From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Thanks very much for joining us. If you're not already, please be sure to subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and do kindly leave us a nice review.

Free expression is essential to a healthy democracy, and each week on this podcast we aim to

contribute by having a wide-ranging and candid conversation with leading practitioners and

commentators in the world of politics, business, technology, the arts and culture, exploring

in depth the themes, people, and topics that are shaping our world. This week, with Democrats in

Congress looking to secure a victory for their plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars

promoting green energy, we're going to talk about the grip that the so-called climate crisis

seems to have on our modern media, the Democratic Party, our cultural elites, and even now much

of the corporate world. My guest is Michael Schellenberger. Michael is a fierce critic

of green extremism, as we could call it, but he's no right-wing commutgeon like me. He's a former

Democratic candidate for office in California. He's written extensively on climate change, energy, and

politics. In his book, Apocalypse Never, why environmental alarmism hurts as all, he rejects

the idea that the changing climate can only be

saved by a massive restructuring of the economy. He argues instead that economic growth can

continue without negative environmental impacts through technological innovation. But his critique of

modern progressivism doesn't stop with climate. He's also written extensively on the state of

American cities and how left-wing policies and leaders are basically

destroying them. Last year, he published San Francisco, why progressives ruin cities,

which looks at how so many of the big cities in America, characterized by violent crime,

homelessness, and general disorder. And of course, this all despite progressives claims that

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