Homelessness has become a human rights crisis.
Michael Shellenberger
Privately, many climate and energy experts admit that the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to decarbonize energy supplies is with nuclear power.
There has always been enough fossil fuels to power human civilization for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, and nuclear energy is effectively infinite.
In reality, Chernobyl proves why nuclear is the safest way to make electricity. In the worst nuclear power accidents, relatively small amounts of particulate matter escape, harming only a handful of people.
I actually argue that renewables are worse than fossil fuels. It's a physical manifestation of lower power densities. More land, more materials, more mining, more metals, more waste.
Hypocrisy is the ultimate power move. It is a way of demonstrating that one plays by a different set of rules from the ones adhered to by common people.
Why are the people who are most alarmist about climate change so opposed to the technologies that are solving it? One possibility is that they truly believe nuclear and natural gas are as dangerous as climate change.
The industrial revolution in England was only made possible through intensified agriculture and the use of coal for manufacturing, which delivered far more energy for far less labor.
We have good examples of successful adaptation to rising sea levels. The Netherlands became a wealthy nation despite having one-third of its landmass below sea level, including areas a full 7m below sea level, as a result of the gradual sinking of its landscapes.
If you want to save the natural environment, you just use nuclear. You grow more food on less land, and people live in cities. It's not rocket science.
Recognizing nuclear as renewable, and saving Diablo Canyon, would be a bold move for Governor Newsom. It would upset his traditional anti-nuclear environmental allies.
In many countries, wind turbines pose the single greatest threat to bats after habitat loss and white-nose syndrome.
The idea that we're going to replace oil and natural gas with solar and wind, and nothing else, is a hallucinatory delusion.
Humankind has never transitioned to energy sources that are more costly, less reliable, and have a larger environmental footprint than the incumbent - and yet that's precisely what adding large amounts of solar and wind to the grid requires.
All renewables thus require a material throughput - from mining to processing to installing to disposing of the materials later as waste - that is orders of magnitude larger than for non-renewable energy sources.
Most people think of solar and wind as new energy sources. In fact, they are two of our oldest.
The only countries that have successfully moved from fossil fuels to low-carbon power have done so with the help of nuclear energy.
Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalism at legacy publications.
The producers of 'Chernobyl' should tell the truth: the accident demonstrates the relative safety, not danger, of nuclear power.
Now that Europe has developed through deforestation and fossil fuel use it is telling Brazil not to develop through deforestation and fossil fuel use. Bolsonaro is the backlash against such hypocrisy.
It was only with the rise of capitalism and the need for workers to be freer, more mobile, and prosperous, that societies were able to undermine pagan morality and the ancient institution of slavery.
Hypocrisy demonstrates how unaccountable one is to conventional morality.
Dealing with environmental lawsuits and grassroots resistance is expensive. Industrial wind and solar developers have to hire lawyers, public relations specialists, and scientists willing to testify that this or that project poses only a modest threat to endangered birds and bats.
Sunlight and wind are inherently unreliable and energy-dilute. As such, adding solar panels and wind turbines to the grid in large quantities increases the cost of generating electricity, locks in fossil fuels, and increases the environmental footprint of energy production.
The underlying problem with solar and wind is that they are too unreliable and energy-dilute.
Allowing for suburbanization of California's ranches and farmlands would still allow for strong protections of California's truly natural areas like Yosemite, the redwoods, and oak woodlands and green spaces near cities.
Solar makes electricity expensive for two inherently physical reasons. Sunlight is dilute, requiring 10 to 15 times as much materials and mining, and up to 5,000 times more land, than non-renewables. And sunlight is unreliable, which reduces the value of solar as it becomes a larger part of energy supplies.
I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.
Journalists and activists alike have an obligation to describe environmental problems honestly and accurately, even if they fear doing so will reduce their news value or salience with the public.
Nuclear is the largest source of clean, carbon-free power in rich nations, and the science shows it is the safest way to make reliable electricity.
Less land is being converted into agriculture globally in part because farmers are growing more food on less land.
The value of solar and wind decline in economic value as they become larger shares of the electricity grid for physical reasons. They produce too much energy when societies don't need it and not enough energy when they do.
Hydroelectric dams remain the way many poor countries gain access to reliable electricity, and both solar and wind might be worthwhile in some circumstances. But there is nothing in either their history or their physical attributes that suggests solar and wind in particular could or should be the centerpiece of efforts to deal with climate change.
I believe Forbes is an important outlet for broadening environmental journalism beyond the overwhelmingly alarmist approach taken by most reporters, and look forward to contributing heterodoxical pieces on energy and the environment in the future.
Paid child care would make child care more efficient, allowing more children to be cared for by fewer adults, and thus free up parents to work more.
Environmentalism, apocalyptic environmentalism in particular, has become the dominant religion of supposedly secular people in the West.
Climate change is an issue I care passionately about and have dedicated a significant portion of my life to addressing.
Climate change has completely overshadowed the conservation concerns that used to be so important to the Democratic Party.
Trump gives progressives a way to channel whatever guilt they might have - whether from preventing homebuilding, benefitting from unfair taxes and pensions, or depriving black and Latino students the teacher quality and school funding they need - into a sanctimonious tribal rage against Republican racism.
Both solar and wind produce too much energy when societies don't need it, and not enough when they do.
If you care about the environment, you want food and energy production to become more efficient and centralized. You want to put less inputs in and get more outputs out and get less waste.
Nuclear is the only energy source that has proven capable of fully replacing fossil fuels at low-cost in wealthy nations. While hydro-electric dams can sometimes play that role, they are limited to nations with powerful rivers, many of which have already been dammed.
Normally skeptical journalists routinely give renewables a pass. The reason isn't because they don't know how to report critically on energy - they do regularly when it comes to non-renewable energy sources - but rather because they don't want to.
Nations are reorienting toward the national interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables. The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to.
Like many environmental documentaries, 'Planet of Humans' endorses debunked Malthusian ideas that the world is running out of energy.
Neither solar nor wind are actually substitutes for coal or natural gas or oil.
Climate change is happening. It's just not the end of the world. It's not even our most serious environmental problem.
Voters must feel that that the burden of new housing is being shared equally and not falling disproportionately on any one group.
The Amazon uses as much oxygen as it produces.
There is good evidence that the catastrophist framing of climate change is self-defeating because it alienates and polarizes many people. And exaggerating climate change risks distracting us from other important issues including ones we might have more near-term control over.
