Scientology and psychiatry

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since the founding of the Church of Scientology in 1954 by L. Ron Hubbard, the relationship between Scientology and psychiatry has been dominated by strong opposition by the organization against the medical specialties of psychiatry and psychology, with themes relating to this opposition occurring repeatedly throughout Scientology literature and doctrine. According to the Church of Scientology, psychiatry has a long history of improper and abusive care. The group's views have been disputed, criticized and condemned by experts in the medical and scientific community and been a source of public controversy.

L. Ron Hubbard and psychiatry

L. Ron Hubbard's views on psychiatry evolved over time. After initially seeking out psychiatric treatment for himself, Hubbard self-identified as a psychologist. In 1951, Hubbard's estranged wife publicly claimed that, according to psychiatrists she had consulted, Hubbard suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Thereafter, Hubbard wrote that Psychiatry was evil and the source of all of humanity's problems.

Hubbard's hospitalizations and request for psychiatric treatment

In 1945, Hubbard was a patient at Oak Knoll Military Hospital. Hubbard's estranged son, Ron DeWolf, would later state that Hubbard received psychiatric treatment during his hospitalization. Hubbard would later cite his time with psychiatric patients at Oak Knoll "using a park bench as a consulting room" as a major influence on his development of Dianetics.

After his discharge, Hubbard sought out psychiatric help to treat his "long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations" but reported that he could not afford it. A letter dated October 15, 1947 which Hubbard wrote to the Veterans Administration (VA) begins: "This is a request for treatment". The letter continues:

After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life, I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence. My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst. Toward the end of my service I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected. I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all. ... I cannot, myself, afford such treatment.
Would you please help me?

In 1948, Hubbard and his second wife Sara moved from California to Savannah, Georgia, where he would later claim to have "worked" as a "volunteer" in the psychiatric clinic. Hubbard later wrote of having observed a "Dr. Center" in Savannah.

Hubbard as would-be psychologist

In January 1949, Hubbard wrote that he was working on a "book of psychology" about "the cause and cure of nervous tension", which he was going to call The Dark Sword, Excalibur or Science of the Mind. In April 1949, Hubbard wrote from Savannah to inform the Gerontological Society at Baltimore City Hospital that he was preparing a paper entitled Certain Discoveries and Researches Leading to the Removal of Early Traumatic Experiences Including Attempted Abortion, Birth Shock and Infant Illnesses and Accidents with an Examination of their Effects Physiological and Psychological and their Potential Influence on Longevity on the Adult Individual with an Account of the Techniques Evolved and Employed. Hubbard's letter was "politely received", but the Society apparently declined involvement. He also wrote to the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association. These letters, and their responses, have not been published, though Hubbard later said that they had been negative. Hubbard later wrote, "In 1948 I wrote a thesis on an elementary technique of application and submitted it to the medical and psychiatric professions for their use or consideration. The data was not utilized."

The following year, Hubbard authored Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health, a handbook for "the psychiatrist, psycho-analyst and intelligent layman". By September 1950, the American Psychological Association's governing body unanimously adopted a resolution advising its members against using Hubbard's techniques with their patients and leading psychologists spoke out against Dianetics. Thereafter, Hubbard was critical of psychiatry.

In late 1950, Hubbard criticized mainstream psychiatry but still wrote positively of Sigmund Freud as a fellow persecuted trailblazer, arguing that "to talk of the faults of Freud, as do those who practice psychoanalysis today, is ungenerous. This great pioneer, against the violent objections of medical doctors and the psychiatrists of his day, ventured to put forth the theory that memory was connected with present time behavior" Hubbard elaborated: "Freud was so thoroughly shunned by neurologists of his day and medicine ever since, that only his great literary skill brought his work as far as it has come."

As late as 1955, Hubbard still identified himself with mental health professions, describing himself as "a writer, a scientist, and a psychologist".

