Review of “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All“
Book Review by qpooqpoo
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
by Michael Shellenberger
Harper, New York, NY, 2020.
“’Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Adapts’—a perfect motto for mitigating and adapting to climate change…. ‘technology and progress, a utopia, or perfect world, founded on democracy and manufacturing’—a perfect motto for achieving prosperity for all.”
—Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never[1]
What does it mean when the most banal, conformist, status-quo, pro-progress neoliberal can call themselves an environmentalist and be named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time Magazine? It means the word “environmentalist” has lost all meaning. This now meaningless word apparently only signifies something universally desirable. It’s doubtful Shellenberger deliberately uses meaningless language, in the Orwellian sense, to hide the truth rather than express it. In reality, he’s likely just internalized the techno-industrial system’s evisceration and co-optation of anything that could pose a threat to its existence.
Wilderness denial to…save wilderness? Wait…what? That’s right, Shellenberger is essentially a wilderness denier. He sees no intrinsic meaning or significance in wilderness, yet he believes in protecting “wildlife.” How does one reconcile this paradoxical stance? He doesn’t. He never clearly defines what the hard objective standard of environmental protection or integrity is—apparently, he just assumes every simpleton who reads his book will be as similarly divested of any values that conflict with or oppose our technological society as he is. He tells us:
“[N]ature doesn’t operate like a self-regulating system. In reality, different natural environments change constantly. Species come and go. There is no whole or ‘system’ to collapse. There’s just a changing mix [of plants and animals].”[2]
“…there is nothing in the mixture telling us that it is better or worse than some other combination, like a farm or desert.”[3]
Those of us who view wilderness as something very real and concrete, and something to fight for, do so because we recognize the absurdity of this thinking. It’s true that humans have modified their environments throughout history, and it’s true that environments change naturally over time. However, it does not follow from this that all modifications to the environment are therefore the same in nature. The scale and pace of modern technological society’s modification of the environment is enormous compared to primitive society’s—radically, qualitatively and quantitatively different. Primitive hunter-gatherers no doubt modified their environments. After all, all living things by definition interact with their environments. But there is a colossal difference between the modifications done by small, isolated bands of hunter-gatherers with limited means, and the drastic and rapid modifications that modern techno-industrial civilization makes to the non-human and non-artificial world.
This isn’t idle philosophizing, it has real implications. Humans have been best adapted, through millions of years of evolution both physically and psychologically, to those conditions that existed for the vast majority of their evolutionary history. This is a real environmental condition. More precisely, there has existed for the vast majority of time in which humans inhabited the Earth (in something approximate to their present form) a set of conditions radically different from those which exist now, for the vast majority of modern people, in the global, industrial, civilized world. This set includes, but is not limited to, individual autonomy: the ability to provide for oneself and family with minimal external interference by entities over which they are powerless to influence; individual freedom: the ability to work and travel anywhere at whim with a minimum of external interference; individual power: the ability to experience power through nature by controlling and achieving life-critical goals with a minimum of external interference; small, local communities with social experience and trust and direct experience in or access to leadership; the free and available resources with which to build and sustain a fulfilling life without chronic anxiety about scarcity and a minimum of outside interference, and a stable and relatively predictable environment in which skills and experience yield compounding returns on energy investment. All of these conditions are conducive to psychological harmony, and guaranteeing all of the above was reliably predictable and dependable for one’s life and the lives of their progeny. This is to say nothing of the crowding, noise, pollution, overbearing rules and regulations, dominance of individuals by large organizations, the surveillance and invasion of privacy, and the anomie and purposelessness that are all fundamental to and widespread within modern civilization.
Changes in any given environment obviously affect the lives of those human and non-human animals living in it. Wilderness is thus not only a distinct object, but it has important implications for human welfare. By denying the existence of wilderness, or at least downplaying it as an objective state, the author removes an important standard, or baseline, against which to measure how environmental changes impact human welfare for better or worse. This reflects a sad pattern we see time and again from defenders of the techno-industrial system or those unlucky enough to be brainwashed by the ideal of “progress”: when something of great value and long-standing importance to people is debased or destroyed by the system and which they see no hope of correcting, they will often try to convince themselves that that thing never existed in the first place. The same goes with freedom, or privacy, or dignity, etc., etc., whatever value happens to be under threat, whenever it is psychologically convenient. It’s likely the same dynamic is at play here with Shellenberger.
