迈克尔·谢伦伯格

迈克尔·D·谢伦伯格（Michael D. Shellenberger，1971年6月16日—），美国作家、记者。谢伦伯格是奥斯汀大学首位特聘教授，担任政治、审查和言论自由CBR主席。

Michael D. Shellenberger (born June 16, 1971) is a political and ecomodernist activist and writer best known for his heterodox views. Born in Colorado, he obtained degrees in Peace and Anthropology in the 1990s. After founding some public relations firms, in 2003 he co-founded the ecomodernist think tank Breakthrough Institute. Scientists, including those he cites, have criticised his "bad science" in comments on climate change, his history of "anti-green contrarianism", and IJNet, the multiple errors in his reporting.

Shellenberger authored Apocalypse Never (2020), about the environment, and San Fransicko (2021), about homelessness. He has been active in critiquing the environmental movement, offering alternative views on climate threats and policies. He contends that while global warming is a concern, it is "not the end of the world", and advocates for the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), industrial agriculture, fracking, and nuclear power as tools for environmental protection.

Shellenberger ran unsuccessfully for governor of California in 2018 and 2022.

Early life and education

Shellenberger was born and raised in Colorado to Mennonite parents. He is a 1989 graduate of Greeley Central High School. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Peace and Global Studies program at Earlham College in 1993. Subsequently, he earned a Master of Arts degree in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1996.

He is proficient in Portuguese.

Career

After graduation, Shellenberger moved to San Francisco to work on left-wing causes. He worked with Global Exchange on a Nike boycott. He created a nonprofit public relations firm, Communication Works, that worked on many progressive causes, and Lumina Strategies. Shellenberger in 2003 founded the Breakthrough Institute. While at Breakthrough, Shellenberger wrote a number of articles with subjects ranging from positive treatment of nuclear energy and shale gas, to critiques of the planetary boundaries hypothesis. He worked to burnish the reputations of prominent clients including Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Shellenberger then founded Environmental Progress, organising campaigns to keep nuclear power plants in operation. Shellenberger has also been called by conservative lawmakers to testify before the U.S. Congress about climate change and in favor of nuclear energy. In December 2022, Shellenberger was one of the authors who released sections of annotated internal Twitter Files authorized by new owner Elon Musk. As of December 2022, he is a writer for The Free Press.

In November 2023, Shellenberger was the key note speaker at a Genspect conference. In this speech he said that the idea of transgender people was a "woke religion" and went on further, saying "We are creating, through ideological means and social media, gender dysphoria. ... These are ideologically driven failures of civilization".

Shellenberger is the co-founder of Public, a newsletter that covers "stories on the most important issues of the day, from censorship and cities to mental health and addiction to energy and the environment". In January 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle indicated Shellenberger was first to report on the use of drugs at a recently opened San Francisco social services facility. In December 2022, the facility closed. In June 2023, Public named three researchers who fell ill in November 2019, later confirmed by The Wall Street Journal via US government sources.

On April 3, 2024, Shellenberger published the "Twitter Files – Brazil", resulting in a formal Congressional inquiry, and two Congressional hearings, at which Shellenberger testified. Investigative journalists subsequently highlighted multiple errors in Shellenberger's reporting.