PDF Summary:Apocalypse Never, by Michael Shellenberger

Though it’s become widely accepted that climate change is real, the questions still remain of what steps we should take to fix the damage and whether they'll be enough. Many scientists and activists believe that the climate has already passed a tipping point and that environmental catastrophe is inevitable. In Apocalypse Never, award-winning science writer Michael Shellenberger says that it’s time to assess the crisis from a rational perspective. He argues that we’re in a much better position to curb climate change than alarmists would have us believe, and that people who bend scientific truth in order to spur environmental action are doing more harm than good.

In this guide, we’ll explain Shellenberger’s argument that environmental alarmists overstate their claims and that there’s ground for hope for our planet’s future. We’ll also look at counter-arguments to Shellenberger’s claims and examine what independent research says about the solutions he suggests. We’ll point to recent developments in industry, agriculture, and the political climate that frame the conversation around climate change.

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(Shortform note: Efforts to reduce bird mortality from wind farms include selecting locations away from nesting grounds, migratory routes, and areas with lots of prey. In order to protect bat populations, studies have shown that ultrasonic deterrents can be used to keep them out of harm’s way. Despite the dangers wind turbines pose to avian populations, far more animals are killed by power lines, other human structures, and invasive predators such as cats. In the future, one potential solution may be the development of bladeless wind turbines.)

The Power Storage Problem

The final argument against wind and solar power is the issue of power storage, which is both a logistical and an economic problem. At present, electricity is as cheap as it is because it’s generated, transmitted, and used continuously through the shared electrical grid. Because wind and solar power aren’t consistent, the grid must keep fossil fuel plants on standby to pick up the slack when renewables fail (which is costly and counterproductive to renewables’ mission to replace fossil fuels). To power the grid entirely with renewables would mean finding a way to store massive amounts of power for periods when wind or solar power ceases to function.

(Shortform note: As a point of comparison, the US power grid has an electrical generation capacity of 12,000 gigawatts but a storage capacity of only 25 gigawatts. Our electrical infrastructure bypasses the need for storage by delivering electricity as soon as it's produced. Energy usage fluctuates throughout the day and throughout the year, and power companies ramp up production during times of highest demand. In order to meet peak power needs and prevent blackouts, the US Department of Energy is working to update the grid’s infrastructure, make it more resilient, and enable sharing power over large transmission networks.)

Large-scale power storage is both prohibitively expensive as well as a logistical nightmare. While advances in battery technology have done wonders for personal electronics, they don’t come close to meeting the scale of storage needed for the whole power grid, which would cost in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. Proposals to store energy hydraulically (by using renewables to pump water uphill behind hydroelectric dams), as well as attempts to store energy by producing hydrogen, have proven unworkable from an engineering standpoint. Shellenberger suggests that as much as wind and solar power meet the romantic ideal of “natural energy,” they simply don’t meet the energy needs of present-day or future generations.

(Shortform note: Despite Shellenberger’s assertions, power companies are moving forward with industrial-scale battery storage systems to integrate wind and solar power into the grid. One example is the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, providing 150 megawatts of electricity stored in lithium-ion batteries. However, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, battery storage systems aren’t necessarily the most economic solution. Dangers of large battery storage systems include overheating and the release of toxic gases.)

The Case for Nuclear

What’s needed instead is a clean, energy-dense alternative. The answer is nuclear power, which is reliable, productive, and has a minimal impact on the environment. Shellenberger explains the advantages of nuclear power, addresses the reservations and misconceptions many people have about it, and argues that anti-nuclear propaganda has drastically clouded public opinion on the topic.

(Shortform note: Nuclear reactors derive power from the breakdown of unstable uranium atoms into lighter elements through the process of nuclear fission. Fission is a natural process, which is why some parts of the world are naturally radioactive. However, inside a nuclear reactor, the fission process is accelerated due to a chain reaction in which neutrons expelled from one uranium atom strike others with enough force to break them apart as well. The energy released by the fission chain reaction is used to heat water into steam, which drives a turbine that produces electric power.)

Nuclear power is the most energy-dense fuel source we have available—the amount of nuclear fuel required to generate power is infinitesimal next to the amount of fossil fuels burned by coal and natural gas plants. It’s reliable and affordable enough to provide for the world’s rising energy needs. Building nuclear plants has been costly in the US, which Shellenberger attributes to environmental regulations purposely designed to make nuclear power cost-prohibitive. However, in countries such as South Korea, assembly-line construction techniques have been shown to reduce the cost of newly designed nuclear plants. Modern plants also last longer with less upkeep than those in the US, which are based on designs from the 1960s.

(Shortform note: Getting nuclear power off the ground in the US is difficult, but not impossible. At present, the US’s only active nuclear construction project is Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia. Plant Vogtle went active in the 1980s, and its expansion units #3 and #4 will be the first new reactors built in the US in over 30 years. The project has met delays and cost overruns, from an initial budget of $14 billion to over $30 billion. Independent observers blame much of the delays on a backlog of paperwork associated with the project. Meanwhile, construction of a next-generation nuclear plant is scheduled to begin in Kemmerer, Wyoming, as early as 2024.)

Unlike the byproducts of other power sources, nuclear waste is not released back into the environment. Once used, nuclear fuel rods are cooled, then encased in nigh-impregnable steel and concrete. Even if a container were to break, which Shellenberger says is highly unlikely, very little would get loose into the environment because there’s so little of it to begin with. There are many places in the world where the natural background radiation is higher than that at man-made radiation sites.

(Shortform note: Nuclear waste isn’t limited to used fuel rods. It also includes equipment and clothing exposed to radioactive materials. There are currently four disposal sites for such low-level radioactive waste in the US, while spent fuel rods are stored near the reactors themselves. In 1987, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was proposed as a permanent nuclear waste repository, though work toward that goal remains in perpetual limbo due to political opposition from various sources, now including the Biden administration. In the meantime, advanced nuclear designs may eventually allow us to reuse and recycle fuel rods from older plants.)

The most realistic cause of nuclear material being released into the wild is in the case of a reactor meltdown, of which there have been three—at Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Fukushima in 2011—but the impact of those accidents is widely overstated. The Chernobyl disaster resulted in fewer than 100 deaths attributed to radiation. For the other two incidents, the nuclear death toll was zero. Shellenberger points out that other energy-related disasters have been far more devastating, such as the collapse of the Banqiao hydroelectric dam that resulted in 200,000 deaths. Yet no one has called for a ban on hydroelectric power.

The Danger of Nuclear Meltdowns

A nuclear reactor meltdown occurs when there isn’t enough water to cool the superheated fuel rods in the reactor’s core. When this happens, a chain reaction can begin that results in even greater overheating and pressure, which can melt the fuel rods, clog the cooling lines, and produce a steam explosion, releasing radioactive material into the air and possibly harming people close by. The 1986 Chernobyl meltdown was caused by a poor reactor design that failed during a cooling system test. The 2011 Fukushima meltdown was triggered when a massive tsunami damaged the cooling systems of three of the nuclear plant’s four reactors.

In The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman explains that the Three Mile Island incident resulted from a feedback loop of human error caused by a faulty indicator light. The fact that such a simple flaw could lead to catastrophe calls the safety of nuclear power into question, but the same is true for any system in which humans and machines interact. The problem is ultimately one of design, and in How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates insists that new designs for nuclear plants make meltdowns nearly impossible.

The Anti-Nuclear Movement

Environmentalists haven't always been against nuclear power. In the 1960s, it was seen as the obvious way to meet rising energy demands while preserving natural areas. Shellenberger writes that the shift began when some environmentalists deliberately conflated nuclear power with nuclear fallout to stop plants from being built on lands they wanted to conserve. This led activists who were against nuclear weapons to split their focus to include nuclear power. The idea that nuclear energy was as dangerous as nuclear fallout went viral among environmental groups in the 1970s, and by now it’s been infused into environmental doctrine.

(Shortform note: The tendency to lump nuclear energy with nuclear weapons continues to this day. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament claims that there are secret connections between the commercial nuclear power industry and government military programs. However, while nuclear power is a dual-use technology that can both provide clean energy and produce fuel for weapons, in practice there has been no strong correlation between the presence of nuclear power plants and a country’s capability to create atomic weapons.)

The film and television industry has also played an important role in turning nuclear power into a boogeyman, with exploitative and inaccurate depictions that drum up the “scare factor” of nuclear energy. However, Shellenberger admits that the nuclear industry did itself no favors by retreating from the public debate and letting the media’s misinformation go unchallenged. As a result, most of the world is phasing out nuclear power.

(Shortform note: Drumming up the “scare factor” isn’t exclusive to nuclear energy. In Bad Science, Ben Goldacre highlights the ways that journalists distort scientific and technological claims in order to generate headlines. Scientific progress is often slow and boring, so profit-driven news outlets have a financial incentive to sensationalize the stories they report, even if it means exaggerating facts and minimizing nuance. As a result, reporters don’t always properly vet their sources of information, and news publications rarely offer retractions for stories later shown to be misleading. Once bad information becomes part of the public narrative, it can be fiendishly difficult to debunk.)

Meanwhile, abandoning the nuclear option has its cost. Deaths and illness from air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuel continue, and in some parts of the world, more forests are being cleared to make firewood for heating and cooking in homes. The rising output of solar and wind power have not been enough to offset the loss of nuclear energy, and in places where nuclear plants have closed down, the price of electricity has only increased, placing a greater economic burden on people’s lives.

The Promise of Nuclear Fusion

It may be that nuclear fission’s public perception can never be redeemed. However, there’s another nuclear possibility that lacks fission’s negative associations—that of nuclear fusion. Instead of drawing power from radioactive uranium, fusion creates energy by smashing together hydrogen atoms (the most common element in the universe). This same process powers the sun, and instead of producing radioactive waste, the byproduct of hydrogen fusion is helium (the second most common element).

The trouble is that sustained nuclear fission is much easier to achieve than fusion, which requires duplicating the pressure and temperature that exists in the heart of a star. Research progresses, as was highlighted by a breakthrough at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories where for the first time, scientists produced a fusion reaction that released more energy than it took to ignite. However, a workable fusion reactor is probably still decades away, leaving fission as our only nuclear stopgap until practical fusion is fully realized.

Saving the Planet

When it comes to rescuing ecosystems, though, how we generate electricity isn’t the highest priority that comes to most people’s minds. The core of existential environmental dread revolves around the idea that humans are actively killing the planet. In order to remove a certain level of panic from the environmental discussion, Shellenberger addresses the issues and misperceptions around mass extinction of species, the loss of the rainforests, and the amount of non-degradable waste such as plastic that we release into the environment.

Conservationists warn that species are now going extinct faster than at any time in the past several million years. Authors who characterize this as the “Sixth Extinction” argue that mass extinctions are not only humanity’s fault, but that they also endanger the human race’s survival by toppling the delicate natural systems on which our civilization depends. However, Shellenberger claims that alarmist extinction rate projections are based on a flawed “species area model” developed in the 1960s that made faulty assumptions about how much habitat is needed for species to survive.

Human Activity as the Cause of Mass Extinction

The author of The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert, compares the present rate of species loss to that of five other mass extinction events that we know of in Earth’s history, of which some were sudden, while others were gradual. In all cases, over 75% of species on the planet were wiped out by environmental changes that occurred too quickly for evolution to adapt. Kolbert and others like her argue that human-driven climate change is creating a similar crisis through habitat destruction, ocean acidification, and the disruption of native ecologies by invasive species that humans transplant.

The Species-Area Relationship model that Kolbert and many biologists use to predict species extinction rates (and that Shellenberger objects to) is a mathematical relationship between the size of a habitat and the number of species it ought to support. The model isn’t as static as Shellenberger suggests, but undergoes revision and refinement to integrate new data as it emerges. The fact scientists continue to question and study the model’s assumptions and implications doesn’t invalidate it as a predictive tool in the field of ecological conservation.

