Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was assuming this would be a current version of other books I’ve read and mostly agreed with, particularly Bjorn Lomborg’s 2001 “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and Gregg Easterbrook’s 1995 “A Moment on the Earth”. Unfortunately, this was not along those lines at all. While heavily footnoted, there is very little data in this book. Chapter 1 begins with noting that decadal death tolls for natural disasters have fallen sharply in last century. This is true. He also cites that the Dutch have adapted quite well to subsidence putting much of their nation under sea level, and they have been able to survive and thrive, suggesting cities around the world can do the same in the 21st century. By 2100, the IPCC predicts global GDP will exceed 500 trillion dollars, meaning everyone will be rich enough to do what the Dutch can do. Moving to wildfires, and he rightly points out that fire suppression and accumulation of wood and shrub play a much bigger role in wildfires in both California and Australia than climate change. He should have mentioned the role of above ground power lines in California, which spark fires during windstorms when knocked over. The question about whether natural disasters are getting worse due to climate change is contentious and depends on your frame of reference. If an Indian Ocean cyclone in 1970 has top wind speeds of 100 mph and kills 100,000 people on landfall is followed by a cyclone in 2020 with a top wind speed of 120 mph but only kills 500 people, have things gotten worse due to climate change? The final point is that carbon emissions are already down sharply in the EU and US over the last 20 years, but he asserts that environmentalists get zero credit for this. Chapter 2 opens with anecdotes about various celebrities lamenting the demise of the Amazon. The Amazon is not the “lungs of the Earth”, but Shellenberger doesn’t really make metaphorical sense in this discussion. Lungs do not produce oxygen, they transmit it from the atmosphere to the blood. Razing the Amazon would not change oxygen levels. The real argument for saving the Amazon is preserving species, not avoiding a fall in atmospheric oxygen levels. He does rightly point out that over the last few decades there has been net forest expansion around the world (temperate and boreal, but still net decline in tropical), and a CO2 fertilization effect driven global increase in plant cover, along with a reduction in land use for agriculture due to rising productivity. An area the size of Alaska has been freed up by rising livestock productivity. Chapter 3 starts off with the famous turtle with the straw in his nose. Shellenberger rightly points out the main threats to species are direct killing and loss of habitat to human agriculture. He does rightly argue that plastics are fine, especially as they allow us to substitute for animal products. What we need is better waste management, especially in poorer countries, so that debris does not end up in the oceans. Chapter Four opens with the recent famous IPBES prediction that we are at risk of losing 1 million species. Shellenberger doesn’t really tease this out. The IPBES did not identify 1 million actually at risk, it did a projection that there are 10 million species and that 10% of them are at risk, but even that is confusing. In what timeframe? In the next 10 years or next 1000? In fact, we have only identified 1.6 million species, 350,000 of which are beetles. Of the species we really care about, the vertebrates, there are only 5000 mammals, 10,000 birds, 10,000 reptiles, 7,000 amphibians, and 33,000 fish. We should try to save all of them, but I’m willing to do without the anopheles mosquito. The IPBES relies on the species area model of extinction that was derived from islands and has clearly been shown not to actually be valid. The best source of biodiversity risk assessment is the IUCN, and they clearly do not support the notion that a mass extinction is under way. Shellenberger then returns to the DRC and its Virunga National Park, home to gorillas. He laments the charcoal mafia that is chopping down trees to make fuel for the impoverished local residents. I agree, creating an effective distribution network of propane gas for cooking would help save the forest. He also laments that baboons from the park eat the crops of local farmers but Shellenberger offers no solution to this problem he highlights. Instead he goes onto a digression about letting European oil companies drill for crude oil in Virunga. That is totally beside the point. That unrefined crude cannot be used by the locals for fuel, nor does it stop baboons from eating crops. He concludes the chapter by suggesting that the DRC go ahead with the Grand Inga Dam on the Congo River. This would be the largest hydroelectric station in the world, twice the size of the Three Gorges Dam, producing 40 gigawatts and costing 80 billion dollars. Who’s paying for it? Chapter Five makes the point that working in an urban sweatshop factory is actually a major step up in quality of life for rural people in poor countries. Also that as we raise agricultural productivity, we return farmland to nature. On page 100 he makes the odd statement that “power dense factories and cities require energy dense fuels.” What they require is lots of electricity, and what is the energy density of electricity? That’s totally undefined. Chapter Six begins by telling us how awesome whales are. Historically, humans have hunted whales, and Greenpeace did not save them. Who said they did? Does Shellenberger in fact oppose the ban on whaling? He does not say. He notes that 20th century whaling was mostly for blubber to be rendered into margarine or soap, and was driven out of business by cheaper palm oil. He bizarrely blames continued whaling in the 1960’s by Norway and Japan to a rigged international margarine market that forced those countries to rely on blubber instead. He then turns to natural gas. On page 118 he states that “climate activists…have claimed that natural gas is worse for the climate than coal.” But then on page 120 he says “most environmentalists support natural gas as a substitute for coal”. Hmmm. Turning to Atlantic salmon, he declares it the “world’s healthiest food” due to low saturated and trans fat. He correctly points out that fish farming is good for preserving wild fish stocks. He then confuses environmentalist opposition to GMO’s as opposition to fish farming. The opposition is to the use of a GM salmon. He shifts back to natural gas and confuses the technology of fracking that made massive amounts of cheap nat gas available in the US in the 2000’s, with the decision to prioritize coal over nat gas in the 1970’s for electric power. Back then supplies were much more limited, and nat gas was a highly regulated industry, only freed by the Carter administration. Chapter Seven begins with an inaccurate quote from CNN, where CNN claimed scientists say “we must immediately eat less meat to halt the climate crisis”. He then quotes the co-chair of the IPCC report CNN was referencing who informs him explicitly that “we don’t want to tell people what to eat”. He states he once thought cutting out meat would cut carbon emissions by 70%, which is not correct. He rightly concludes that ending meat consumption would make minimal difference to the climate. He shifts to praising factory farming again, which is hyperefficient and spares land and reduces methane emission from bovine flatulence. He also makes a bizarre claim that farmers raising low fat pigs harm the environment (page 140). Perhaps he could calculate how much extra carbon was emitted by not raising fat pigs. The rest of the chapter is a useless paean to carnivorism. When talking about the Atlantic salmon, he called it the world’s healthiest food for being so low in fat, and now tells us fat is good for us. Contradictory? He never seriously wrestles with the moral argument for vegetarianism, that modern factory farming is unnecessarily cruel in its methods and practices and should be shunned. Chapter Eight is the heart of the book. He is correct that nuclear is a reliable producer of carbon free power. But his discussion leaves out any sense of perspective. There are currently 435 nuclear reactors worldwide, 97 of which are in the US, with a combined capacity of 370 gigawatts and producing 10% of world electricity. But there are only 46 new plants under construction, which takes 10 years on average. He must be aware that nuclear construction peaked 45 years ago, when the world began work on 40 plants annually, that number collapsed and has been under 5 plants for many years. Lazard in 2018 found the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for new wind and solar to be 20% of that for new nuclear, and that nuclear LCOE will rise 23% in the 2020’s while RE continue to plummet. Compared to 1997, by 2018 wind was annually producing 1258 more TWh, solar 584, and nuclear only 299. Total nuclear power generation worldwide in 2018 was still 2563 TWh, but that reflects capacity built before 1997 and still online. He mentions disposal problems with used solar panels or wind turbine blades. Perhaps we can dump them in or on Yucca Mountain. Shellenberger ignores the immediate history of RE. Costs have fallen so much that deployment is exploding. The first terawatt of RE was installed by 2018, the second by 2023, and two more by 2030 likely. Nuclear will bring less than 100 gigawatts of net new power online by 2030, a drop in the bucket. Already, China produced in 2018 more from wind alone than nuclear (wind 366 TWh, nukes 277 TWh, solar 177 Twh). The US nuclear fleet has a total capacity of 100 gigawatts, but is on average 39 years old, and starting to age out. Only 8 plants are less than 10 years old. Several plants are only able to stay open due to zero emission credits effectively subsidizing them. Shellenberger also claims on page 168 that if nuclear is not used then “fossil fuels must be used”. Not true. When California closed San Onofre nuclear power station, it lost 19 TWh/year in generation, but replaced that with 47 TWh from renewables and energy efficiency. Californians pay a lot more for electricity, in fact we pay on average 16 cents per KWh, compared to a national average of 10 cents. However, up to 1970, US and California per capita electricity consumption was the same and rose in tandem. After 1970, California pursued an aggressive policy of energy efficiency, and while US consumption rose 100%, California has stayed flat. We pay more but use half as much. Fair trade. He then moves on to Hollywood and Ralph Nader, and blames them for souring America on nuclear power. But the collapse in new nuclear starts after 1975 was a global phenomenon, not just American. He does not grapple with or explain the immense financial problem of nuclear power. The main impediment to nuclear power is not irrational fear by the public. The main problem is the massive capital required and the cost of that capital. A new plant would need 7 billion dollars and ten years, and at 90% capacity, it would sell about 7900 GWh, at a price of 10 cents per KWh, that would generate about 800 million dollars per year. If the company secured a 40 year loan at 8% interest, it would pay 600 million dollars every year just to cover the loan. What if there are massive cost overruns? Who would provide this amount of capital for 40 years? Who would take on the bankruptcy risk? Because of the massive capital involved, a nuclear plant needs guaranteed revenue for forty years, which means they can only exist in a highly regulated power market. In a free market, nuclear would have to compete with other power providers, for example solar companies providing power for 2 cents per KWh during daytime. Or wind providers. In a truly free market, nuclear would be the high cost power of last resort, which would destroy its economics as it has such massive capital costs it has to sell its full output 24/7. This is why no deregulated electricity market in the world has any nuclear plants under construction. It’s got nothing to do with irrational fear, which I don’t think figures in Chinese or Indian decision making. Chapter Nine is mostly an attack on solar and wind. Shellenberger is right that the main drawback is intermittency. But his economic analyses are deeply flawed. He denounces rooftop solar because the payback is so long but neglects the obvious solution of financing it. I put solar on my roof in 2016 for 