Michael Shellenberger

Activist, Change agent, Connector, Environmentalist, Explorer, Photographer, Social entrepreneur, Startup, Writer/Editor

Michael is founder and president of Environmental Progress. He is a long-time advocate of clean energy innovation and environmental progress as part of a paradigm shift in how we think about and deal with environmental problems. He is co-founder and Senior Fellow at Breakthrough Institute, and on the Advisory Board of MIT's "Future of Nuclear Energy" task force. Michael is Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment" (2008) and coauthor of An Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015) and Nature Unbound (2105). He writes for publications including Scientific American, The New York Times, & the Washington Post. His 2015 TEDx talk was on "How Humans Save Nature." He has appeared on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," in a feature-length documentary about pro-nuclear environmentalists, "Pandora's Promise," and has debated nuclear on CNN "Crossfire" & at UCLA (2016). His 2007 book with Ted Nordhaus, Break Through, was called "prescient" by Time and "the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring" by Wired. Their 2004 essay, "The Death of Environmentalism" was debated around the world. Michael was president and co-founder of Breakthrough Institute from 2003 - 2015 and left at the end of last year to start EP. In coming months and years EP will work as intensely on protecting the right of poor countries to access cheap credit and power for the development and conservation objectives as it does on nuclear. Two recent essays — "Why African Leaders Should Listen to Asian Economists and Ignore Western Experts,"and "Why Energy Transitions are the Key to Environmental Progress," written with Rachel Pritzker — offer a peek into the next phase of EP's work. Michael has been profiled in the New York Times, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, the National Review, The New Republic, on NPR; his research and writing have appeared in The Harvard Law and Policy Review, Democracy Journal, the American Prospect, The New Republic the Wall Street Journal; and are sometimes cited by the New York Times, Slate, USA Today, Washington Post, New York Daily News, The New Republic. Michael has been politically engaged for 20 years entirely in progressive causes. In 2002 he cofounded the Apollo Alliance, now the Blue-Green Coalition, which advocated a $300 billion investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency — a demand that was largely realized by President Barack Obama. From 1996 - 1999 he worked with the Headwaters Forest Coalition to protect the last significant groves of old-growth redwoods still in private hands. During the same years he worked with Global Exchange to challenge Nike to improve factory conditions in Indonesia. Michael lives in Berkeley, California and travels widely.

Universal prosperity and more room on Earth for nature.

The key to solving climate change and saving nature is a high-energy planet.

climate, energy, environment

surviving without a lot of sleep