Public allegation of Hubbard having psychiatric issues

Hubbard's wife Sara in 1951

 

In 1951, Hubbard's wife Sara went to a psychiatrist to obtain advice about his increasingly violent and irrational behavior, and was told that he probably needed to be institutionalized and that she was in serious danger. She gave Hubbard an ultimatum: get treatment or she would leave with the baby. He was furious and threatened to kill their daughter Alexis rather than let Northrup care for her. Sara later recalled: "He didn't want her to be brought up by me because I was in league with the doctors. He thought I had thrown in with the psychiatrists, with the devils."

In February 1951, L. Ron Hubbard kidnapped his wife Sara. After her release, she filed for divorce, charging Hubbard with causing her "extreme cruelty, great mental anguish and physical suffering". Her allegations produced more lurid headlines: not only was Hubbard accused of bigamy and kidnapping, but she had been subjected to "systematic torture, including loss of sleep, beatings, and strangulations and scientific experiments". Because of his "crazy misconduct" she was in "hourly fear of both the life of herself and of her infant daughter, who she has not seen for two months".

It was publicly reported that Sara had consulted doctors who "concluded that said Hubbard was hopelessly insane, and, crazy, and that there was no hope for said Hubbard, or any reason for her to endure further; that competent medical advisers recommended that said Hubbard be committed to a private sanatorium for psychiatric observation and treatment of a mental ailment known as paranoid schizophrenia."

From March to May 1951, Hubbard fled to Havana with his infant daughter. According to his estranged son Ronald DeWolf, Hubbard was under psychiatric care at this time.

Hubbard voluntarily underwent psychological examination to rebut public charges that he was a paranoid schizophrenic.

Psychiatry as evil

In 1955, Hubbard wrote that "nearly all the backlash in society against Dianetics and Scientology has a common source — the psychiatrist-psychologist-psychoanalyst clique". In a letter addressed to the FBI dated July 11, Hubbard reports having been the victim of an "attack made by psychiatrists using evidently Communist connected personnel".

In 1956, Hubbard wrote an article entitled "A Critique of Psychoanalysis" which embodies Hubbard's harder stance. Writes Hubbard: "Now and then it becomes necessary to eradicate from a new subject things which it has inherited from an old. And only because this has become necessary am I persuaded to tread upon the toes of the “grandfather” to Dianetics and Scientology." In the essay, Hubbard admits that from "the earliest beginnings of Dianetics it is possible to trace a considerable psychoanalytic influence." Hubbard makes a distinction between Dianetics and Scientology writing that "Scientology, unlike Dianetics, is not a psychotherapy. It is therefore from the dominance of Scientology rather than from the viewpoint of Dianetics that one can understand the failings of psychoanalysis, its dangers and the reasons why it did not produce what it should have produced."

We discover psychoanalysis to have been superseded by tyrannous sadism, practiced by unprincipled men, themselves evidently in the last stages of dementia. This, then, is the end of the trail for psychoanalysis—a world of failure and brutality. Today men who call themselves analysts are merrily sawing out patients’ brains, shocking them with murderous drugs, striking them with high voltages, burying them underneath mounds of ice, placing them in restraints, “sterilizing” them sexually and generally conducting themselves much as their patients would were they given the chance. It is up to us to realize, then, that psychoanalysis in its pure practice is dead the moment the spirit of humanity in which Freud developed the work is betrayed by the handing over of a patient to the merciless misconduct which passes today for treatment.

In 1957, Hubbard founded the "National Academy of American Psychology" which sought to issue a "loyalty oath" to psychologists and psychiatrists.Those who opposed the oath were to be labelled "Subversive" psychiatrists, while those who merely refused to sign the oath would be labelled "Potentially Subversive".

In 1958, Hubbard wrote that "Destroy is the same as help to a psychiatrist". His 1958 writings cited "Psychiatry: The Greatest Flub of the Russian Civilization" by Tom Esterbrook ; Hubbard's son would later reveal that Tom Eastebrook was one of Hubbard's many pen-names.

