Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Michael Shellenberger was on track to be the perfect environmental activist: supporting local farmers in Latin America, earning a degree in Peace and Global Studies, working as a professional progressive activist in San Francisco, and helping save the last old-growth redwood forest in California. In the early 2000s, Shellenberger became disillusioned with what he saw as dogma and sentimentality in the environmental movement. Activists passed over clear, evidence-based solutions, sometimes even opposing them. This led him and fellow dissident Ted Norhaus to co-found the Breakthrough Institute and pen the heretical essay, "The Death of Environmentalism." For the past two decades, Shellenberger has matured and proliferated his contrarian ideas into lectures, essays, tweets, books, and even his campaign for California governor in 2018. In a way, Apocalypse Never is the culmination of this apostasy. It's clear that the author is a dedicated environmentalist. There are serious environmental issues, including climate change, but there are also serious issues in the environmental movement, such as the rejection of nuclear, a uniquely promising energy technology. His writing exudes a passion for both helping the environment and helping the movement accomplish its goals. The writing is overstretched at times. On the topic I know most about, meat production, Shellenberger's chapter can feel like cherry-picking or missing the forest for the trees. There are plenty of exaggerations about animal-free food as a panacea, and I agree with the author's critique of the environmental benefits of "grass-fed," but there is also a clear moral impetus to reform the food system, for both climate efficiency reasons and to end the suffering of over 100 billion animals suffering on factory farms at any given time. Still, the potential of Apocalypse Never is clear. In 1962, Silent Spring provided the environmental movement what it needed: national attention and awareness of the problems. 58 years later, there are some glaring problems with the modern environmental movement. The bottleneck is no longer simply more attention—it is advocating for tractable, evidence-based solutions that can address Earth's climate despite the turbulent political climate. Apocalypse Never directly addresses this challenge.