Deforestation

Shellenberger says that habitat loss and declining species populations are more important metrics to consider and that they aren’t the result of “evil corporations” but by the actions of people simply struggling to survive. In Brazil and the Congo, rainforests are disappearing in order to make room for farmland and to use the chopped-down trees for fuel, as was done in the developed world for all of recorded history. Not only are forests disappearing, what remains is being carved into islands of woodland that break apart species’ natural range of territory.

(Shortform note: Much of the forest being lost in Brazil is due to illegal land grabs for ranching and logging. However, it’s not just the ranchers and loggers who are to blame, but the large corporations who knowingly buy their products and sell them to consumers in the US and elsewhere. As opposed to Brazil’s industrial deforestation, the rainforests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been disappearing due to subsistence farming and charcoal manufacture, as Shellenberger claims. Also unlike Brazil, the DRC is taking active measures to restore lost woodlands in cooperation with local communities.)

A misunderstanding that Shellenberger speaks to specifically is the idea that rainforests are vital to providing the planet’s oxygen and removing carbon dioxide from the air. Forest ecosystems actually consume as much oxygen as they produce, and while plants do store carbon, they don’t to the extent that many activists claim. For example, the Amazon absorbs 5% of the world’s carbon emissions, less than the 25% cited by protestors of Brazil’s deforestation projects.

(Shortform note: Shellenberger takes his numbers from an article in USA Today, but downplays the importance of the Amazon’s 5% carbon offset. The 25% figure refers to the amount of carbon emissions absorbed by all the world’s plants. As a result of deforestation, the Amazon has now become a source of carbon emissions, but its role in the environment goes beyond its carbon footprint. The rainforest has a cooling effect on the atmosphere, and its removal would result in a global temperature rise even if we were able to reduce worldwide carbon emissions.)

On the plus side, reforestation has exceeded deforestation for the last few decades, in part due to replanting projects and agricultural land returning to nature, but also because the excess carbon in the atmosphere actively encourages plant growth. However, Shellenberger admits that new forest growth is a poor replacement for the old growth forests that are home to many species and have more natural diversity. More efficient use of already-cleared lands can halt civilization’s march into old growth forests that are in most need of conservation.

(Shortform note: A danger of deforestation that Shellenberger doesn’t cover is the possibility that the loss of woodland caused by humans can trigger a cycle in which the rest of a forest dies on its own. This is of concern in the Amazon, where the forest recycles water by drawing it up from the soil into the canopy. That, combined with salt the trees release into the air, allow the jungle to create its own rainfall. If enough of the rainforest is destroyed by humans, what remains may not have enough biomass to recycle the moisture it needs to survive.)

Plastic in the Oceans

Of equal or greater concern are the oceans, where wildlife is endangered by the vast amount of plastic waste that gets eaten by birds, fish, whales, and marine turtles. Though much of the plastic comes from torn and discarded industrial fishing nets, a great deal more finds its way there by land from countries without strong waste management infrastructures. Meanwhile, the use and production of plastic has steadily risen for over 50 years. Attempts to recycle it result in most of it being shipped to southeast Asian countries, which are becoming less willing to act as the world’s plastic garbage dump.

Shellenberger notes that the invention of plastic resulted in the stop of widespread slaughter of animals such as elephants and tortoises, whose ivory and shells were used as materials for many commonplace items. Today there is a push toward bioplastics, but the alternatives to petroleum-based plastic aren’t necessarily better for the environment. Bioplastics require more water, farmland, and energy to produce than normal plastic, and are harder to reuse and recycle. In those respects, green alternatives can be a step in the wrong direction. The environmental cost of petroleum plastic is actually less than our other current options.

The Environmental Impact of Plastic Waste

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman explains that because plastic doesn’t biodegrade, even if we were to stop production today, the plastic we’ve already created will eventually find its way into every corner of the ecosystem. Forces of erosion will eventually break plastic down into smaller and smaller pieces that can be easily transported by water and air—and ingested by microbes and plankton. Because plastic is such a relatively new invention, its long-term effects on the environment have yet to be fully determined.

Shellenberger’s views on plastic’s benefits go against environmentalists’ concerns about the enormous amount of plastic waste produced every year, though progress has been made in finding ways to organically break down and recycle certain types of plastic. Bioplastics also don’t break down in landfills—they only degrade in industrial composting facilities. In their overall lifetime, bioplastics have a greater carbon footprint than single-use plastics and add nothing of value to composted soil. At present, the only actionable way to mitigate endless plastic waste may be a cultural shift toward reusable containers and packaging.

The Human Cost

In addition to engineering and logistical difficulties, any solution to climate change is doomed to fail if it doesn’t account for the human variable. Shellenberger argues that first-world countries are shifting the burden for managing the climate onto nations in the developing world in a form of environmental colonialism. Damaging deforestation in places such as Brazil and the Congo is simply the result of people trying to survive, while environmental groups and international organizations counterproductively hold back modernization and make enemies of the farmers in those countries whom they should really be courting as allies.

(Shortform note: In False Alarm, Lomborg argues that the economic impact of climate change should be of greater concern than it’s given. Using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a yardstick to measure general prosperity, Lomborg calculates that current rates of climate change could result in a global drop in GDP of 4% by the end of the century. This impact, he argues, would represent a worldwide decline in health, happiness, and overall well-being. Since this downward turn will be disproportionately felt by poorer countries, Lomborg recommends spurring economic growth to help people in the developing world adapt to the environmental changes of the future.)

Life in many countries is hard and hand to mouth. Logging and farming are how people survive and are the only ways for many families to lift their children out of poverty. Deforestation is caused by economic necessity, not “evil corporations” burning rainforests out of greed. Shellenberger says that what’s needed in these countries are modern agricultural techniques that will allow them to produce more food on less land. There is precedent for this in the United States—the Tennessee Valley Authority was created during the Great Depression to bring hydroelectric power and modernized agriculture to impoverished farmers, vastly improving their standard of living while enabling economic growth and education.

(Shortform note: The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is one of a handful of federally owned electric utilities in the US. Despite its goal of bringing the Tennessee region out of poverty, it was strongly opposed by other utilities for its ability to undercut their profits. In addition to hydro power, the modern TVA has nuclear power, renewables, and fossil fuel plants, one of which was the site of a massive coal ash spill in 2008. Nevertheless, the TVA pioneered land-use practices and technologies that have since been used to improve agriculture and living conditions in impoverished areas throughout the world.)

However, that’s not what’s taking place today. Instead, environmental organizations are actively pushing against efficient, concentrated industrial farming in favor of small, local farms that produce less food while, in aggregate, using far more land. Hand-in-hand with this drag on agricultural progress is pressure for these countries to forego efficient and cheap electric power in favor of land-intensive renewables. The American and European groups insisting on these measures are trying to enforce low levels of power consumption in poor countries that they’re unable or unwilling to attempt in the developed world. Meanwhile, by glamorizing the “simple agrarian life,” they ignore the harsh economic realities of the people who actually live it.

Even the simple farming life loses its shine when farmers need access to land that Western environmentalists want to protect. Shellenberger writes that in Africa, whole groups of people were displaced when their farms and villages were made part of national parks. The conservation programs responsible financially compensate the countries for their land and provide some income in the form of ecotourism, but that rarely trickles down to those who lose their homes. Instead, the result is animosity between the people who live in an area and the organizations trying to protect it. Though they could have been treated as allies, local residents become enemies of the conservation effort and sometimes actively fight against it.

Environmental Colonialism, Environmental Justice

Other authors in addition to Shellenberger have accused the US and Europe of imposing their environmental agendas on other countries instead of working in cooperation with native populations. Recognizing the negative ecological impact that colonialism has had in the past, some Western governments offer financial reparations while blocking access to vital energy technology. Such actions may only widen the socioeconomic gap between the richest nations and the poorest. Meanwhile, concerns about the environmental impact of rising population numbers in the Third World have led some to propose measures to restrict population growth in developing countries—measures that wouldn’t be applied to richer nations.

