Environmentalism, apocalyptic environmentalism in particular, has become the dominant religion of supposedly secular people in the West.

Paid child care would make child care more efficient, allowing more children to be cared for by fewer adults, and thus free up parents to work more.

I believe Forbes is an important outlet for broadening environmental journalism beyond the overwhelmingly alarmist approach taken by most reporters, and look forward to contributing heterodoxical pieces on energy and the environment in the future.

Hydroelectric dams remain the way many poor countries gain access to reliable electricity, and both solar and wind might be worthwhile in some circumstances. But there is nothing in either their history or their physical attributes that suggests solar and wind in particular could or should be the centerpiece of efforts to deal with climate change.

The value of solar and wind decline in economic value as they become larger shares of the electricity grid for physical reasons. They produce too much energy when societies don't need it and not enough energy when they do.

Less land is being converted into agriculture globally in part because farmers are growing more food on less land.

Nuclear is the largest source of clean, carbon-free power in rich nations, and the science shows it is the safest way to make reliable electricity.

Journalists and activists alike have an obligation to describe environmental problems honestly and accurately, even if they fear doing so will reduce their news value or salience with the public.

I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.

Solar makes electricity expensive for two inherently physical reasons. Sunlight is dilute, requiring 10 to 15 times as much materials and mining, and up to 5,000 times more land, than non-renewables. And sunlight is unreliable, which reduces the value of solar as it becomes a larger part of energy supplies.

Allowing for suburbanization of California's ranches and farmlands would still allow for strong protections of California's truly natural areas like Yosemite, the redwoods, and oak woodlands and green spaces near cities.

The underlying problem with solar and wind is that they are too unreliable and energy-dilute.

Sunlight and wind are inherently unreliable and energy-dilute. As such, adding solar panels and wind turbines to the grid in large quantities increases the cost of generating electricity, locks in fossil fuels, and increases the environmental footprint of energy production.

Dealing with environmental lawsuits and grassroots resistance is expensive. Industrial wind and solar developers have to hire lawyers, public relations specialists, and scientists willing to testify that this or that project poses only a modest threat to endangered birds and bats.

Hypocrisy demonstrates how unaccountable one is to conventional morality.

It was only with the rise of capitalism and the need for workers to be freer, more mobile, and prosperous, that societies were able to undermine pagan morality and the ancient institution of slavery.

Now that Europe has developed through deforestation and fossil fuel use it is telling Brazil not to develop through deforestation and fossil fuel use. Bolsonaro is the backlash against such hypocrisy.

The producers of 'Chernobyl' should tell the truth: the accident demonstrates the relative safety, not danger, of nuclear power.

Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalism at legacy publications.

The only countries that have successfully moved from fossil fuels to low-carbon power have done so with the help of nuclear energy.

Most people think of solar and wind as new energy sources. In fact, they are two of our oldest.

All renewables thus require a material throughput - from mining to processing to installing to disposing of the materials later as waste - that is orders of magnitude larger than for non-renewable energy sources.

Humankind has never transitioned to energy sources that are more costly, less reliable, and have a larger environmental footprint than the incumbent - and yet that's precisely what adding large amounts of solar and wind to the grid requires.

The idea that we're going to replace oil and natural gas with solar and wind, and nothing else, is a hallucinatory delusion.