Name: Michael Shellenberger on Climate Change Alarmism
Uploaded: 2021-10-14T17:32:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Michael Shellenberger on Climate Change Alarmism' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-10-14. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Michael Shellenberger on Climate Change Alarmism' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-10-14. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan experience. I mean, I worry about it. You kind of go, what
happens when the progressives convince Facebook that San Francisco is dangerous?
Yeah, and that's not outside the realm of possibility at all.
This thing that you say about silencing you, that's not outside the realm of
possibility.
You know, I've seen it. I mean, we were talking about Barry Weiss earlier.
She got fucking basically pushed out in the New York Times because of this sort
of ideology that's spreading rampant through journalism.
And journalism has become slash activism.
And then there's this idea that you have to do whatever you can and by any
means necessary, push your agenda and silence the oppressors.
You know, even if these oppressors are people like you that are just saying,
listen, you've got to take a more radical approach to dealing with these ever-growing
problems.
And one of the ways might be this carrot and the stick and this idea that you
have to give people consequences for their actions and reward people for good
actions.
And we could possibly, like, build people back up, but we're going to have to
do it in a way that's going to make folks uncomfortable.
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely – it seems like two things are going on at once,
right?
There's definitely this top-down effort at censorship and including people like
me.
In fact, I was censored by Facebook.
You were?
I was.
How so?
When my last book came out, they censored True Facts.
Which book is that?
Apocalypse Never.
This one?
Yep.
Yeah, they censored –
This is Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
Yeah, that came out in June of last year and I was censored in the article I
wrote about it.
And now other people that write about climate change are being censored.
I will say, though, you know, I mean –
How so were you censored?
Like, what did you say that was –
They put a – they put a – like a warning label on the article that was
being shared that was the initial article announcing the book saying this
contains misleading and false information.
It's not true.
It didn't contain a single piece of false information.
And misleading is a really subjective thing, right?
What did you say that they objected to?
So the main issues were – I point out that we're not in the midst of a mass
extinction.
A mass extinction is when over – when 75 or 90 percent of all species on
Earth are extinct or going extinct.
In fact, only 6 percent of species are critically endangered and most of them
should or will survive.
The other one is I pointed out that natural disasters are not getting worse.
Deaths from natural disasters have declined over 90 percent over the last 100
years.
We're just much better at dealing with hurricanes and floods and, you know, non-climate-related
disasters like earthquakes as well.
And so what they – they respond – you know, on the disasters, they point
out that there's some evidence that hurricanes are becoming somewhat more
intense.
But then they leave out the fact that the best available science predicts that
hurricanes will become 25 percent less frequent but 5 percent more intense,
North Atlantic hurricanes.
But even that doesn't matter because we're just so much better at preparing for
hurricanes.
So, like, vanishingly, few people die.
I think something like – in the most recent year, I think 2019, something
like 400 Americans died of natural disasters, right?
It's like 300 – because I was like 300 times more people died of drug deaths
in the United States than from natural disasters.
I mean, this is how these two books work together is me as someone that
considers myself liberal or moderate.
I used to be progressive.
I don't use that label anymore.
But my view is the drug crisis is objectively a much bigger threat to human
life and to civilization than climate change.
Like, we're adapted really well to climate change.
We should do something about it.
It's real.
There are risks associated with it.
But, like, there's no scenario in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
of climate change killing 93,000 Americans a year.
In fact, there's no scenario of it killing – of it increasing deaths from
natural disasters at all.
Why is it more attractive?
Why is that a more attractive talking point?
Because this is one of the things that you keep hearing from whether it's
whistleblowers at news organizations where they're saying that climate change
is the next thing.
They're looking at it according to, you know, these people that are talking
about it.
They're looking at climate change as the next thing that's going to freak
people out enough to guarantee ratings.
Yeah, I mean, I look at – so both of these books are similar in the sense
that I debunk popular myths.
I explain what the solutions are.
And then I also explore why it is that, say, the people that say they're the
most concerned about climate change oppose the main solutions to reducing
carbon emissions or adapting to climate change.
Basically, the three things won't surprise you.
There's financial interests.
There's just sort of a broader will to power, both kind of status and politics
and just kind of I'm going to jet around the world and tell people how to live
their lives.
Which is hilarious and often happens.
Yes.
And then the third is religion and that, you know, the death of God, what Nietzsche
called the death of God, which is basically we just stop believing in
traditional religions, whether it's Judaism or Christianity or Buddhism or
Hinduism.
As we stop believing in traditional religions, we still have a fear of death.
We still have a need to believe in some higher power.
And so we make new religions.
And the problem with the new religions, whether it's climate apocalypse.
Wokeism.
Or wokeism or victimology.
The problem is that the people that are the adherents to those new religions
don't think that they're promoting a new religion.
They think that they're just being more compassionate or I'm just being more
sensitive or whatever.
So they're actually more dogmatic than the people in the traditional religions
because, you know, you meet people that have even evangelical views.
They'll always be like, well, you know, I am an evangelical Christian, right?
So they have some awareness of it.
But folks that are – they don't – like these people don't go, well, I am an
apocalyptic environmentalist.
What they say is – they go, I'm more aware of the science or, you know, I
just love nature and I just care about poor people more than you.
It's always cast in some sort of highly charged, moralizing framework, you know,
which is like this idea – you know, it's like the main idea of the folks that
have created the disaster in our cities is that they care more.
That's the conceit, you know, it's the I care – I just care more than you do.
You are just more – you're just insensitive.
Total bullshit.
But that kind of emotional – that kind of appeal to emotion has a lot of
power.
Watch the entire episode for free only on Spotify.