Quotes from Michael Shellenberger

Humankind has never transitioned to energy sources that are more costly, less reliable, and have a larger environmental footprint than the incumbent - and yet that's precisely what adding large amounts of solar and wind to the grid requires.

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

Neither solar nor wind are actually substitutes for coal or natural gas or oil.

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.

You cannot power the world on wind and solar.

The rapidly spinning blades of wind turbines act like an apex predator that big birds never evolved to deal with. And because big birds have much lower reproductive rates than small birds, their deaths have a far greater impact on the overall population of the species.

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

The underlying problem with solar and wind is that they are too unreliable and energy-dilute.

The idea that we're going to replace oil and natural gas with solar and wind, and nothing else, is a hallucinatory delusion.

The renewable industry claims technical innovations will improve solar and wind - but in reality nothing can change the lower power density of sunlight and wind.

The value of solar and wind decline in economic value as they become larger shares of the electricity grid for physical reasons. They produce too much energy when societies don't need it and not enough energy when they do.

In many countries, wind turbines pose the single greatest threat to bats after habitat loss and white-nose syndrome.

Cold white wine is so good with fatty, fried food.

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

The nature of nuclear weapons makes it impossible to either ban the bomb or wipe out an enemy's arsenal. Nuclear deterrence was unavoidable.

If you think modernity is mostly to blame for pollution, visit Africa where people still burn wood and dung as an energy source.

There has always been enough fossil fuels to power human civilization for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, and nuclear energy is effectively infinite.

For years, I referred to climate change as an 'existential' threat to human civilization, and called it a 'crisis.'

I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California. In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them.

Paid child care would make child care more efficient, allowing more children to be cared for by fewer adults, and thus free up parents to work more.

Journalists and activists alike have an obligation to describe environmental problems honestly and accurately, even if they fear doing so will reduce their news value or salience with the public.

It was only with the rise of capitalism and the need for workers to be freer, more mobile, and prosperous, that societies were able to undermine pagan morality and the ancient institution of slavery.

The producers of 'Chernobyl' should tell the truth: the accident demonstrates the relative safety, not danger, of nuclear power.