I have been an environmental activist for the past 30 years.
Over 20 of those years were devoted to researching and writing about environmental issues, including climate change.
My goal is not only to protect the natural environment, but also to ensure universal prosperity for all people.
To achieve that goal, I wrote this book.
Communicating facts and science accurately is also one of my interests.
Scientists, journalists, and activists believe they have a responsibility to report environmental issues honestly and accurately.
Even if you are worried that you will not be able to attract public attention and enthusiasm, you must be honest.
Much of what people say about the environment and climate is wrong.
We must do our best to correct that misinformation.
Those who exaggerate environmental problems, spread false alarms, and promote extreme thoughts and actions are the enemies of positive, humanistic, and rational environmentalism.

---p.28

In fact, the negative impacts of climate change have been significantly reduced compared to the past.
That's because the number of deaths from natural disasters has fallen by 92 percent since peaking in the 1920s.
In the 1920s, 5.4 million people lost their lives to natural disasters, while in the 2010s, only 400,000 people died.
Moreover, it is worth noting that this decline in deaths occurred at a time when the world's population nearly quadrupled.

The extent of damage caused by extreme weather events has decreased dramatically over the past several decades.
This phenomenon is found in both rich and poor countries.
According to a landmark study published in the journal Global Environmental Change in 2019, deaths and economic damage from weather events have plummeted by 80 to 90 percent over the past four decades, from the 1980s to the present.
From 1901 to 2010, sea levels rose 19 centimeters.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that sea levels would rise by 66 centimeters under a moderate scenario and 83 centimeters under a severe scenario by 2100.
Even if these projections significantly underestimate the impacts of climate change, sea level rise is occurring at a slow rate, giving societies time to adapt.
(…)
So, will food production really plummet? The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has announced that food production will significantly increase under various climate change scenarios.
Today, humanity produces enough food to support 10 billion people, 25 percent more than the current human population.
And experts predict that food production will increase further despite climate change.
---pp.38,40

Carbon emissions in developed countries have been declining for over a decade.
Europe's greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 were 23 percent lower than in 1990.
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell 15 percent from 2005 to 2016.
The United States and the United Kingdom, in particular, have dramatically reduced carbon emissions from electricity generation.
Between 2007 and 2018, the US saw a 27 percent drop, while the UK saw a 63 percent drop.
Most energy experts predict that carbon emissions from developing countries will also peak at some point and then decline.
This is the same phenomenon that occurred in developed countries.
Once developing countries achieve a level of affluence comparable to that of developed countries, their carbon emissions will decline.
In conclusion, today's average global temperature is likely to remain at an average increase of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.
This is significantly lower than the 4 degrees that poses a risk of crossing the tipping point.
Currently, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that carbon emissions in 2040 will be lower than all scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Is the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the past 30 years due to the efforts of climate shepherds? No.
The energy transition from coal to natural gas and nuclear power is a major factor in the decline in carbon emissions from Europe's largest economies, including Germany, the UK and France, which peaked in the 1970s.
We are fighting climate change with the power of technology, which many climate activists, including Bill McKibben, Greta Thunberg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, vehemently oppose.

---pp.78,79

Nepstad was best known as the lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent report on the Amazon.
I asked him if it was true that the Amazon was the main source of oxygen for the entire planet.
“That’s bullshit,” said Nepstad.
“There is no scientific basis for that statement.
“It’s true that the Amazon produces a lot of oxygen, but it’s the same thing because we breathe it in.”
According to Oxford University ecologists who studied the subject, Amazonian plants consume about 60 percent of the oxygen they produce through respiration (during the day, plants photosynthesize more actively than they respire, releasing oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide, but at night, they only respire, absorbing oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide.
Through this biochemical process, plants obtain the energy they need.
The remaining 40 percent is the work of microorganisms that break down the rainforest biomass.
---p.87

Let's go back to August 2019.
The media are greedy big corporations.
It depicted nature-hating farmers and corrupt politicians setting fire to the rainforest.
I was annoyed.
It was a story so far removed from the reality of Amazon that I had known for over 25 years.
Deforestation and increased fires are fundamentally the result of politicians responding to the public's desire for economic growth.
It's not because of a lack of interest in the natural environment.
That's precisely why deforestation has been on the rise again in Brazil since 2013.
As the severe economic downturn hit, law enforcement became lax.
Since Bolsonaro's election in 2018, farmers' demands for their land have grown, leading to increased deforestation.
Of Brazil's 210 million people, 55 million live in poverty.
Between 2016 and 2017, two million Brazilians fell below the poverty line.
(…)
Why is Brazil cutting down its rainforests to produce soybeans and meat for export?
Anyone who wants to know why must first look squarely at the reality of Brazil.
Brazil is a country where a quarter of the population lives in poverty.
I live in poverty, no different from Bernadette, the woman I met in Congo.
The suffering of such people is overlooked or sometimes ignored entirely by environmentalists in Europe and North America.

---pp.97,98

As deforestation in the Amazon increases, environmental groups must reconnect with Brazilian farmers.
And we need to find a more realistic solution.
Farmers should be allowed to increase the intensity of their farming and livestock production in some areas, especially Serrado.
This will help reduce development pressures on other areas and prevent fragmentation of tropical forests in particular.
Creating parks and protected areas is the flip side of increasing agricultural intensity.
Development and protection go hand in hand.
Simply making farming and livestock more efficient and profitable would make other efforts to protect primary forests unnecessary.
By simply designating specific areas and increasing the intensity of existing farms and ranches, Brazilian farmers and ranchers can produce more food on less land, thus protecting the natural environment.

---p.110

“As Japan followed the West in industrialization, plastic began to be widely used as a substitute for turtle shells when making products such as hair ornaments.”
The first and most widely adopted product for celluloid was the comb.
For thousands of years, humans have made combs from tortoise shell, ivory, bone, rubber, iron, tin, gold, silver, lead, reed, wood, glass, and ceramics.
Celluloid replaced all these materials.
By the late 1970s, the use of ivory on piano keys had ceased.
(…)
Hyatt, the inventor of celluloid, produced a pamphlet explaining the environmental benefits of his invention.
“There is no need to scour the Earth for increasingly rare raw materials.”
Let's go back to the conversation we had with Pigner.
I mentioned to Pigner that plastic has saved the lives of countless sea turtles.
Pigener burst out laughing.
“Plastic is a miracle product.
Right? So, the technological advancements that Mr. Shellenberger knows about have helped the environment.
Without plastic, turtles' lives would not have been saved.
It would be a lie to deny that, and I don't want to lie.
“I’m not that single-minded.”
---pp.131,132

There's a lesson we can learn from all this talk about plastic.
If you want to protect the environment, you should not use natural materials, and if you want to avoid using natural materials, you should replace them with artificial ones.
This is the exact opposite of the environmental protection methods pursued by environmentalists.
They argue for using natural resources in a more sustainable way, moving towards natural materials such as biofuels and bioplastics.
We instinctively consider natural materials to be more eco-friendly than artificial ones.
Such notions need to be overcome.
Humanity has saved sea turtles and elephants from extinction with artificial materials.
Imagine how much more precarious the turtles would have been if we had clung to that instinct.
(…) In order to protect nature, we must accept artificiality.
This truly profound paradox is only just beginning to be understood by humanity.

---pp.143,145

The Biodiversity Science Organization is not a scientific organization whose main goal is to study species, extinction, and biodiversity, but rather an organization under the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The organization claims that 6 percent of all species are critically endangered, 9 percent are endangered, and 12 percent are vulnerable to becoming endangered.
Meanwhile, the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that 0.8 percent of the 112,432 plant, animal, and insect species on Earth have gone extinct since 1500.
If we convert this into a percentage, less than two species, or only 0.001 percent, become extinct each year.
Biodiversity has increased dramatically over the past 100 million years.
This increase in diversity far surpasses the impact of the last mass extinction.
To measure biodiversity, it is more accurate to count the number of genera rather than individual species, and the number of genera has nearly tripled over the past 100 million years.
A review of the past five mass extinctions, using fossil data, shows that biodiversity declined significantly, by 15 to 20 percent, but was soon followed by even greater growth.
(…)
It is not true that humanity is failing to protect the habitats of living things.
As of 2019, the combined area of ​​all protected areas on Earth is larger than the continent of Africa.
15 percent of the Earth's total surface area is protected area.
In 1962, there were 9,214 protected areas, but by 2003, this had increased to 102,102, and by 2020, it had reached 244,869.
(…)
The real threat to gorillas and other wildlife isn't oil companies or economic growth.
I found out for sure when I visited the area in December 2014.
Because of poverty, using wood as fuel was a real problem.
In Congo, more than 90 percent of cooking fuel comes from wood or charcoal.
---pp.155,158

Scientists estimate that between 5 and 10 million Native Americans were displaced by conservationists after the creation of Yosemite National Park in California in 1864.
A sociologist at Cornell University estimates that there are at least 14 million environmental refugees in Africa alone, created by Europeans.
The displacement of indigenous people was not some collateral damage of environmental protection policies.
The very core of environmental protection policy was the expulsion of indigenous people.
In a paper addressing this topic, two scholars noted:
“The expulsion of people who raised livestock, gathered forest products, and farmed land was a central part of environmental protection policies implemented in southern and eastern Africa and India in the 20th century.”
---pp.168,169

What garment factories and many other consumer goods factories in poor developing countries do is diametrically opposed to what Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace claim.
Factories are blamed for causing deforestation, but they are actually the driving force behind protecting forests.
It has been so far and will continue to be so.
---p.192

Manufacturing brings about an increase in wealth.
With that wealth, the country can build roads, construct power plants, expand transmission facilities, establish flood control systems, build water and sewer systems, and establish waste management systems.
These are the things that differentiate a poor country like Congo from a rich country like the United States.
Moreover, cities lead to population concentration.
Conversely, this means that more suburban areas are returning to the wild.
Cities occupy only 0.5 percent of the unfrozen Earth's surface.
Paved roads and buildings account for less than 0.5 percent of the Earth's surface.
As agricultural productivity increases, the areas of grasslands, forests and wild lands expand.
Globally, the reality is that the rate of forest restoration is catching up with the rate of deforestation.
(…)
However, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, animals are still used for farming.
They raise hundreds of millions of horses, cows, and other animals.
Simply conserving the land that grows food for these animals can help protect the habitats of vulnerable species.
Just as in Europe or North America, modern agriculture was able to protect nature.

---pp.199,200

If we stop burning wood for fuel, we can allow grasslands and forests to recover and wildlife to return.
(…)
Intensifying and enhancing energy production is a necessary step to leave more of the planet to wildlife.
All the hydroelectric dams, all the fossil fuel power plants, and all the nuclear power plants built on Earth today combined would cover only 0.2 percent of the total surface area excluding frozen land.
The land area used for energy production is only one-two-hundredth of the land area used for food production.

---pp.216,217

Environmental activists, including myself, have had a negative view of manufacturing.
But contrary to long-held misconceptions, the positive impacts of manufacturing far outweigh the negatives.
When we wear clothes made by workers in developing countries like Suparti, the emotion we should feel is not guilt.
You should feel proud.
Environmentalists and the media criticize fast-fashion brands like H&M for producing clothes in poor countries, but that's not right.
Such accusations must stop.
This isn't to say that companies like Mattel, Nike, and H&M shouldn't improve working conditions for their workers.
Consumers can make the world a better place by pressuring companies to do the right thing.
But to do that, we must not demonize the very act of consumers buying cheap goods made in developing countries.

---pp.225,226

The story of how a small group of dedicated nature lovers saved the environment is deeply inspiring.
We're all familiar with these stories. We see them on TV, in documentary films, in books, and in the news.
It's also an exciting drama with a clear distinction between heroes and villains.
On one side are greedy cowards who destroy nature, and on the other side are young heroes who pursue their ideals.
Millions of young people are inspired by these stories and begin to do what they can.
The only flaw in this tale of environmental warriors' heroism is that it's almost entirely wrong.

---p.233

As the Drake field was developed, kerosene, a refined petroleum product, began to be rapidly distributed.
Kerosene was rapidly encroaching on the American market for liquid lighting fuels, usurping whale oil's place.
Thus, the whales were able to save their lives.
Because whale oil is no longer needed.
At the peak of whaling, the whaling industry produced 600,000 barrels of whale oil annually.
After Drake's discovery, the oil industry produced the same amount of oil in less than three years.
There was no difference between the amount of oil produced in a day from a single oil field in Pennsylvania and the amount of whale oil obtained from the whales that a single whaling ship caught after a voyage of three or four years.
The energy density of oil was truly incredible.
---pp.236,237

The whaling industry peaked in 1962.
It was 13 years before Greenpeace captured the world's attention in Vancouver.
After 1962, the whaling industry entered a rapid decline.
The United Nations called for a 10-year moratorium on whaling in 1972, and the United States enacted the Marine Mammal Protection Act to ban whaling.
In 1975, when Greenpeace was based in Vancouver and gaining international acclaim, 46 countries had already banned whaling of all humpback whales, blue whales, gray whales, and some species of right, fin, and sei whales.
It wasn't an international treaty that saved the whales, it was vegetable oil.
When the International Whaling Commission banned whaling in 1982, the whaling industry was effectively over.
The whales hunted since the International Whaling Commission's whaling ban accounted for only 1 percent of all whales hunted in the 20th century.

---p.240

According to one study, if everyone around the world went vegetarian, individual energy consumption in the food sector alone could be reduced by 16 percent and greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by 20 percent.
However, individual energy consumption in the 'overall' sector will only decrease by 2 percent, and 'overall' greenhouse gas emissions will only decrease by 4 percent.
The same goes for the “most extreme” scenario put forward by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where the entire world becomes vegan.
Even if humanity were to completely eliminate animal foods and products and revert all pastures to forests by 2050, the effect would only reduce 10 percent of total carbon emissions.
Even if every American reduced their meat consumption by a quarter, greenhouse gas emissions would only decrease by 1 percent.
If every American became a vegetarian, America's carbon emissions would only decrease by about 5 percent.
Studies showing similar results continue endlessly.
According to one study, even if all citizens of developed countries became vegetarians, the reduction in carbon emissions would only be about 4.3 percent on average.
Another study found that even if every American went vegan, carbon emissions would only decrease by 2.6 percent.
(…)
Here we can see one important fact.
Carbon emissions reductions should be achieved in the 'energy' sector, not in areas such as food or land use.
The energy sector is the most important.
Energy sectors such as electricity, transport, cooking and heating account for nearly 90 percent of global fossil fuel consumption.

---pp.267,268

This is not to say that no one has died from nuclear energy.
However, when you look at the number of fatal accidents, it is absurdly low.
That means it's that safe.
Let's compare the annual death toll.
270,000 people die while walking and 1.35 million people die while driving.
2.3 million people die on the job and 4.2 million die from air pollution.
In contrast, the total number of deaths from nuclear power barely exceeds 100.
The worst nuclear accidents we've seen so far demonstrate the fundamental reasons why nuclear energy is not only safe but also has a very low environmental impact.
This is because the energy density of the fuel is extremely high.
Nuclear fission, which splits atoms to generate heat, requires much less fuel than chemically breaking down molecules by igniting them.
Just one can of Coca-Cola has enough uranium to provide enough energy for one person to last a lifetime.
So even if the worst nuclear accident occurs, even if the fuel rods are exposed, the amount of particulate matter that directly affects people beyond the power plant is bound to be very small.
Meanwhile, particulate matter emitted from burning fossil fuels and biomass in homes, cars and power plants killed 8 million people in 2016.
Therefore, the safest way to produce electricity stably is nuclear power.
Considering that air pollution shortens the lives of 7 million people a year, nuclear power has actually saved over 2 million lives so far.

---pp.310,311

From 1995 to 2018, unprecedented subsidies were poured into solar and wind power.
However, the share of carbon-free energy in global energy supply rose by only 2 percentage points, from 13 percent to 15 percent.
This is because we have reduced nuclear power while increasing solar and wind power generation.
Those two energies cannot replace the void left by nuclear energy.
Electricity accounts for only one-third of the energy used worldwide.
The remaining two-thirds are used directly to consume primary energy sources, most of which are fossil fuels.
This applies to areas such as heating, cooking, and transportation.
Unlike solar and wind power, nuclear power can provide not only electricity but also heat.
Among zero-carbon energy sources, only nuclear power can serve as an abundant, sustainable, and inexpensive source of heat.
Only nuclear power has the potential to produce hydrogen gas and electricity cheaply, potentially displacing fossil fuels in areas such as heating, cooking, and transportation.
---p.316

That was the case in the 1960s.
Most environmentalists favor nuclear power as a cleaner energy source than coal or hydroelectric power.
The same goes for most Democrats and progressives.
In the United States, Europe, and around the world, the view that nuclear energy can be a clean, energy-dense, and virtually unlimited source of energy has been gaining widespread acceptance.
---p.322

The U.S. government estimates that by 2050, renewable energy will account for a larger share of U.S. electricity generation than natural gas.
Globally, renewable energy, which accounted for 28 percent of electricity generation in 2018, is projected to reach nearly 50 percent by 2050.
But these numbers are misleading.
While it is true that renewable energy accounted for 11 percent of global primary energy in 2018, 64 percent of that (or 7 percent of all primary energy sources) came from hydroelectric dams.
However, most dams are built in developed countries.
This is especially true because dam construction in poor developing countries is often blocked by environmentalists from wealthy countries.
Despite the enthusiasm for renewable energy, solar and wind power accounted for only 3 percent of primary energy sources in 2018.
Geothermal power accounts for an even smaller fraction, at just 0.1 percent, and tidal power's share is so small it's impossible to even measure.
---pp.360,361

A study by a group of climate and energy scientists found that when the U.S. transitions to solar and wind power, considering continental weather and seasonal variations, it would require more than $23 trillion in installation and operating costs for battery energy storage.
For reference, the US GDP in 2019 was $22 trillion.

---p.362

There are two main reasons why solar and wind power are becoming more expensive.
First, because it is intermittent energy, it requires power generation facilities of the same capacity to support it.
Second, because the energy density is low, more land, transmission lines, and power generation facilities are required.
In other words, the fundamental problem of renewable energy cannot be solved through technology.
The problem is that we cannot go against the laws of nature.

---p.373

We need to face the simple truth.
Solar panels and wind turbines don't produce as much energy as the investment in building them and storing the energy they produce.
According to a pioneering study, in Germany, nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams produce 75 and 35 times the energy respectively put into their construction.
However, solar, wind, and biomass only produce 1.6, 3.9, and 3.5 times the energy invested in their construction, respectively.
In contrast, fossil fuels such as coal, gas, and oil return about 30 times the energy they require to operate.
The Industrial Revolution was possible because coal has a much higher energy density than wood.
By the same token, solar and wind power, with their much lower energy density, cannot sustain today's high-energy urban industrial societies and civilizations.

---p.385

McKibben is one of the most influential environmental activists in the United States.
And as we've seen, he's a proponent of shutting down nuclear power plants in Vermont.
As a result, Vermont ended up increasing its carbon emissions by 16 percent instead of reducing them by 25 percent.
But McKibben can't be the only environmentalist who shut down nuclear power plants and replaced them with fossil fuel plants.
All major environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Sierra Club, have been at the forefront of campaigning to phase out nuclear power plants in the United States.
At the same time, they have been receiving money from natural gas companies and renewable energy companies or investing in such companies.
They are financially tied to those who stand to benefit if nuclear power plants are shut down and natural gas plants are built in their place.
If we push for a nuclear phase-out, our competitors, fossil fuel and renewable energy companies, will be able to do profitable business.
This is because the amount of electricity produced by nuclear power plants is so large.
Over the past decade, the Indian Point nuclear power plant has generated $8 billion in revenue.
In 40 years, you can easily hit $32 billion.
Closing nuclear power plants means that huge amounts of money will flow into natural gas and renewable energy companies.

---p.410

Climate activists boast vastly more funding than climate skeptics.
The combined annual budgets of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the largest environmental groups in the United States, amount to $384 million.
But the combined annual budgets of the two largest climate change skeptic groups, the Corporate Competitiveness Institute and the Heartland Institute, are less than $13 million.
The two environmental groups' combined budget of $384 million is more than ExxonMobil's entire donation to climate change skeptics over the past 20 years combined.
---p.413

I am also in favor of replacing coal with natural gas.
But that doesn't justify taking money from the natural gas industry while opposing climate change.
Bloomberg is just as much a stakeholder as Aubrey McClendon, Tom Steyer, or ExxonMobil.
Groups like the Sierra Club and 350.org criticize ExxonMobil for taking money from them, while claiming they are receiving money from Bloomberg.
This behavior can be simply called hypocrisy.

---p.419

Environmentalists have not wielded enough political influence in wealthy countries to hinder economic development by curbing energy consumption.
But for weak and poor countries, it has wielded enough power over the past 50 years to suppress energy consumption and thus hinder economic development.
The World Bank is currently redirecting funding from cheap and reliable energy sources like hydropower, fossil fuels, and nuclear power to more expensive and less reliable sources like solar and wind power.
In October 2019, the European Investment Bank announced that it would end all funding for fossil fuel power plants in poor countries by 2021.
Environmentalists in wealthy countries may not be the root cause of poverty in countries like Congo, but they are at least responsible.
Because it is clear that it is making it difficult for people in poor and underdeveloped areas to enter the path of industrialization and development, preventing them from benefiting from it.

---p.449

The purpose of the World Bank is to provide finance to help poor countries develop economically.
For more than two decades after World War II, the World Bank lent developing countries the money they needed to build basic modern infrastructure, such as dams, roads, and power grids.
Things like building a dam are low-risk investments.
Once built, it can produce electricity steadily and stably, and by selling that electricity, it can generate profits and pay off the national debt.
Much of Brazil's power grid has benefited from World Bank financing, with 12 hydroelectric power plants lighting up the country's nights.
But in the late 1980s, as environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace began to raise their voices, the UN began to offer developing countries an entirely different development model.
It was called “sustainable development.”
Under this new model, poor developing countries would have to continue using small-scale renewable energy sources instead of large-scale power infrastructure like dams.
The World Bank soon followed the UN's lead.
By the 1990s, only 5 percent of the World Bank's financial assistance went to infrastructure development.
---pp.451,452

Now it's time to ask the real question:
How did so many people, including myself in the past, become so wrong? Why did we come to believe that climate change would spell the end not only for polar bears but also for humanity?
We kind of know the answer.
The scientific basis of the IPCC report itself is generally sound.
However, the Summary for Policymakers, press releases, statements by the report's authors, and media interviews are problematic.
They tend to exaggerate with ideological motivations.
Carelessly omitting important context.
As we have seen, the authors of the IPCC report and media reports claim that sea level rise is “unmanageable.”
The world's food supply is on the brink of collapse, a plant-based diet could drastically reduce carbon emissions, poor countries could become wealthy by adopting renewable energy, and nuclear energy is dangerous.
The media also bears a significant responsibility for public misunderstandings about climate change and environmental issues.
They emphasize apocalyptic language and tone while obliterating important international, historical, and economic contexts.
Since at least the 1980s, mainstream media outlets have been reporting on climate change in an exaggerated way.
Elite media outlets like The New York Times and The New Yorker have gone even further, propagating Malthusian ideologies and delusions that were debunked half a century ago.
---pp.507,509

Environmentalism today is a kind of secular religion.
It is a new religion for the highly educated class who are not familiar with established religions.
The believers are mainly upper middle class people living in developed countries and some developing countries.
Environmentalism offers believers a new purpose in life, both individually and collectively.
Environmentalism provides a criterion by which we can distinguish between good and bad people, heroes and villains.
Moreover, environmentalism is preached in the name of science, and thus has intellectual authority.

---pp.520,521

That's not to say there's nothing we need to do.
There is a lot to do.
The problem is the direction.
We must further develop the current positive trend.
We must not attempt to reverse the progress we have made by regressing to a low-energy, agricultural society.
That's why I'm pointing out the anger and fear-mongering surrounding climate change, deforestation, extinction, and so on.
We must pay attention to the sadness and loneliness that such environmental movements are fostering.
Much of that environmental movement is wrong.
Because they spread unresolved anxiety, propagate ideologies that make people feel helpless, and obscure or deny existing evidence.

---p.538

We all, especially those of us living in developed countries, must remember that we should be grateful for the civilized life we ​​enjoy today and take for granted.
We must also remember to take a balanced view of the claims of environmental doomsayers and to foster empathy and solidarity with those who still cannot enjoy the fruits of humanity's prosperity.
This is a really important story.
The arguments propagated by environmental doomsayers are not only inaccurate but inhumane.
It is not true that humans are destroying nature without thinking.
Climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, and extinction are not fundamentally the result of our greed and arrogance.
It is simply a side effect that occurs as we humans develop our economy in pursuit of a better life.

---pp.541,542