Michael Shellenberger
Why Wishful Liberal Thinking Led to Disasters in Ukraine, Homelessness, And Climate
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left) admits, “We’re in Trouble,” as President Joe Biden (center) struggles to respond to the worst energy crisis in 50 years, and as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (right) makes homelessness worse.
The good news is that everything is changing — and fast
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In the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberals in the West have denounced their political opponents as deniers of climate change, science, and reality in general. Progressives and neoliberals alike argued that they alone could see the shape of the new world being born. It would be increasingly globalized, democratic, and focused on new threats, like climate change.
It’s now clear that all of that was a delusion. Neither China nor Russia is democratizing and both have become more autocratic and totalitarian. Neither nation views climate change as a major threat. On the contrary. Russia views climate change as an opportunity to expand agriculture and shipping through its newly ice-free waters. Where both Putin and Chinese Premier Xi used to give lip service to climate change, neither even bothered to attend last fall’s United Nations climate talks.
It’s true that the West has imposed sanctions on Russia, and the Ukranian people are battling the Russians fiercely and admirably. A few days ago, Russians retreated from the capital city of Kyiv. Western nations froze bank accounts of Russian oligarchs, hammering the ruble. And European governments are calling on their citizens to reduce energy consumption.
But those are hiccups on the way to a rapidly changed world. Consider that:
- China aided Russia’s invasion of Ukraine through a massive cyberattack on Ukraine’s military and nuclear facilities, according to intelligence memos obtained by The Times of London.
- Europe continues to import Russian energy while China nor India are buying Russian oil at a steep discount. There is little reason to believe conservation measures by Western consumers will make much of a dent in energy consumption.
- And Russia’s retreat from Kyiv appears to be temporary and strategic.
Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMDWhy did the West fail to deter Russia from invading Ukraine?
The West’s Green Delusions Empowered Putin.
March 1st 2022
1,720 Retweets5,301 Likes
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes at the very same time as: the collapse of the West’s climate and renewables agenda; an energy crisis triggered by climate activists; and a worsening drug, crime, and homeless crisis in America’s cities.
What do all these events have in common? They all point to the grave dangers of irrational liberal optimism.
Liberals aren’t the only ones who are guilty of wishful thinking. There are an alarming number of Republicans who believe that Donald Trump was elected President in 2020 and that Larry Elder defeated Governor Gavin Newsom in California’s recall election last fall. Only an elaborate electoral fraud conspiracy, the reasoning goes, kept them from assuming office.
And conservatives contributed to the disasters in Ukraine, homelessness, and climate change. George W. Bush famously said he looked into Putin’s eyes and “was able to get a sense of his soul.” Bush also made the disastrous “Housing First” policy of giving away apartment units, unconditionally, to addicts and the mentally ill, federal policy. And many Republicans have, in recent years, promoted renewable energy subsidies.
But when it comes to the West’s failure to deter an increasingly totalitarian and violent Russia and China, the growing scarcity and unreliability of energy, and the destruction of America’s cities by open air drug scenes, the fault lies squarely with people on the Left end of the political spectrum.
Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, French President Emanuel Macron, and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, all denied to themselves, and to others, what was plainly obvious to many analysts for years: Putin intended to invade Ukraine.
Even as Russian forces prepared for war games last fall, Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan wondered “why Russia would take such a military action at that time,” according to a reconstruction of the events leading up to Putin’s invasion by the Wall Street Journal.
Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD
But what do we do now? michaelshellenberger.
December 19th 2021
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On climate change, center-Left parties around the world deluded themselves into thinking their high-energy economies could be powered by renewables, which energy historians have known for centuries had to be abandoned for fossil fuels in order for the industrial revolution to happen. And around the world it was liberals not conservatives who fought to shut down nuclear plants and block natural gas pipelines and infrastructure.
Liberals and progressives could have embraced a climate and energy strategy focused on domestically-produced natural gas and nuclear, as I have urged them to do for over a decade, and which Putin did, allowing him to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supplies.
Such a strategy was the only one that ever made any sense from an environmental point of view. Nuclear and natural gas are the two technologies that are most responsible for declining emissions by the US and Europe since the 1970s.
Instead, the Left in Europe opted for importing fossil fuels from Russia and the Left in the US for importing solar panels made by enslaved Muslims in China.
Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD
February 6th 2022
2,616 Retweets10,051 Likes
On crime, liberal cities have gradually reduced consequences for breaking laws, whether from addiction or malevolence, resulting in rising homicides, burglaries, and open air drug scenes. Relatedly, on homelessness, progressives have funneled hundreds of billions into “Housing First,” which gives away apartments to homeless drug addicts without requiring sobriety.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom doubled down on Housing First last year. At a press conference announcing $12 billion for Housing First, a journalist asked, ”How do you keep California from becoming a magnet for people who have issues in other states and coming here to take advantage of what California is spending. It’s been a problem in the past.”