By 1967, Hubbard claimed that psychiatrists were behind a worldwide conspiracy to attack Scientology and create a "world government" run by psychiatrists on behalf of the USSR:

Our enemies are less than twelve men. They are members of the Bank of England and other higher financial circles. They own and control newspaper chains and they, oddly enough, run all the mental health groups in the world that had sprung up […]. Their apparent program was to use mental health, which is to say psychiatric electric shock and pre-frontal lobotomy, to remove from their path any political dissenters […]. These fellows have gotten nearly every government in the world to owe them considerable quantities of money through various chicaneries and they control, of course, income tax, government finance — [Harold] Wilson, for instance, the current Premier of England, is totally involved with these fellows and talks about nothing else actually.

Referring to psychiatrists as "psychs", Hubbard wrote of psychiatrists as denying human spirituality and peddling fake cures. He taught that psychiatrists were themselves deeply unethical individuals, committing "extortion, mayhem and murder. Our files are full of evidence on them."

Hubbard's efforts to cast the field of psychiatry as the source of all of humanity's problems are exemplified in a policy letter written in 1971, in which he attempted to redefine the word "psychiatrist" to mean "an antisocial enemy of the people":

Psychiatry and psychiatrist are easily redefined to mean 'an antisocial enemy of the people.' This takes the kill-crazy psychiatrist off the preferred list of professions. This is a good use of the technique [of redefining words] as for a century the psychiatrist has been setting an all-time record for inhumanity to Man.

Anti-psychiatric themes also appear in some of Hubbard's later fictional works. In Hubbard's ten-volume series Mission Earth, various characters debate the methods and validity of psychology. In his novel Battlefield Earth, the evil Catrists (a pun on psychiatrists), are described as a group of charlatans claiming to be mental health experts.

The Church of Scientology and psychiatry

Scientologists often hold anti-psychiatry demonstrations

 

A 1969 book, Believe What You Like, described an attempt by Scientologists to secretly infiltrate the National Association of Mental Health in Britain and turn official policy against mental health treatment. Though they were expelled from the organization after their identity and mission were revealed, the Church of Scientology then filed a number of suits against the NAMH. 

When Operation Snow White, a Church of Scientology campaign to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard, was revealed in 1980, it came to light that Scientology agents of the Guardian's Office had also conducted a similar campaign against the World Federation for Mental Health and the National Association of Mental Health.

Scientology's views are expressed by its president in the following quote:

What the Church opposes are brutal, inhumane psychiatric treatments. It does so for three principal reasons: 1) procedures such as electro-shock, drugs and lobotomy injure, maim and destroy people in the guise of help; 2) psychiatry is not a science and has no proven methods to justify the billions of dollars of government funds that are poured into it; and 3) psychiatric theories that man is a mere animal have been used to rationalize, for example, the wholesale slaughter of human beings in World Wars I and II.

An October 2006 article in the Evening Standard underlines the strong opposition of Scientology toward the psychiatric profession:

Up front, David Miscavige is dramatically — and somewhat bizarrely — attacking psychiatrists, his words backed by clips from a Scientology-produced DVD are broadcast on four giant high-definition TV screens and sensationally called: Psychiatry: an industry of death [...]. 'A woman is safer in a park at midnight than on a psychiatrist's couch', booms Miscavige, backed by savage graphics of psychiatrists — or 'psychs' as he calls them — being machine-gunned out of existence.

Warning sign at Psychiatry: An Industry of Death, a Scientology-run museum in Los Angeles

The group says that they are near victory in their war against psychiatry. In their treatise Those Who Oppose Scientology, it is stated:

Today, there are 500 Dianeticists and Scientologists to every psychiatrist […] while Scientology is more visible than ever, with churches dotting every continent on Earth and millions of parishioners around the world, one is hard pressed to find even a single psychiatrist with a shingle on his door.

Scientology claims a worldwide membership of more than 8 million, the total of people who have taken the Scientology introductory course. The Church of Scientology claims 3.5 million members in the United States, though an independent survey has found the number of people in the United States would state their religion as 'Scientology' is close to 55,000. By comparison, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, which are composed of psychiatrists and psychologists, have 38,000 and 148,000 members respectively.

