The following is a statement from Extinction Rebellion, UK, in light of misrepresentations of their movement by a former team member now working for a pro-nuclear front group.It alleges that Environmental Progress, its new employee, Zion Lights, its founder, Michael Shellenberger, and the group’s predecessor, Breakthrough Institute (still operating as well) have ties to big corporations and to climate denial.
There have been a number of stories in the press in the last few weeks with criticisms about Extinction Rebellion by Zion Lights, UK director of the pro-nuclear lobby group Environmental Progress. It appears that Lights is engaged in a deliberate PR campaign to discredit Extinction Rebellion.
For any editors who might be considering platforming Lights, we would like to make you aware of some information about the organisation she works for and her employer, Michael Shellenberger.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS & MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
Environmental Progress is a pro-nuclear energy lobby group. While the group itself was only established in 2016, its backers and affiliates have a long and well-documented history of denying human-caused climate change and/or attempting to delay action on the climate crisis. A quick look at groups currently promoting Zion Lights through their social media channels include climate deniers and industry lobbyists such as The Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Genetic Literacy Project (formerly funded by Monsanto).*
The founder of Environmental Progress, Michael Shellenberger, has a record of spreading misinformation around climate change and using marketing techniques to distort the narrative around climate science. He has a reputation for downplaying the severity of the climate crisis and promoting aggressive economic growth and green technocapitalist solutions.
Shellenberger appeared on the Tucker Carlson Show on Fox News just last week to say that the forest fires currently raging in California are due to “more people and more electrical wires that they’ve failed to maintain because we’ve focused on other things like building renewables” and we’ve been “so focused on renewables, so focused on climate change.”
In his recent book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts us All, Shellenberger argues that there are no limits to growth and that environmental problems can be solved by everyone getting richer. The book has been widely criticised by many respected scientists both for its central premise and its misunderstanding, misinterpretation and misuse of the facts. (See here and here.)
His stance on fundamental and vitally important points of scientific consensus around the climate crisis is flat out wrong. In his essay promoting his book published in June of this year on the Environmental Progress website and The Australian – ‘On behalf of environmentalists, I apologise for the climate scare’ –he claims that “climate change is not making natural disasters worse” and that “Humans are not causing a ‘sixth mass extinction”. He also argues that “fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003,” and, “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.” These claims contradict reports from the IPCC and misrepresent the discussion taking place in the scientific community.
One science advisor with Environmental Progress, respected MIT climate expert Professor Kerry Emanuel, spoke publicly about being “very concerned” about the essay, and felt unsure whether he would remain involved with the organisation.
The article was published in Forbes, before being pulled offline the same day for violating its code of ethics around self-promotion.
A key tactic from the climate delayer playbook used in the essay is that of the repentant environmentalist, according to investigative journalist, Paul Thacker. After gaining credibility by aligning themselves with a section of the environmental movement, the repentant environmentalist then performs a volte face and attacks their former position.
This tactic has also been used by Zion Lights, who first overstated her role within Extinction Rebellion (she was a member of the media team, not ‘co-lead’ as stated on the Environmental Progress website) and then denounced the movement following an apparent change of heart.
BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE
Shellenberger is co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute, a lobbying group masquerading as a “think tank”. The Breakthrough Institute has “a clear history as a contrarian outlet for information on climate change [which] regularly criticises environmental groups”, according to Paul Thacker. Breakthrough has also been described as a “program for hippie-punching your way to fame and fortune.”
Shellenberger co-founded the Breakthrough Institute with Ted Nordhaus, nephew of economist, William Nordhuas. William Nordhaus features in Merchants of Doubt – Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s examination of the PR strategies used both by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries. His interventions in the 1990s helped set back essential action on climate change by decades.
Other figures associated with Shellenberger and the Breakthrough Institute include:
Owen Paterson, one of the UK’s most prominent climate deniers who helped with the UK launch of the group’s Ecomodernist manifesto in 2015.
Matt Ridley, coal mine owner, once hereditary Conservative Peer and famous climate delayer / ‘lukewarmist’ who spoke at the UK launch event. (more…)
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