It would be one thing to frankly value technology over nature, and if a conflict arose between the two, to accept the loss of wild nature for whatever supposed “benefits” technology provides in its place. Many technophiles adopt this approach, and you can see for yourself how rare it is to find them thinking about the natural world or how to protect it. It would be another to value wild nature over technology, and if a conflict arose between the two, to accept the loss of technology, often begrudgingly, to preserve nature. Entirely different from these positions is the stance that modern technology is in fundamental, irreconcilable conflict with wild nature and only the destruction of modern technological civilization can save nature and prevent an unmitigated catastrophe. This is the hardest stance to take, because its inescapable logic inevitably requires there to be a struggle to curtail or end the colossal powers of the modern technological system, but it’s one that Wilderness Front takes with firm conviction. It is a far more bizarre approach to value them both equally. To do so invariably requires a degree of psychological denial: denial of the idea that modern technological civilization—or any civilization for that matter—is diametrically opposed to, and incompatible with, wild nature. And so only a very small but precious minority can confront the issue soberly without succumbing to cope. One could be tempted to suspect Shellenberger is arguing in bad faith, really valuing technology over wilderness but presenting himself otherwise. But in light of his extensive background with environmental sympathies and movements,[5] it’s more likely he’s sincere about his love of nature, but trying as best he can to reconcile modern technology with it. There is even some evidence to suggest that this move was motivated by powerful psychological incentives. The author notes:
“Twenty years ago, I discovered that the more apocalyptic environmentalist books and articles I read, the sadder and more anxious I felt.” …
“It was, in part, my awareness of the impact that reading about climate and the environment had on my mood that led me to doubt whether environmentalism could be successful.”[6]
This mirrors the pattern that the environmental movement has gone through in the last several decades. Without an uncompromising position to hold wild nature above technology, and steeped in the deep mythology of technological progress, the vast majority of self-described environmentalists became apathetic and hopeless or else turned to denialism as it became clear that modern technology and wilderness could not be reconciled. And thus, most of the truly radical environmentalists of the 1960s through 1990s petered out (or sold out) and stopped thinking about the issue or, in the case of Shellenberger, turned to increasingly naïve and wishful thinking about reforming the technological system in such a way that it can coexist in harmony with wilderness.
Shellenberger is an environmental accelerationist. He thinks that we can save nature by pushing for more technology. Specifically, for more domestication, more industrialization, more artificial substitutes, and above all, the use of higher density energy sources. “[W]e save nature by not using it, and we avoid using it by switching to artificial substitutes….it is only by embracing the artificial that we can save what’s natural.”[7] Grass fed free-range cows and chickens take up vastly more land than industrial methods of caging animals and pumping them with artificial foods and hormones, freeing up the land to be used by wildlife. Natural gas and nuclear energy are vastly more energy-dense, requiring far less land for the same energy produced as compared to their renewable or coal counterparts, again, freeing up more land for wildlife. Genetically engineered salmon raised in industrial fisheries can free natural ocean ecosystems of the overfishing burden and allow natural fish to increase in population, the use of plastics is a good thing, because if we had not embraced plastics then all of the natural sources of plastic-like material such as turtle shells and whale oil would have led those animals into extinction…and on and on. “Creating cheap and easily obtainable substitutes in the form of domesticated meat should thus be a high priority for conservationists.”[8] The idea is deceptively simple and yet utterly ridiculous. In essence, he envisions a great divide, a bifurcation between the world of the techno-industrial system that humans inhabit and the outside world of wild plants and animals that have been “saved” by the techno-system’s embrace of high technology and energy density.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding. A false dichotomy. The “natural” and the “artificial” are part of the same world-system, and they inevitably always interact and affect each other. Competition for survival and power among self-propagating systems,[9] and the impossibility of predicting or controlling the development of society over the long term are fundamental to the world system, and they will doom his naïve visions.
“Between 500 and 1350, forests went from covering 80 percent of western Europe to covering half of that. Historians estimate that the forests of France were reduced from being thirty million hectares (about seventy-four million acres) to thirteen million (about thirty-two million acres) between 800 and 1300. Forests covered 70 percent of Germany in the year 900 but just 25 percent by 1900.”[10]
So “development” (i.e. technological and industrial growth) gutted the wilderness of Europe. A land of majestic forests, clear flowing streams, vast meadows, and mysterious swamps teaming with abundant wild plants and animals was desecrated, and then replaced, gradually over time, with factories, apartment buildings, power plants, solar farms, waste dumps, dams…in other words an overall “higher standard of living” (as defined by the technological system and the people educated and brainwashed within it to maintain its values). How then does Shellenberger explain how Africa, South America, Southeast Asia and the whole “developing” world will avoid a similar fate when they push for economic and technological growth? Shellenberger justifies this growth as a means to preserving as much of nature as possible, so how then does he envision these developing nations will avoid a similar or far worse trajectory in terms of forest decline alone? How does Shellenberger envision that the entire world, once “developed” with the technological level of the most advanced modern countries—with their supposedly environmentally low-footprint technologies like nuclear power—will escape the environmental fate that befell Europe when it industrialized with more environmentally damaging technologies? More specifically, how will the developed globe escape the same social and material processes that led an industrializing Europe to radically denude its wild landscape? Because rest assured, the same processes will be at work. Specifically, the process of competition and natural selection among competing systems. Shellenberger shows that he is aware of this fundamental aspect of dynamic systems when he acknowledges Javon’s famous paradox:
“Thanks to energy efficiency, things like lighting, electricity, and air conditioning are a lot cheaper. But that has just meant that people use them more, which reduces the energy savings that would have occurred had consumption levels not risen…. The fact that energy efficiency, a form of resource productivity, lowers prices, which increases demand, is basic economics.”[11]
This same logic applies to production, and to economic and military competition among individuals and organizations for resources both natural and produced. Thus, the process of competition, and therefore growth of technologies and their impacts as forced by competition, is not saved by more efficient sources of energy or more abundant energy. Kaczynski describes this process accurately in his theory of “self-propagating systems” and the logical corollary that Shellenberger’s entire better-technology-to-save-nature schema is doomed by a fundamental aspect of all dynamic systems, including the world-system and all its subsystems:
“Organizations, movements, ideologies are locked in an unremitting struggle for power. Those that fail to compete successfully are eliminated or subjugated. The struggle is almost exclusively for power in the short term; the competitors show scant concern even for their own long-term survival, let alone for the welfare of the human race or of the biosphere. That’s why nuclear weapons have not been banned, emissions of carbon dioxide have not been reduced to a safe level, the Earth’s resources are being exploited at an utterly reckless rate, and no limitation has been placed on the development of powerful but dangerous technologies.”[12]
So it doesn’t look like Shellenberger will be able to escape this process and the resulting environmental degradation it entails even with all of his “low-impact” technologies—there’s no limit on their expansion and interaction with the biosphere when they’re employed by competing social systems that grow technologically and economically. Shellenberger never offers a comprehensive explanation to address this point, but the implication is clear throughout the book: the developing world can avoid a similar degradation of its wilderness areas (as with pre-modern Europe) through better management and control. The idea of rationally planning and controlling these societies over the long term in order to serve some ideal is a pipe dream, as societies develop through an autonomous process of competition and natural selection among competing systems. We haven’t even managed to eliminate nuclear weapons—a simple and straightforward problem—so how then are we going to accomplish the more subtle, complex, and relatively exorbitant task of preserving forests and wildlife because… just because….? Occasionally he does offer specific examples of what needs to be done to control technological development in such a way that wildlife is preserved, but ultimately his propositions amount to preaching ridiculously pathetic platitudes. To take the plastic pollution issue as one example—a serious catastrophe which now threatens to overwhelm[13] us all and devastate wildlife: “A well-managed refuse and land-fill system can cost ten times more than open dumping, yet will be necessary to avoid river and ocean pollution.” Good luck. The issue isn’t simply overwhelming, but it has far-reaching consequences. Microplastics have been found in our blood, our lungs, and in our brains,[14] and this has implications that we don't yet understand. And it isn't just humans, up to 1 million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals are killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean.[15] He unwittingly reminds us of how impossibly difficult such a thing will be for the entire world: “Even in fastidious Japan, where 70 to 80 percent of used plastic bottles, bags, and wrappers are collected and incinerated or recycled, twenty thousand to sixty thousand tons of plastic still ends up in the ocean.”[16]