Mental health care professionals are not concerned that the public will take Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) materials seriously, because of the organization's connection with the church; however, they argue that these materials can have a harmful impact when quoted without attribution.

Except for court trials and media publications and public rallies, published materials have received little notice outside of Scientology and CCHR; of reviews available, few are positive. Psychology professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's short review of Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler states:

Scientology has attracted much attention through its propaganda effort against what it calls psychiatry. This has involved great expense and organizational effort, carried out through a variety of fronts. If the book Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler (Roder, Kubillus, & Burwell, 1995) is a representative example, and I believe it is, it proves decisively that the campaign is rooted in total paranoia and pathetic ignorance. Reading this book, and I will urge you not to waste too much time doing it, makes clear that the authors simply have no idea what psychiatry is.

The American Psychiatric Association's Lynn Schultz-Writsel adds:

We have not responded in any way, shape or form. There has not been a hue and cry from members to respond. And anyway, the publication speaks for itself.

Michael Burke, the president of the Kansas Psychiatric Association, said regarding Scientology, "They aren't really able to support their position with any scientific data, which they tend to ignore. … the public seems to be able to look right past the Scientology hoopla."

The commercial motivation of Scientology in questioning psychiatry, with their alternative practice, dianetics, has been questioned by Peter W. Huber.

According to Susan Raine in Scientology in Popular Culture (2017), The Church of Scientology's programs against psychiatry "complicates the movement's quest for religious legitimacy." This is because of "the way in which Hubbard tried to replace psychiatry, psychology and other forms of counseling and therapy with Scientology."

Legal waivers

Following legal actions involving the Church of Scientology's relationship with its members, it has become standard practice within the group for members to sign lengthy legal contracts and waivers before engaging in Scientology services. In 2003, a series of media reports examined the legal contracts required by Scientology, which require that, among other things, Scientology followers deny any and all psychiatric care that their doctors may prescribe to them:

I do not believe in or subscribe to psychiatric labels for individuals. It is my strongly held religious belief that all mental problems are spiritual in nature and that there is no such thing as a mentally incompetent person — only those suffering from spiritual upset of one kind or another dramatized by an individual. I reject all psychiatric labels and intend for this Contract to clearly memorialize my desire to be helped exclusively through religious, spiritual means and not through any form of psychiatric treatment, specifically including involuntary commitment based on so-called lack of competence. Under no circumstances, at any time, do I wish to be denied my right to care from members of my religion to the exclusion of psychiatric care or psychiatric directed care, regardless of what any psychiatrist, medical person, designated member of the state or family member may assert supposedly on my behalf.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an institution set up by Scientology and Thomas Szasz, also claims that the real nature of psychiatry is that of human rights abuse. 

In 1966 Hubbard declared all-out war on psychiatry, telling Scientologists that "We want at least one bad mark on every psychiatrist in England, a murder, an assault, or a rape or more than one." He committed the Church of Scientology to the goal of eradicating psychiatry in 1969, announcing that "Our war has been forced to become 'To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms.'"

Not coincidentally, the Church of Scientology founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights that same year as its primary vehicle for attacking psychiatry. CCHR still quotes Hubbard's above-cited statement that all psychiatrists are criminals: "There is not one institutional psychiatrist alive who, by ordinary criminal law, could not be arraigned and convicted of extortion, mayhem and murder. Our files are full of evidence on them."

CCHR has conducted campaigns against Prozac, against electroconvulsive therapy, against Ritalin (and the existence of ADHD) and against various health legislations. CCHR has also opened a permanent museum, "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death", in Hollywood.

Scientologists

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise has been highly vocal in attacking the use of psychiatric medication, gaining particular attention for becoming extremely animated on the subject during an interview on Today on June 25, 2005. His position has attracted considerable criticism from psychiatrists and other physicians (American Psychiatric Association and National Mental Health Association), and individuals suffering from depression.