25,000 dollars. My house uses about 12 MWh per year, and I used to pay about 3000 dollars per year to SCE. I financed my solar system at 6% over 20 years, and I pay less monthly then I did to SCE. I did not buy the Powerwall storage system, that is a gimmick for survivalists. Storage is very expensive, but the costs are dropping rapidly, and that will change everything in 10 years, just as utility solar went from an expensive vanity in 2010 to the cheapest power of all in 2020. Shellenberger misstates the cost of a 100% solar plus storage or wind plus storage grid. Getting that last 10% accounts for much of the cost, because you need a lot of wasteful storage that mostly sits idle. The same numbers would be generated by a hypothetical 100% nuclear grid. In fact, solar (daytime power, more in summer) and wind (more in evenings and winter) complement each other. In addition widescale integration of power and complex demand management can offset much of the intermittency limitations. There will of course need to be a massive increase in storage, but costs are dropping and new technologies are likely to come along. We then read about the slaughter of birds and insects by windmills. This is a minor problem, and he provides no evidence otherwise. What bird species have been driven extinct by windmills? Is it not likely that birds will eventually adopt flight and migration patterns away from these? Siting windmills to minimize these hazards is important. Shellenberger does not mention offshore wind, which is actually far better and more reliable source of wind power, and will likely become the dominant wind energy in the 2030’s. Offshore windmills are unlikely to harm wildlife in a material way or cause bird extinctions. Shellenberger states that “no amount of technological innovation can solve the fundamental problem with renewables” because they are “unreliable and energy dilute”. If he is referring to the amount of surface area needed to generate power, he needs to actually do the math. He claims that solar panels generate 50 watts per square meter. That’s a little light, modern panels can do 125 watts, but perhaps he is taking into account capacity issues. Let’s use his numbers. Even he concedes that 18,000 square miles would be enough to provide the entire electric power needs of the US. Why is that in any way a prohibitive amount? Earlier, he pointed out that an area the size of Alaska has been returned to nature due to improved agriculture, and that is 660,000 square miles. We can’t use 18,000 for solar power? We use more land area to grow corn for ethanol, why don’t we just use that land? Or the 20,000 square miles currently leased out for oil and gas drilling by the BLM? He then makes much of the fact that the needed storage would take up another 250 square miles. I find his arguments here completely unpersuasive. He then says that if the US used solar for all its power needs (I assume this means all cars are electric, and so is heating and industrial), it would require 50% of the US surface area (page 191). That would be a bit under 1.9 million square miles and I have no idea what he is talking about there. Shellenberger appears to believe that the size of the physical footprint of a power plant is the most important factor determining its attractiveness. If we developed fusion power, and it used half as much land as nuclear fission, but cost five times as much, would he suggest we have to switch to fusion? I don’t think so, because fission power is not land constrained, so the increased density of hypothetical fusion is practically meaningless. Shellenberger makes valid arguments against biofuels. Chapter Ten is basically a long ad hominem attack on various villains, as Shellenberger sees them, who instead of opposing nuclear on principle, were merely grifting for natural gas for decades. He bizarrely claims that Governor Jerry Brown singlehandedly killed so many nuclear power plants between 1976 and 1979 which otherwise would have resulted in California having zero carbon power emissions currently. Actually, for California to generate all its power from nuclear would require 30 additional nuclear power plants in the state. Brown killed the only seriously proposed plant, Sun Desert, but there were not 29 others he stopped. Shellenberger rightly complains that skeptics of global warming are sometimes attacked for their alleged ties to fossil fuel industries. I agree that is unfair. But the same applies in the other direction, and his game of connect the dots in this chapter is off-putting to say the least. Chapter Eleven begins with some flightshaming of celebrities who attended a conference on climate change. This is a totally petty thing to do. Flightshaming or strawshaming is ridiculous. Personal behavior is not going to end climate change, it is a public policy matter entirely. I might have solar and drive a hybrid, but those decisions made economic sense as they saved me some money. I still can have an opinion about climate change if I drive a gas guzzler. Flying for that matter, is the highest hanging fruit. Let’s solve everything else first, as modern life requires air travel, and flight requires jet fuel. Air travel makes up less than 5% of carbon emissions. If we get rid of the other 95% by 2050, we can then figure out what to do about planes. If flying only raises CO2 concentrations by 1-2 ppm per decade, we might decide to do little or nothing. We’ll see. He then moves on to complain that the World Bank and NGO’s are trying to stifle development in poor countries. Poor countries are sovereign and develop themselves, and don’t need permission from the World Bank or NGO’s. In the scheme of things, World Bank funding is trivial, almost all investments come from the private sector and the national government. He finishes up whining about Paul Ehrlich’s misguided Malthusian doomsaying from the 1960’s, but what relevance does that have today? Outside of Africa, the biggest problem most countries face is a collapse in fertility below replacement. Chapter Twelve concludes the book by rambling about what he calls “apocalyptic” environmentalism being a type of religion. He calls on “rational” environmentalists to oppose them. I’ll sign up for that, but not for nuclear power. @nayyerali10.