But why is he so eager to preserve “nature”? Why is nature valued? He never approaches a comprehensible explanation. The main reason why is that such a discussion would invariably lead to thinking about aspects of nature that might conflict with the values and priorities of the technological system. And such thinking would lead in turn to an evaluation of those aspects of the natural world that are incompatible with the technological system, especially as it regards human society and the individual’s life. So, we’re left with a schizophrenic mental separation: the artificial and the natural, rigorously kept separate from each other, but never evaluating why. The gorillas he loves so much get to live free in the wilderness that they’ve been biologically adapted to both physically and psychologically, but as for humans…stay on the other side of the cage! (Yes, you, human. Just for “leisure.” Just for looking. Now go back to your computer screen on the mandatory conveyor belt of progress rushing you recklessly into the Brave New World). And so on the thinking goes: “Cities, meanwhile, concentrate human populations and leave more of the countryside to wildlife.”[17] First, humans are for the most part forced to live in cities, or if they want to, they do so because their rural homelands have been gutted of any economic or spiritual life, or they seek the drug-like hedonism cities provide as compensation for the otherwise alienating, disempowering, enslaving and empty conditions they foster. Second, humans are not meant to live separate and distinct from wildlife. We are wild ourselves, and our alienation from wild nature both around us and within our own natures is a prime reason for the widespread misery that plagues modern life. Third, there’s no guarantee that the trend towards cities will continue indefinitely—technological conditions may change to select for more dispersed human populations. In many cases wildlife becomes dependent on the social conditions created by technology, such that if most humans ever wanted to live outside of cities (or experienced any other radical social shift) the surrounding wildlife would be severely disrupted. This last part holds true for the author’s entire approach to keeping the technological system separate from nature so as to “preserve” it: in essence, both nature and humans living within the technological system who value nature will be held hostage to each other.
Despite all its flaws, the cherry-picking of data to suit its thesis, the false premises, the downplaying of the negatives of his position, the overplaying of the positives, and the generally convoluted and often contradictory points raised in the book, it does have a few positives.
First, it is well researched, and for anyone interested in the issues of pollution, global warming, deforestation, and fossil fuel and nuclear energy as they pertain to ecology, there are a wealth of sources that provide some very good insights on facts and figures—a good starting point for anyone who wants to be introduced to those topics.
Second, he does a very credible job at debunking the “renewable energy” paradigm, and provides a lot of good and frankly fascinating information related to the impracticality and inefficiency of wind and solar energy.
Third, he provides an insightful and amusing exposé of the corruption of mainstream environmental and scientific organizations. If anyone wants to begin “following the money” behind the push for “sustainable” energy or better understand the censorship and self-censorship surrounding the politics of academia and the scientific establishment, he does a decent job at introducing these topics.
Finally, the book is quite instructive on the importance of honest reporting and careful research. As he says, “…persistent exaggeration of the facts has the potential to do more harm than good to the scientific credibility of your cause….” This is especially important for a revolutionary movement dedicated to ending the technological system. It can be tempting, and easy, to rely on popular notions or trending statistics, but great care must be made to fact-check and research sometimes even the most seemingly obvious points, as the facts and statistics are often far more subtle and complex or contentious than they first appear.[18]
What kind of person writes a book like this? A neoliberal banking all his hopes on technology? A conservative falling for “The System’s Neatest Trick”[19] by attacking the hysterical environmentalist left? A shill for the nuclear energy industry? A tortured wildlife-lover at heart that can’t bear the idea that the technological system must be destroyed to save nature and retreats into utopian copium? It’s not entirely clear. What is clear is that he’s an anthropocentrist. “[We] need to go beyond rationalism and re-embrace humanism which affirms humanities specialness, against Malthusian and apocalyptic environmentalists who condemn human civilization and humanity itself.”[20] Understanding the mindset of these types of people, and how they wrestle with and explain to themselves and others the crisis that the technological system is currently entering is important to the degree that they reflect the psychology of the status quo intellectual class who by and large control the institutions, the media, and the bureaucracies of the system and we should anticipate and prepare for their arguments and attacks. We can also learn much by keeping an eye on the hysterical “environmental alarmists” he attacks. Shellenberger is right to ask, “…could a hatred of human civilization, and perhaps humanity itself, be behind claims of environmental apocalypse?...a kind of subconscious fantasy for people who dislike civilization.…”[21] Undoubtedly this is plausible, and maybe these types—those who aren’t avowed leftists or deficient in character—represent a potential pool of anti-technology revolutionaries. Whatever the case, there isn’t much philosophical value in Shallenberger’s confused, naïve, and misguided position. Though it is sometimes amusing to witness the various twists and contortions—the sick, pathological self-deception of the technophilic intelligentsia as they confront the harsh realities of the industrial system and its incompatibility with wild nature and human welfare.