Responded Newsom, “To the extent that people want to come here for new beginnings and all income levels, that’s part of the California dream. And we have a responsibility to enliven and inspire. California’s dream is still alive and well. A $80 billion budget surplus… And that should not just be for certain people.”
The result is that, today, well over 50 percent of the people on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles are from out of town, according to expert insiders, homeless outreach workers, and the homeless themselves.
Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMDNewsom said he wouldn’t because it’s “Part of the California dream.”
April 4th 2022
19 Retweets81 Likes
Why do liberals keep making the same mistake over and over again?
In part, it’s because of what cognitive psychologists call “theory of mind.” Liberals tend to think that other people think like they do. Western liberal leaders thought Putin was one of them, a liberal democrat committed to rule of law, even though he repeatedly said he wanted to reconstruct the Soviet empire.
Similarly, leading liberal leaders think homeless drug addicts are seeking a better life, and just need their own apartment to quit drugs, get a job, and re-connect with family and friends. In truth, many if not most homeless addicts maintain their addiction until they are forced to quit.
On energy and climate change, progressives indulged in the fantasy that we could power the world with energy sources that have no negative consequences. They convinced themselves that renewables were better in every way than either fossil fuels and nuclear, even as they demanded massive subsidies for, and the right to kill endangered species in, their deployment.
Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD
October 30th 2021
2,503 Retweets6,622 Likes
And liberals engaged in wishful thinking that high standards of living can be maintained with much lower levels of energy consumption, and that poor and working people will accept low standards of living.
There were financial rewards for such wishful thinking. Politicians like Newsom can raise much more money from homeless housing developers than from homeless shelter providers. Center Left parties take money from renewable energy companies all over the world. And it’s now clear that climate activists in Europe, and perhaps the United States, took, took money from the Russian government to fight fracking and natural gas production.
Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD
March 3rd 2022
10,413 Retweets27,215 Likes
The good news is that the failure of elites to govern at local, national, and international levels points to a coming change of leadership, triggered by covid, but ultimately resulting from the exhaustion of post-Cold War ideologies and institutions.
It will gradually become clear that the West must defend itself more vigorously against resurgent illiberal regimes, particularly Russia and China, which could well invade Taiwan, or even attempt to take a Japanese island, in the coming months or years.
In California, it has fallen to mothers of homeless addicts to speak out against the open drug scenes. Yesterday they held a press conference in San Francisco warning foreign tourists not to visit. The dangers of the open air fentanyl markets, unofficially supported by the governments of San Francisco, California, and the United States, are simply too great. The billboard they purchased in Union Square to warn tourists was covered by every major San Francisco news media outlet.
And major political changes are afoot. Republicans will likely take one or more house of Congress, and President Joe Biden is unlikely to run again in 2024. The result will be major changes within both parties. California, long a leader of change, for good or ill, will likely see the recall of district attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the election of a new attorney general, and the election of a new, more moderate, governor.
I interviewed @ShellenbergerMD, the moderate challenging California Gov. Gavin Newsom. His bid tests how far voter dissatisfaction with Newsom’s handling of the homelessness crisis goes — and whether a non-Republican has a better shot than Larry Elder. 
In this context, it becomes clear that the claims of reality denial by progressives were a kind of psychological projection. It was progressives who denied the realities of climate change and energy, the intentions of Vladimir Putin, and homelessness. The good news is that people are waking up, and quickly. The trend toward the dismantling of civilization could soon reverse itself. But, ultimately, what happens next is up to us.
Health
Setback for the Transgender movement: Michael Shellenberger on leaked files revealing medical malpractice on children and vulnerable adults
Video interview below background information from EnvironmentalProgress.org
LEAKED FILES FROM WPATH REVEAL WIDESPREAD MEDICAL MALPRACTICE ON CHILDREN AND VULNERABLE ADULTS AT GLOBAL TRANSGENDER HEALTHCARE AUTHORITY
World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) members demonstrate a lack of consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments
Press Release: JDA Worldwide for Environmental Progress
Newly leaked files from within the leading global transgender healthcare body have revealed that the clinicians who shape how “gender medicine” is regulated and practiced around the world consistently violate medical ethics and informed consent. The files, which were leaked from within the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), were published by the US-based think tank Environmental Progress.
