The precedent for coronavirus fear hijacking medical science: global warming fears hijacking environmentalism. From Jan Jekielek and Iren Luo at Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:
Authored by Jan Jekielek and Irene Luo via The Epoch Times,
For years, experts have predicted impending catastrophe from climate change. Thirty-one years ago, a senior U.N. environmental official told the Associated Press that governments had only a 10-year window to reverse global warming before it went beyond human control.
Like many others, Michael Shellenberger feared climate change was an existential threat to human civilization. He has devoted three decades of his life to environmental activism and improving the lives of people in poor or developing nations. At age 16, he threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. He’s fought to protect redwood trees in California, traveled to the Congo to study the impact of wood fuel use on gorillas, sought better working conditions for factory workers in Asia, and pushed the U.S. government to fund renewable energy.
Now, he believes the climate movement is radical, alarmist, and causing anxiety and depression, especially among young people. One in five British children say they’ve had nightmares about it, according to a large national survey earlier this year.
Although global temperatures are rising and humans are a major contributor, that doesn’t mean the world is ending, Shellenberger argues in his new book, “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.”
Contrary to what media headlines would suggest, climate change hasn’t made natural disasters worse. Fires, for instance, have declined 25 percent around the world from 1998 to 2015. And in California and Australia, where fires have increased, the biggest contributing factors were humans allowing wood fuel to build up and constructing homes near forests—not climate change.
Claims of crop failure are similarly exaggerated, in his view. Humans already grow enough food for 10 billion people, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) predict crop yields will continue increasing.
