pacifists called Mennonites,” he starts one of his many
TEDx Talks, sharing that every August he would join
the other kids in lighting candles and sending them on
boats in Bittersweet Park in Greeley to remember the US
government’s bombing of Hiroshima.
After college at Earlham, a Quaker school in Richmond,
Indiana, Shellenberger moved to California to work on
environmental campaigns. He even helped save the state’s
last ancient redwood forest and blocked a proposed
radioactive waste repository set for the desert.
“In 2002, shortly after I turned 30, I decided I wanted
to dedicate myself to addressing climate change. I was
worried that global warming would end up destroying
many of the natural environments that people had
worked so hard to protect,” he writes in his article “Why
Renewables Can’t Save the Planet.”
Co-founding Breakthrough Institute, which believes
in technology solutions to environmental problems, with
“Because nuclear
plants produce
heat without fire,
they emit no air
pollution in the
form of smoke”
—Michael
Shellenberger
joining forces
Mark Cojuangco and Michael Shellenberger inside the
Bataan Nuclear Power Plant
Nordhaus followed in 2003. At Breakthrough,
he co-authored several analyses of cap and
trade climate legislation but in 2004, he
and Nordhaus shocked the environmental
movement when they published their essay
titled “The Death of Environmentalism,
presented at the 2004 meeting of the
Environmental Grantmakers Association.
Shellenberger’s green path was clearly
deviating, but the shockwaves he and
Nordhaus generated were enough for Time to
take notice and recognise them as its Heroes of
the Environment under the category “Leaders
and Visionaries.”
Why the shift? Shellenberger can talk endlessly
in defence of nuclear energy. Here are just three
points culled from only one of his many articles:
“Because nuclear plants produce heat without fire, they
emit no air pollution in the form of smoke. By contrast,
the smoke from burning fossil fuels and biomass results
in the premature deaths of seven million people per year,
according to the World Health Organisation.
“Nuclear produces so little waste, and none enters the
environment as pollution.
“As we stop burning wood and dung in our homes, we no
longer must breathe toxic indoor smoke. And as we move
from fossil fuels to uranium, we clear the outdoor air of
pollution, and reduce how much we’ll heat up the planet.”
One year after signing “An Ecomodernist Manifesto,”
Shellenberger left Breakthrough to run Environmental
Progress, which fuels several public campaigns to save
nuclear power plants. With significant success in this
area, he just might be the champion whom proponents of
nuclear energy in the Philippines are waiting for.58 philippine tatler. august 2019