WPATH is considered the leading global scientific and medical authority on “gender medicine,” and in recent decades, its Standards of Care have shaped the guidance, policies and practices of governments, medical associations, public health systems and private clinics across the world.
However, the WPATH Files reveal that the organization does not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, and members frequently discuss improvising treatments as they go along. Members are fully aware that children and adolescents cannot comprehend the lifelong consequences of “gender-affirming care,” and in some cases, due to poor health literacy, neither can their parents.
“The WPATH Files show that what is called ‘gender medicine’ is neither science nor medicine,” said Michael Shellenberger, President and founder of Environmental Progress. “The experiments are not randomized, double-blind, or controlled. It’s not medicine since the first rule is to do no harm. And that requires informed consent.”
The raw files have been published in a report called The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments on children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults, which contains analysis by journalist Mia Hughes that puts the WPATH Files in the context of the best available science on gender distress.
Environmental Progress has made all files available to read at the end of the report. The leaked files include screenshots of posts from WPATH’s internal messaging forum dating from 2021 to 2024 and a video of an internal panel discussion. All names have been redacted other than several WPATH members of public significance, such as Dr. Marci Bowers, an American gynecologist and surgeon who is the President of WPATH, and the Canadian pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Metzger.
In the WPATH Files, members demonstrate a lack of consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments. Messages in the files show that patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and other vulnerabilities such as homelessness, are being allowed to consent to hormonal and surgical interventions. Members dismiss concerns about these patients and characterize efforts to protect them as unnecessary “gatekeeping.”
The files provide clear evidence that doctors and therapists are aware they are offering minors life-changing treatments they cannot fully understand. WPATH members know that puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries will cause infertility and other complications, including cancer and pelvic floor dysfunction. Yet they consider life-altering medical interventions for young patients, including vaginoplasty for a 14-year-old and hormones for a developmentally delayed 13-year-old.
The WPATH Files also show how far medical experiments in gender medicine have gone, with discussions about surgeons performing “nullification” and other extreme body modification procedures to create body types that do not exist in nature.
A growing number of medical and psychiatric professionals say the promotion of pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments is a global medical scandal that compares to major incidents of medical malpractice in history, such as lobotomies and ovariotomies.
“Activist members of WPATH know that the so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ they provide can result in life-long complications and sterility and that their patients do not understand the implications, such as loss of sexual function and the ability to experience orgasm,” Shellenberger said. “These leaked files show overwhelming evidence that the professionals within WPATH know that they are not getting consent from children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults, or their caregivers.”
Environmental Progress has written to every WPATH member named in the files, as well as additional members whose names have been redacted, to confirm their comments and offer a right of reply. Two people responded – one confirmed that the comments attributed to them were correct, and another did not deny their comments but refuted Environmental Progress’ interpretation of them. Mention of Environmental Progress’ outreach to members via email was then later seen in the form of comments on WPATH’s internal messaging forum.
Interview with Michael Shellenberger from Jordan B Peterson Clips
READ: THE WPATH FILES AND REPORT
You can see that in Poland people are actually burning trash to stay warm. Burning trash in your fireplace creates toxic smoke. It’s hazardous. The government’s considering handing out masks so people can breathe more safely when they’re outdoors.
Recall that natural gas is the reason the United States reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country in the world. Carbon emissions have been on the decline globally, in large measure, because of the transition from coal to gas. Natural gas is something that most reasonable people agree is a superior fuel to coal. Natural gas is the reason the United States reduced its emissions by 22% between 2005 and 2020, which is five percentage points more than the United States had agreed to reduce our emissions under cap and trade legislation, which nearly passed Congress in 2010 and under the UN Paris Climate Agreement.
The above is a graph that was produced by Matthew Yglesias, a well-known progressive blogger. He tweets it out whenever somebody points out that President Biden isn’t doing all he can to expand oil and gas production. It’s accurate. It does show that oil production increased on a daily average under Biden from under Trump. But it’s deeply misleading. You have to remember that under Trump, the Coronavirus pandemic, for several months, massively slashed oil production.
You can see from the below chart of the EIA data on crude oil production that we still haven’t gotten back to where we were before the pandemic. Now consider how the need is much greater for US oil now that Europe and the United States are rejecting Russian oil.Upgrade
The United States is the biggest liquified natural gas exporter, it’s true. But it takes five years to bring online new LNG capacity in the United States. So all of the new LNG that’s come online during Biden’s presidency was due to past presidents.
And Biden has leased less land than any President since World War II. It’s a shockingly small amount of land: 130,000 acres as opposed to seven million acres under Obama, four million acres under Trump, during the first 19 months of their administrations. It’s a huge reduction in the amount of land being leased.
