Michael Shellenberger: On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare

This stuff is all consistent with my current best guesses based on the stuff readily available to a reasonably intelligent and interested layperson like me:

• Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
  
• The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
  
• Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
  
• Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
  
• The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
  
• The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
  
• Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s
  
• Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level
  
• We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
  
• Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
  
• Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
  
• Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture