Michael D. Shellenberger (born June 16, 1971) is a political and ecomodernist activist and writer best known for his heterodox views. Born in Colorado, he obtained degrees in Peace and Anthropology in the 1990s. After founding some public relations firms, in 2003 he co-founded the ecomodernist think tank Breakthrough Institute. Scientists, including those he cites, have criticised his "bad science" in comments on climate change, his history of "anti-green contrarianism", and IJNet, the multiple errors in his reporting.
Shellenberger authored Apocalypse Never (2020), about the environment, and San Fransicko (2021), about homelessness. He has been active in critiquing the environmental movement, offering alternative views on climate threats and policies. He contends that while global warming is a concern, it is "not the end of the world", and advocates for the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), industrial agriculture, fracking, and nuclear power as tools for environmental protection.
Shellenberger ran unsuccessfully for governor of California in 2018 and 2022.
Early life and education Shellenberger was born and raised in Colorado to Mennonite parents. He is a 1989 graduate of Greeley Central High School. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Peace and Global Studies program at Earlham College in 1993. Subsequently, he earned a Master of Arts degree in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1996.
He is proficient in Portuguese.
Career After graduation, Shellenberger moved to San Francisco to work on left-wing causes. He worked with Global Exchange on a Nike boycott. He created a nonprofit public relations firm, Communication Works, that worked on many progressive causes, and Lumina Strategies. Shellenberger in 2003 founded the Breakthrough Institute. While at Breakthrough, Shellenberger wrote a number of articles with subjects ranging from positive treatment of nuclear energy and shale gas, to critiques of the planetary boundaries hypothesis. He worked to burnish the reputations of prominent clients including Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
Shellenberger then founded Environmental Progress,Environmental Progress home page (accessed 1 July 2017) which is behind several public campaigns to keep nuclear power plants in operation. Shellenberger has also been called by conservative lawmakers to testify before the U.S. Congress about climate change and in favor of nuclear energy. In December 2022, Shellenberger was one of the authors who released sections of annotated internal Twitter Files authorized by new owner Elon Musk. As of December 2022, he is a writer for The Free Press.
Also in November 2023, Shellenberger was the key note speaker at a Genspect conference. In this speech he said that the idea of transgender people was a "woke religion" and went on further, saying "We are creating, through ideological means and social media, gender dysphoria. ... These are ideologically driven failures of civilization".
Shellenberger is the co-founder of Public, a newsletter that covers "stories on the most important issues of the day, from censorship and cities to mental health and addiction to energy and the environment". Public broke the story of the first people to get Covid in 2023. Public also broke a January 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle about the use of drugs at a recently opened San Francisco social services facility. In December 2022, the facility closed.
On April 3, 2024, Shellenberger published the "Twitter Files – Brazil", resulting in a formal Congressional inquiry, and two Congressional hearings, at which Shellenberger testified. Investigative journalists subsequently highlighted multiple errors in Shellenberger's reporting. In September 2024, Shellenberger appeared with Bill Nye at an event entitled "Can Science Save the World?" hosted by New College of Florida. The event "seeks to advance civil discourse and engagement through facilitating events that foster open discussion and debate on relevant public policy issues."
Shellenberger has faced accusations of "bad science" for his comments on climate change in Apocalpyse Never; he has also been criticized for arguing with prominent climate scientists on social media and "apologising" to the world on the behalf of environmentalists. A panel of scientists organized by Climate Feedback analyzed the claims he made in his "apology" article, concluding that they were "inaccurate or mislead readers by contradicting available evidence or using scientific data out of context." A Snopes article, which consulted multiple scientists that Shellenberger had cited, was similarly critical; Michael Mann called one of Shellenberger's central arguments "completely wrong," and found it was also contradicted by the very IEA source Shellenberger used to support it.
Shellenberger is on the faculty of the University of Austin in the area of "Politics, Censorship and Free Speech."