You can see that in some particular cases, like a very large oil and gas sale in Alaska, the Department of Interior claimed there wasn’t any industry interest in the lease. This turned out not to be the case. The Senator from Alaska, Lisa Markowski said, “I can say with full certainty based on conversations as recently as last night, that Alaska’s industry does have an interest in lease sales and the Cook Inlet to claim otherwise is simply false, not to mention stunningly shortsighted.”
People point out the oil and gas industry does have many thousands of leases, and that’s true, but there’s a high degree of uncertainty about whether the leases they have will produce oil and gas at levels that make sense economically to produce from.
So increasing oil and gas leasing at a time of an energy crisis in Europe seems like a no-brainer, but the Biden administration is not doing that. In fact, it’s been preventing the expansion of gas in many other ways.
You can see the Biden administration denied a request to have a formaldehyde regulation exempted. All else being equal, you’d wanna reduce that pollution. But I think a little bit of formaldehyde is gonna be a less toxic airborne event than having people breathing toxic wood and plastic smoke in Europe. The right thing to do, in terms of aiding our allies, would be to wave that regulation. But the Biden administration refused.
You can see that the Biden administration is actively considering forgoing all new offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific. It may do no offshore leases at all for oil and gas.
Instead, the Biden administration has sought to give sanctions relief to Venezuela in the hopes that Venezuela would produce more oil. And of course, most famously Biden went to Saudi Arabia to ask the Saudis to produce more oil in July. Now, everybody agrees that was a huge foreign policy failure. The Saudis announced they would be cutting production with the rest of OPEC+. The Biden administration’s pressure on the Saudis apparently annoyed them. Now, they’ve been pushed closer into the arms of Russia. This is a pretty significant setback for the Biden administration.
At the same time Biden was going to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. Biden administration was refusing to even meet with oil and gas executives. That’s a pretty serious snub when you consider that it’s an industry you want to expand production.
An oil and gas analyst on Twitter criticized a Senator from Wisconsin for suggesting the Democrats are responsible for the lack of refining capacity. He said, “What — do you also blame a political party for a flat tire?”
I pointed out that a single oil refinery outage would have little impact if we had sufficient refinery capacity, and the reason we don’t is that politicians, mostly Democrats have used regulations to prevent their construction. When I interviewed executives one said to me, “If you were an oil company, why would you invest hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding refining capacity if you thought the federal government would shut you down in the next few years? The narrative coming out of this administration is absolutely insane.”
So you can see here that refinery capacity was increasing all the way through 2020. It then declined due to the pandemic. And it has not risen since then. When the analyst was asked, why don’t we get more refineries? He clearly didn’t know. Or at least he said he didn’t know. But it’s clear the Biden administration has not wanted more refineries.
There was a chance to retrofit a major refinery in the US Virgin Islands. It was a refinery that was older. It needed pretty significant upgrades. It was polluting. But these are machines that can be fixed. Several billion dollars of investment would’ve fixed it and it goes back many years. This is an article from 2008. It describes how, at that time, the Democrats in the Senate killed a proposal for refinery expansion.
Go back to 2006. The same thing happened. The House was in the hands of the Republicans who passed a piece of legislation to expand refineries. And it was the Democrats who killed it. And, incidentally, they’re using the exact same arguments today that they used back then.
More recently, we’ve seen an attack on expanded natural gas pipeline capacity, including from Pennsylvania to the Northeast, particularly to Boston. The result of not having pipeline capacity is that they’ve been burning more oil for electricity in New England. In fact, oil-fired power jumped to a four-year high earlier this year. And they’ve been having to import liquified natural gas to New England rather than just pipe it in, which is significantly cheaper. Probably half as expensive.
Grassroots advocacy and lawsuits have prevented pipelines from being built. You can see there’s a strong correlation between the price of natural gas and the ability to get pipelines built. We stop building pipelines and gas gets more expensive. Globally, the impact is that we’re gonna return to coal. This is the consequence of stifling oil and gas production.
One could argue that we just need more scarcity in order to accelerate the transition to electric cars. But it’s notable that the major figures in this, including President Biden, supporters of President Biden, and representatives of his administration aren’t defending a pro-scarcity position. They’re instead claiming that they’re doing all they can to bring down oil and gas prices and expand production.
I think this data, and the historical chronology, paint a picture that shows that there has, in fact, been a war on natural gas and oil United States and that it is impacting global supplies, and leaving Europe vulnerable.
Click to see the video presentation of this article. Additional slides and graphs are in the video.
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