Books by Scientologists

Bruce Wiseman from CCHR published the book Psychiatry: The Ultimate Betrayal (Scientology's Freedom Publications, 1995), in which he portrays psychiatry as creating Adolf Hitler.

The German Scientologists Thomas Roder and Volker Kubillus wrote the book Psychiatrists: the Men Behind Hitler (also published by Scientology's Freedom Publications, 1995–2001), that advances a conspiracy theory of all-powerful psychiatrists to overwhelm the world.

Lisa McPherson

Scientologist Lisa McPherson was taken out of a psychiatric hospital because of her ties to Scientology. 

This resulted in her later suspicious death due to unclear causes likely having to do with mistreatment by Church officials. Allegations that this amounted to negligence or even assassination occurred, and legal proceedings involving criminal negligence lawsuits were settled out of court in an undisclosed settlement.

Jeremy Perkins

On March 13, 2003, Scientologist Jeremy Perkins killed his mother, Elli, by stabbing her 77 times. Jeremy, previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, never received treatment after previous incidents with violence and hallucinations. His mother, active in the Buffalo Church of Scientology, felt that vitamins and Scientology routines were better than psychological counseling and anti-psychotic medication.

Linda Waliki

On July 5, 2007, a 25-year-old Australian woman, Linda Waliki, killed her 52-year-old father Michael, 15-year-old sister Kathryn, and injured her mother Sue with a knife. Her name was released in the print edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, on July 7, 2007. It was previously unreleased due to one of the victims being under age. She was diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, but her parents denied her continued psychiatric treatment due to their Scientology beliefs. Instead they replaced this medication with one specially imported from Scientologists in the United States.

Relations with anti-psychiatry movement

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded by anti-psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and the Church of Scientology in 1969. Some anti-psychiatry websites and psychiatric survivors groups have sought to distance themselves from Scientology and the CCHR. In particular, the organisation Mind Freedom has specifically made public statements to emphasise that it is not connected with either CCHR or the Church of Scientology.

Despite sharing notable anti-psychiatry views on some issues with the secular critics, Scientology doctrine does differ in some respects. Scientology has promoted psychiatry-related conspiracy theories, including that psychiatrists were behind the Yugoslav Wars and that September 11 was caused by psychiatrists. Scientologists are religiously committed never to take psychiatric drugs and to reject psychology outright. 

The socio-political roots of the movements have different origins. Advocates of the anti-psychiatric world view such as David Cooper, R. D. Laing and Michel Foucault had ties with the political left of the 1960s; Thomas Szasz, with the civil libertarians of the right, as well as an outspoken atheist. Many advocates of the anti-psychiatry movement have stated that they consider the idea of "mental illness" as a convenient and inaccurate label assigned by society rather than an objective biomedical state, rejecting psychiatric terms such as schizophrenia which they may see as stigmatizing. By contrast, Hubbard referred to "schizophrenics" in his writings on Scientology theory, and developed the emotional tone scale to, in part, gauge the health of a person's mental state. Furthermore, in his Science of Survival Hubbard suggested putting people very low on the scale into quarantine, a practice at odds with, for instance, the aim of the American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization: an organization co-founded by Szasz to end involuntary commitment.

Neuro-linguistic programming

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, United States in the 1970s. NLP's creators claim there is a connection between neurological processes (neuro-), language (linguistic) and behavioral patterns learned through experience (programming), and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. Bandler and Grinder also claim that NLP methodology can "model" the skills of exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire those skills. They claim as well that, often in a single session, NLP can treat problems such as phobias, depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness, allergy, common cold, and learning disorders.

NLP is marketed by some hypnotherapists and by some companies that organize seminars and workshops on management training for businesses. There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates and it has been discredited as a pseudoscience. Scientific reviews state that NLP is based on outdated metaphors of how the brain works that are inconsistent with current neurological theory and contain numerous factual errors. Reviews also found that all of the supportive research on NLP contained significant methodological flaws and that there were three times as many studies of a much higher quality that failed to reproduce the "extraordinary claims" made by Bandler, Grinder, and other NLP practitioners. Even so, NLP has been adopted by some hypnotherapists and also by companies that run seminars marketed as leadership training to businesses and government agencies.

History and conception

Early development

According to Bandler and Grinder, NLP comprises a methodology termed modeling, plus a set of techniques that they derived from its initial applications. Of such methods that are considered fundamental, they derived many from the work of Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson and Fritz Perls.

Bandler and Grinder also drew upon the theories of Gregory Bateson, Alfred Korzybski and Noam Chomsky (particularly transformational grammar), as well as ideas and techniques from Carlos Castaneda.

Bandler and Grinder claim that their methodology can codify the structure inherent to the therapeutic "magic" as performed in therapy by Perls, Satir and Erickson, and indeed inherent to any complex human activity, and then from that codification, the structure and its activity can be learned by others. Their 1975 book, The Structure of Magic I: A Book about Language and Therapy, is intended to be a codification of the therapeutic techniques of Perls and Satir.

Bandler and Grinder say that they used their own process of modeling to model Virginia Satir so they could produce what they termed the Meta-Model, a model for gathering information and challenging a client's language and underlying thinking. They claim that by challenging linguistic distortions, specifying generalizations, and recovering deleted information in the client's statements, the transformational grammar concepts of surface structure yield a more complete representation of the underlying deep structure and therefore have therapeutic benefit. Also derived from Satir were anchoring, future pacing and representational systems.

In contrast, the Milton-Model—a model of the purportedly hypnotic language of Milton Erickson—was described by Bandler and Grinder as "artfully vague" and metaphoric. The Milton-Model is used in combination with the Meta-Model as a softener, to induce "trance" and to deliver indirect therapeutic suggestion.

However, adjunct lecturer in linguistics Karen Stollznow describes Bandler's and Grinder's reference to such experts as namedropping. Other than Satir, the people they cite as influences did not collaborate with Bandler or Grinder. Chomsky himself has no association with NLP whatsoever; his original work was intended as theory, not therapy. Stollznow writes, "[o]ther than borrowing terminology, NLP does not bear authentic resemblance to any of Chomsky's theories or philosophies – linguistic, cognitive or political."

According to André Muller Weitzenhoffer, a researcher in the field of hypnosis, "the major weakness of Bandler and Grinder's linguistic analysis is that so much of it is built upon untested hypotheses and is supported by totally inadequate data." Weitzenhoffer adds that Bandler and Grinder misuse formal logic and mathematics, redefine or misunderstand terms from the linguistics lexicon (e.g., nominalization), create a scientific façade by needlessly complicating Ericksonian concepts with unfounded claims, make factual errors, and disregard or confuse concepts central to the Ericksonian approach.

More recently (circa 1997), Bandler has claimed, "NLP is based on finding out what works and formalizing it. In order to formalize patterns I utilized everything from linguistics to holography...The models that constitute NLP are all formal models based on mathematical, logical principles such as predicate calculus and the mathematical equations underlying holography." However, there is no mention of the mathematics of holography nor of holography in general in McClendon's, Spitzer's, or Grinder's account of the development of NLP.

On the matter of the development of NLP, Grinder recollects:

My memories about what we thought at the time of discovery (with respect to the classic code we developed – that is, the years 1973 through 1978) are that we were quite explicit that we were out to overthrow a paradigm and that, for example, I, for one, found it very useful to plan this campaign using in part as a guide the excellent work of Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) in which he detailed some of the conditions which historically have obtained in the midst of paradigm shifts. For example, I believe it was very useful that neither one of us were qualified in the field we first went after – psychology and in particular, its therapeutic application; this being one of the conditions which Kuhn identified in his historical study of paradigm shifts.

The philosopher Robert Todd Carroll responded that Grinder has not understood Kuhn's text on the history and philosophy of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Carroll replies: (a) individual scientists never have nor are they ever able to create paradigm shifts volitionally and Kuhn does not suggest otherwise; (b) Kuhn's text does not contain the idea that being unqualified in a field of science is a prerequisite to producing a result that necessitates a paradigm shift in that field and (c) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is foremost a work of history and not an instructive text on creating paradigm shifts and such a text is not possible—extraordinary discovery is not a formulaic procedure. Carroll explains that a paradigm shift is not a planned activity, rather it is an outcome of scientific effort within the current (dominant) paradigm that produces data that can't be adequately accounted for within the current paradigm—hence a paradigm shift, i.e. the adoption of a new paradigm.

In developing NLP, Bandler and Grinder were not responding to a paradigmatic crisis in psychology nor did they produce any data that caused a paradigmatic crisis in psychology. There is no sense in which Bandler and Grinder caused or participated in a paradigm shift. "What did Grinder and Bandler do that makes it impossible to continue doing psychology...without accepting their ideas? Nothing," argues Carroll.

Commercialization and evaluation

By the late 1970s, the human potential movement had developed into an industry and provided a market for some NLP ideas. At the center of this growth was the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, California. Perls had led numerous Gestalt therapy seminars at Esalen. Satir was an early leader and Bateson was a guest teacher. Bandler and Grinder claimed that in addition to being a therapeutic method, NLP was also a study of communication and began marketing it as a business tool, claiming that, "if any human being can do anything, so can you." After 150 students paid $1,000 each for a ten-day workshop in Santa Cruz, California, Bandler and Grinder gave up academic writing and produced popular books from seminar transcripts, such as Frogs into Princes, which sold more than 270,000 copies. According to court documents relating to an intellectual property dispute between Bandler and Grinder, Bandler made more than $800,000 in 1980 from workshop and book sales.

A community of psychotherapists and students began to form around Bandler and Grinder's initial works, leading to the growth and spread of NLP as a theory and practice. For example, Tony Robbins trained with Grinder and utilized a few ideas from NLP as part of his own self-help and motivational speaking programmes. Bandler led several unsuccessful efforts to exclude other parties from using NLP. Meanwhile, the rising number of practitioners and theorists led NLP to become even less uniform than it was at its foundation. Prior to the decline of NLP, scientific researchers began testing its theoretical underpinnings empirically, with research indicating a lack of empirical support for NLP's essential theories. The 1990s were characterized by fewer scientific studies evaluating the methods of NLP than the previous decade. Tomasz Witkowski attributes this to a declining interest in the debate as the result of a lack of empirical support for NLP from its proponents.

Main components and core concepts

NLP can be understood in terms of three broad components and the central concepts pertaining to those:

• Subjectivity. According to Bandler and Grinder:
  • We experience the world subjectively thus we create subjective representations of our experience. These subjective representations of experience are constituted in terms of five senses and language. That is to say our subjective conscious experience is in terms of the traditional senses of vision, audition, tactition, olfaction and gustation such that when we—for example—rehearse an activity "in our heads", recall an event or anticipate the future we will "see" images, "hear" sounds, "taste" flavors, "feel" tactile sensations, "smell" odours and think in some (natural) language. Furthermore it is claimed that these subjective representations of experience have a discernible structure, a pattern. It is in this sense that NLP is sometimes defined as the study of the structure of subjective experience.
  • Behavior can be described and understood in terms of these sense-based subjective representations. Behavior is broadly conceived to include verbal and non-verbal communication, incompetent, maladaptive or "pathological" behavior as well as effective or skillful behavior.
  • Behavior (in self and others) can be modified by manipulating these sense-based subjective representations.
• Consciousness. NLP is predicated on the notion that consciousness is bifurcated into a conscious component and a unconscious component. Those subjective representations that occur outside of an individual's awareness comprise what is referred to as the "unconscious mind".
• Learning. NLP utilizes an imitative method of learning—termed modeling—that is claimed to be able to codify and reproduce an exemplar's expertise in any domain of activity. An important part of the codification process is a description of the sequence of the sensory/linguistic representations of the subjective experience of the exemplar during execution of the expertise.