“…I told him I thought the continued existence of nuclear weapons should remind us to be happy to be alive.”
“You mean like a memento mori,” said Dick
“Yes!”[22]
Perhaps a more accurate title for his book would be, Why I stopped worrying and learned to love the techno-industrial system…
___________
NOTES:
[1] Page 281. Here the author is responding to marketing taglines used at the World’s Fair in Chicago, from 1933 to 1934.
[2] Page 262
[3] Ibid
[4] This is probably some combination of “denialism” and “shifting baseline syndrome”. According to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Dictionary of Psychology, denial is “a defense mechanism in which unpleasant thoughts, feelings, wishes, or events are ignored or excluded from conscious awareness… Denial is an unconscious process that functions to resolve emotional conflict or reduce anxiety.” Source: https://dictionary.apa.org/denial Shifting baseline syndrome “describes a gradual change in the excepted norms for the condition of the natural environment due to lack of past information or lack of experience of past conditions.” From Soga, Masashi, and Kevin J. Gaston, “Shifting baseline syndrome: causes, consequences, and implications,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, May 2019, p. 193. The concept was originally pioneered by marine biologist Daniel Pauly in 1995 and has gained traction in environmentalist circles. Interestingly, however, the exploration for its application to the social sciences more broadly is, at least in the eyes of this author, quite limited. This is a topic that deserves greater exploration, especially for those opposed to the technological system.
[5] See, e.g., page 87: “In 1996, I left graduate school in Santa Cruz, California, and returned to San Francisco to work on activist campaigns with Global Exchange, Rainforest Action Network, and other progressive and environmental organizations.”; page 29: “I attended the 1992 United Nations environment summit in Rio de Janeiro, where deforestation was a hot topic.”; pages 98-99: “Helen and I have not lit a fire in our fireplace once, and do not intend to do so in the future, because of the pollution it would create.”, and throughout.
[6] Page 273.
[7] Page 62.
[8] Page 142. It should be noted that what is “domesticated” (i.e. managed for human consumption) is relative and changes over time in response to propaganda, education, and culture, as well as economic and technological changes. In reality, the entire biosphere is open for exploitation by the system in the form of “domestication” and so topples his schema to preserve nature by somehow separating it. Bring on the Soylent Green!
[9] “By a self-propagating system (self-prop system for short) we mean a system that tends to promote its own survival and propagation. A system may propagate itself in either or both of two ways: The system may indefinitely increase its own size and/or power, or it may give rise to new systems that possess some of its own attributes.
The most obvious examples of self-propagating systems are biological organisms. Groups of biological organisms can also constitute self-prop systems; e.g., wolf packs or hives of honeybees. Particularly important for our purposes are self-prop systems that consist of groups of human beings. For example, nations, corporations, labor unions, churches, and political parties…” From Kaczynski, Theodore John, Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, Fitch & Madison Publishers, Scottsdale, AZ, p. 50.
[10] Page 31.
[11] Page 98.
[12] Kaczynski, Theodore John, Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2020), p. 64, Chapter 2, ff. & passim.
[13] Page 49. “Consumption of plastics has skyrocketed during the last several decades…. Scientists estimate that the amount of plastic waste could increase ten-fold between 2015 and 2025….even in rich countries less than a third of plastic waste is recycled.”
[14] See, e.g., Carrington, Damian, “Microplastics found deep in lungs of living people for first time,” The Guardian, April 6, 2022; Gaspar, Lauren, et. Al., Acute Exposure to Microplastics Induced Changes in Behavior and Inflammation in Young and Old Mice,” International Journal of Molecular Science, August 1, 2023, 24(15), 12308.
[15] United Nations June 2017 Ocean Conference Factsheet on marine pollution. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Ocean_Factsheet_Pollution.pdf
[16] Page 49.
[17] Page 90.
[18] E.g., p. 30: [When asking a prominent scientist on the notion that the Amazon rainforest is a major source of the Earth’s oxygen] “’It’s bullshit,’ he told me, ‘There’s no science behind that. The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen, but it uses the same amount of oxygen through respiration, so it’s a wash.’”
[19] See, Kaczynski, Theodore John, Technological Slavery, Vol. 1, Fitch & Madison Publishers, Scottsdale, AZ, 2022. P. 117.
[20] Page 274.
[21] Page 270
[22] Page 279
Copyright 2024 by qpooqpoo. All rights reserved. This is published with the permission of the copyright owner.