John Robson: Forbes falls to cancel culture as it erases environmentalist’s mea culpa

It’s big news when somebody prominent apologizes for being badly wrong on a major public matter, promises to do better going forward and urges others to do the same, right? Unless the person commits heresy like, say, Michael Shellenberger.

In case you missed it, and they did their best to make sure you did, Shellenberger is an excruciatingly woke environmentalist and progressive. By his own account “At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s co-operatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.”

His environmentalist credentials are equally solid beginning with raising money for Rainforest Action Network at 16. But in cancel culture, all that is solid melts into air … with a little help from a match. Including Shellenberger’s remarkable cri de coeur in Forbes starting “On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.”

Sorry. Did I say “in Forbes?” Alas, if you go there now you get a terse “This page is no longer active. We regret any inconvenience.” In the fast-vanishing spirit of fair play, I contacted Forbes to see if it was just a technical glitch. Nyet, tovarisch.

ConservativeChick

Article URL : https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-robson-forbes-falls-to-cancel-culture-as-it-erases-environmentalists-mea-culpa/wcm/370ca87c-37c3-4376-8e95-78231ae5fd46/