In his bestselling book, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, Michael Shellenberger argues that homelessness is not primarily the result of poverty and the shortage of affordable housing. Instead, it is really a problem of mental illness and substance abuse. He blames a systemic pathology of progressive municipal officials and do-gooders who refuse to enforce laws that would bring order and civility to urban streets.
Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment," Green Book Award winner, and the best-selling author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities and Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
He’s been called an “environmental guru,” “climate guru,” “North America’s leading public intellectual on clean energy,” and “high priest” of the pro-human environmental movement for his work, and “influential.”
Michael has broken major stories including: the Censorship Industrial Complex; World Economic Forum’s conflicts-of-interests and secretive finances; San Francisco’s supervised drug consumption site; FBI misinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop; Paul Pelosi’s alleged attacker; San Francisco’s cash incentives for homelessness; Amazon Forest “lungs of the world” myth; climate pseudoscience; climate anxiety; the U.S. government support for fracking; and forest management, climate change, and California’s fires.
Michael has testified to the U.S. Congress about climate change and public health, Big Tech censorship, the Censorship Industrial Complex, and the global energy crisis.
He is the founder and president of Environmental Progress, an independent nonprofit research organization that incubates ideas, leaders, and movements, and a cofounder of the California Peace Coalition, an alliance of parents of children killed by fentanyl, parents of homeless addicts, and recovering addicts.
He has been a climate and environmental activist for over 30 years. He has helped save nuclear reactors worldwide, from Illinois and New York to South Korea and Taiwan, thereby preventing an increase in air pollution equivalent to adding over 24 million cars to the road.
In the 1990s, Michael helped save California’s last unprotected ancient redwood forest, inspired Nike to improve factory conditions, and advocated for a “new Apollo project” in clean energy, which resulted in a $150 billion public investment in clean tech between 2009 and 2015.