Alan Carlin’s “Environmentalism Gone Mad”

Four years ago I reported here on the case of Alan Carlin, the 38-year career employee of the EPA who was being silenced because of his dissenting views on climate change. The EPA suppressed Carlin’s research into the weaknesses of the EPA’s “findings” on climate change science, and ordered Carlin to cease any further work on the subject.

Carlin Cover copyFor a long time I have pondered the idea of trying to put together a book entitled The Green God That Failed, a reference to the famous 1949 book The God That Failed which detailed the change of mind of ex-Communists including Arthur Koestler, Andre Gide, and Iganzio Silone, only this time featuring former greens like Patrick Moore, Bjorn Lomborg, David Schonbrod, and others telling how they became disaffected with environmentalism.

 

Now retired from the EPA, Carlin has written a worthy substitute, a memoir titled Environmentalism Gone Mad: How a Sierra Club Activist and Senior EPA Analyst Discovered a Radical Green Energy Fantasy.  It is an engaging memoir, mixing a compelling personal narrative with long and valuable technical descriptions of environmental issues and EPA bureaucracy. Here’s a short sample from the Introduction:

Although I did not plan it that way, my career has been framed by the rise of the environmental movement. I was a Sierra Club activist and Chapter leader during one of the pivotal environmental battles of the 1960s which brought the environmental movement to public consciousness and the Sierra Club to prominence. . .

This [climate change] scare can only be described in superlative terms. It was and is audacious, deceptive, bold, mad, scandalous, and has come closer to achieving its purposes than it should have given its flimsy and invalid scientific basis. The proposed “solution” advanced by the environmental movement is even worse. This book attempts to explain how I reached my conclusions as to its scientific validity, or rather the lack thereof, how I came to play a role in the issue, how the Obama Administration’s climate/energy policy is wasting very large sums on non-solutions to minor or non-problems. . .

I actively supported the environmental movement in the 1960s and early 1970s during its early rise to prominence in the United States and on the basis of this experience decided to devote most of my career to supporting its goals by joining the Environmental Protection Agency in 1971 and working there for over 38 years. However, it is now clear that between then and now the movement lost its way and was taken over by radicals advocating fantasies that would actually harm the environment, the economy, national security, and human welfare. Broadly speaking, the movement became preoccupied with the effects of energy generation and use rather than meaningful environmental problems.

Worth a read. Carlin also keeps a blog on environmental issues that is worth checking regularly.

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