Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger is the best-selling author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (Harper Collins), a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” and Green Book Award Winner. He is Founder and President of Environmental Progress, an independent and nonprofit research organization based in Berkeley, California.

He has been a climate, environmental, and social justice activist for over 30 years. In the 1990s he helped save California’s last unprotected ancient redwood forest, and inspire Nike to improve factory conditions in Asia. In the 2000s, Michael advocated for a “new Apollo project” in clean energy, which resulted in a $150 billion public investment in clean tech between 2009 and 2015.

He has helped save nuclear reactors around the world, from Illinois and New York to South Korea and Taiwan, thereby preventing an increase in air pollution equivalent to adding over 24 million cars to the road.

Michael is a leading environmental journalist who has broken major stories on Amazon deforestation; rising climate resilience; growing eco-anxiety; the U.S. government’s role in the fracking revolution; and climate change and California’s fires.

He writes on housing and homelessness, and has called for California to declare a state of emergency regarding its addiction, mental health, and housing crises. He has authored widely-read articles and reports on the topic including “Why California Keeps Making Homelessness Worse,” and “California in Danger.”