To counter environmental colonialism, there is a growing movement toward environmental justice, the idea that no national, ethnic, or cultural group should pay a disproportionate cost for the effects of climate change or conservation. In terms of environmental equity, it follows that countries and organizations that bear the most responsibility for environmental damage should shoulder the burdens of correcting it. Ensuring environmental justice requires involving everyone in the decision-making process and ensuring that no one is denied the resources to improve their lives as well as their environment.

The Case for Industrialization

In the end, Shellenberger says that the way to save the planet is to save humans first. Bringing modern industry, modern farming, and cheap electrical power to the world lifts people out of poverty, increases urbanization, concentrates resource usage, and lets more of the planet go back to nature. The current positive environmental trends enjoyed in the developed world can be shared because 1) industrialization frees people from struggling daily to survive, 2) industrial farming techniques let us reduce how much land we need to feed people, and 3) artificial products save plants and animals from being used as clothing and building materials.

It’s a historical fact in the US and Europe that industrialization lifts people out of poverty. It’s been especially empowering for women, for whom it gave a path toward financial independence away from traditional, home-based gender roles. Shellenberger claims this same process is taking place today in the developing world. Young men and women are moving from farms to the cities, where manufacturing work brings them higher wages and gives them more free time to pursue education. And because city dwellers don’t produce their own food, this creates more economic demand for the farmers who don’t choose to move to the cities.

(Shortform note: Given the worldwide trend toward increasing urbanization, modern city planners are looking for ways to make cities more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Examples include reintroducing vegetation to combat the heat of buildings and concrete, using cable cars to enhance public transportation, and making better use of vertical space as an antidote to urban sprawl. This last transition may have been given a jumpstart by the shift toward people working from home. Faced with a decline in demand for traditional office space, real estate developers have begun converting commercial office buildings into apartments.)

Environmental groups should therefore be working with farmers to increase agricultural yields in concentrated regions close to the cities, so that natural areas with more biodiversity can be better preserved. Shellenberger says that this can be achieved by implementing industrial farming, which he admits has a deservedly bad reputation due to issues of animal cruelty. However, public outcry has resulted in improvements in the last 20 years, resulting in more humane conditions for animals while minimizing their impact in terms of land use and emissions. Free range farms, while emotionally appealing, take a much greater toll on the environment.

(Shortform note: In addition to industrial farming practices already used in the developed world, advances in data collection and robotics can further enhance crop yield and livestock handling. Data tools allow farmers to monitor plant and animal health and specifically tailor food and water needs. Meanwhile, the development of lab-grown meat and artificial substitutes may one day obviate the need for sprawling, resource-intensive cattle ranches or inhumane industrial farms. However, at present such meat alternatives are cost-prohibitive for the average consumer.)

In order to accept industrialization as a solution, Shellenberger says the main emotional hurdle is to acknowledge that artificial products are better than natural ones. This is easy to understand in some situations. After all, isn’t wearing artificial fur more ethical than slaughtering wildlife for their pelts? Industrial, unnatural farming techniques let farmers dramatically increase crop production while reducing the amount of farmland needed. And nuclear power, for all its Cold War stigma, will always be the most efficient, power-dense way to heat and light our cities and our homes, far better than “natural” wind and solar power.

(Shortform note: The debate between artificial and natural products is complicated by the difficulty of defining what “natural” even means. In Natural, religious scholar Alan Levinovitz describes our modern tendency to equate nature with goodness as a theological fallacy not grounded in science. While mythologizing nature has deep roots in human culture, Levinovitz argues that it can distort our thinking so that we turn our backs on the benefits of modernity in favor of so-called “natural” foods, medicines, and lifestyles.)

And yet, there has always been a “back to nature” movement that prizes a dreamy oneness with the natural world. Shellenberger insists that we give up this fantasy. The only way forward into a green future is to lift people up to all the benefits of modernity, and not turn the clock back to the destructive ways of the past.

(Shortform note: In How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates agrees with Shellenberger that regressing technological development and progress is not a viable or desirable solution to climate change. However, he sets reducing carbon emissions as our top environmental priority and states that chief responsibility lies at the level of national governments. Businesses bear some of the burden too, but the most effective step individuals can take is to become more involved in the political process through which we can push for meaningful change.)