Michael Shellenberger

“While some wars are planned, others result from each side retaliating in ways it views as proportionate but viewed by the other side as disproportionate.”

“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 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.”

“The flip side of renewables' low energy density is their low return on energy invested.”

“Less land is being converted into agriculture globally in part because farmers are growing more food on less land.”

“The Amazon uses as much oxygen as it produces.”

“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.”

“The burden of higher cost electricity and benefits of renewable energy subsidies fall unevenly on Californians.”

“If solar and wind farms are needed to protect the natural environment, why do they so often destroy it?”

“Both solar and wind produce too much energy when societies don't need it, and not enough when they do.”

“Celebrities, whether from the world of entertainment or politics, moralize about the need to change individual consumption when they should be moralizing about the need to change collective energy production.”

“In truth, humankind has never been at risk of running out of energy.”

“If you look at all the energy that is used by an iPhone, not just to make it and to power it, but also to power all the servers, all of the stuff that you don't see that the iPhone is connected to, it uses as much energy as a refrigerator.”

“Hawks and doves have long found common ground opposing the spread of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states.”

“Climate change is happening. It's just not the end of the world. It's not even our most serious environmental problem.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Before progressives were apocalyptic about climate change they were apocalyptic about nuclear energy. Then, after the Cold War ended, and the threat of nuclear war declined radically, they found a new vehicle for their secular apocalypse in the form of climate change.”

“Solar and wind advocates say cheaper solar panels and wind turbines will make the future growth in renewables cheaper than past growth but there are reasons to believe the opposite will be the case.”

“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.”