Congressional testimony Shellenberger has testified before the United States Congress on multiple occasions on topics ranging from climate change, state-sponsored censorship and disinformation, UFOs, and artificial intelligence. +TopicDateCommitteeSubcommittee"An Update on the Climate Crisis: From Science to Solutions"January 15, 2020House Committee on Science, Space, and TechnologyFull Committee"Governing AI Through Acquisition and Procurement"September 14, 2023Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental AffairsFull Committee"Hearing on The Weaponization of The Federal Government"November 30, 2023House Committee on the JudiciarySelect Subcommittee on The Weaponization of The Federal Government"Brazil: A Crisis of Democracy, Freedom, & Rule of Law?"May 7, 2024House Committee on Foreign AffairsFull Committee"Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth"November 13, 2024House Committee on Oversight and Government ReformCommittee on Oversight and Accountability"The Censorship-Industrial Complex, Part 3: The Foreign Threat"February 12, 2025House Committee on the JudiciaryFull Committee"USAID Censorship and Disinformation Operations Aimed at the American People" February 13, 2025Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental AffairsFull Committee
Writing and reception
The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming in a Post-Environmental World In 2004, Nordhaus and Shellenberger co-authored "The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World." The paper argued that environmentalism is incapable of dealing with climate change and should "die" so that a new politics can be born. The paper was criticized by members of the mainstream environmental movement. Carl Pope, the former executive director of the Sierra Club, called the essay "unclear, unfair and divisive", stating it contained multiple factual errors and misinterpretations. Adam Werbach, another former Sierra Club president, praised the paper's arguments. John Passacantando, the former Greenpeace executive director, said in 2005 that Shellenberger and Nordhaus "laid out some fascinating data, but they put it in this over-the-top language and did it in this in-your-face way." Michel Gelobter, as well as other environmental experts and academics, wrote The Soul of Environmentalism: Rediscovering transformational politics in the 21st century as a response that criticized "Death" for demanding increased technological innovation instead of addressing the systemic concerns of people of color.
Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility In 2007, Shellenberger and Nordhaus published Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. The book is an argument for what its authors describe as a positive, "post-environmental" politics that abandons the environmentalist focus on nature protection for a new focus on technological innovation to create a new economy. They were among 32 of Time magazine's Heroes of the Environment (2008) after writing the book, and received the 2008 Green Book Award from science journalist John Horgan. The Wall Street Journal wrote that "(i)f heeded, Nordhaus and Shellenberger's call for an optimistic outlook – embracing economic dynamism and creative potential – will surely do more for the environment than any U.N. report or Nobel Prize."Jonathan Adler, The Wall Street Journal, 27 November 2007, The Lowdown on Doomsday: Why the public shrugs at global warming
Environmental scholars Julie Sze and Michael Ziser questioned Shellenberger and Nordhaus's goals in publishing Break Through, arguing the "evident relish in their notoriety as the 'sexy'(,) cosmopolitan 'bad boys' of environmentalism (their own words) introduces some doubt about their sincerity and reliability." Sze and Ziser asserted that Break Through failed "to incorporate the aims of environmental justice while actively trading on suspect political tropes", such as blaming China and other nations as large-scale polluters. Furthermore, Sze and Ziser claim that Shellenberger and Nordhaus advocate technology-based approaches that miss entirely the "structural environmental injustice" that natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina make visible. Ultimately, "Shellenberger believes that community-based environmental justice poses a threat to the smooth operation of a highly capitalized, global-scale Environmentalism."
Joseph Romm, a former US Department of Energy official now with the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, argued that "(p)ollution limits are far, far more important than R&D for what really mattersreducing greenhouse-gas emissions and driving clean technologies into the marketplace."Joe Romm, Grist, 3 October 2007, Debunking Shellenberger & Nordhaus: Part I: The death of 'The Death of Environmentalism' Environmental journalist David Roberts, writing in Grist, argued that while the BTI and its founders garner much attention, their policy is lacking, and ultimately they "receive a degree of press coverage that wildly exceeds their intellectual contributions." Reviewers for the San Francisco Chronicle,Robert Collier, San Francisco Chronicle, 7 October 2007, Review: Why get so heated about global warming? the American ProspectKate Sheppard, American Prospect, 11 October 2007, Life After the Death of Environmentalism and the Harvard Law ReviewDouglas Kysar, Harvard Law Review, June 2008, The Consultants' Republic argued that a critical reevaluation of green politics was unwarranted because global warming had become a high-profile issue and the Democratic Congress was preparing to act.
An Ecomodernist Manifesto
In April 2015, Shellenberger joined a group of scholars and Whole Earth Catalog founder, author Stewart Brand, in issuing An Ecomodernist Manifesto. It proposed dropping the goal of "sustainable development" and replacing it with a strategy to shrink humanity's footprint by using natural resources more intensively through technological innovation. The authors argue that economic development is necessary to preserve the environment.
An Ecomodernist Manifesto was met with critiques similar to Gelobter's evaluation of "Death" and Sze and Ziser's analysis of Break Through. Environmental historian Jeremy Caradonna and environmental economist Richard B. Norgaard led a group of environmental scholars in a critique, arguing that Ecomodernism "violates everything we know about ecosystems, energy, population, and natural resources," and "Far from being an ecological statement of principles, the Manifesto merely rehashes the naïve belief that technology will save us and that human ingenuity can never fail." Further, "The Manifesto suffers from factual errors and misleading statements."