Techniques or set of practices

An "eye accessing cue chart" as it appears as an example in Bandler & Grinder's Frogs into Princes (1979). The six directions represent "visual construct", "visual recall", "auditory construct", "auditory recall", "kinesthetic" and "auditory internal dialogue".

 

According to one study by Steinbach, a classic interaction in NLP can be understood in terms of several major stages including establishing rapport, gleaning information about a problem mental state and desired goals, using specific tools and techniques to make interventions, and integrating proposed changes into the client's life. The entire process is guided by the non-verbal responses of the client. The first is the act of establishing and maintaining rapport between the practitioner and the client which is achieved through pacing and leading the verbal (e.g., sensory predicates and keywords) and non-verbal behavior (e.g., matching and mirroring non-verbal behavior, or responding to eye movements) of the client.

Once rapport is established, the practitioner may gather information (e.g., using the Meta-Model questions) about the client's present state as well as help the client define a desired state or goal for the interaction. The practitioner pays particular attention to the verbal and non-verbal responses as the client defines the present state and desired state and any "resources" that may be required to bridge the gap. The client is typically encouraged to consider the consequences of the desired outcome, and how they may affect his or her personal or professional life and relationships, taking into account any positive intentions of any problems that may arise (i.e. ecological check). Fourth, the practitioner assists the client in achieving the desired outcomes by using certain tools and techniques to change internal representations and responses to stimuli in the world. Finally, the changes are "future paced" by helping the client to mentally rehearse and integrate the changes into his or her life. For example, the client may be asked to "step into the future" and represent (mentally see, hear and feel) what it is like having already achieved the outcome.

According to Stollznow (2010), "NLP also involves fringe discourse analysis and "practical" guidelines for "improved" communication. For example, one text asserts "when you adopt the "but" word, people will remember what you said afterwards. With the "and" word, people remember what you said before and after."

Applications

Alternative medicine

NLP has been promoted with claims it can be used to treat a variety of diseases including Parkinson's disease, HIV/AIDS and cancer. Such claims have no supporting medical evidence. People who use NLP as a form of treatment risk serious adverse health consequences as it can delay the provision of effective medical care.

Psychotherapeutic

Early books about NLP had a psychotherapeutic focus given that the early models were psychotherapists. As an approach to psychotherapy, NLP shares similar core assumptions and foundations in common with some contemporary brief and systemic practices, such as solution focused brief therapy. NLP has also been acknowledged as having influenced these practices with its reframing techniques which seeks to achieve behavior change by shifting its context or meaning, for example, by finding the positive connotation of a thought or behavior. 

The two main therapeutic uses of NLP are: (1) as an adjunct by therapists practicing in other therapeutic disciplines; (2) as a specific therapy called Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy which is recognized by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy with accreditation governed at first by the Association for Neuro Linguistic Programming and more recently by its daughter organization the Neuro Linguistic Psychotherapy and Counseling Association. Neither Neuro-Linguistic Programming nor Neuro-Linguistic Psychotherapy are NICE-approved.

According to Stollznow (2010) "Bandler and Grinder's infamous Frogs into Princes and their other books boast that NLP is a cure-all that treats a broad range of physical and mental conditions and learning difficulties, including epilepsy, myopia and dyslexia. With its promises to cure schizophrenia, depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and its dismissal of psychiatric illnesses as psychosomatic, NLP shares similarities with Scientology and the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)." A systematic review of experimental studies by Sturt et al (2012) concluded that "there is little evidence that NLP interventions improve health-related outcomes." In his review of NLP, Stephen Briers writes, "NLP is not really a cohesive therapy but a ragbag of different techniques without a particularly clear theoretical basis...[and its] evidence base is virtually non-existent." Eisner writes, "NLP appears to be a superficial and gimmicky approach to dealing with mental health problems. Unfortunately, NLP appears to be the first in a long line of mass marketing seminars that purport to virtually cure any mental disorder...it appears that NLP has no empirical or scientific support as to the underlying tenets of its theory or clinical effectiveness. What remains is a mass-marketed serving of psychopablum."

André Muller Weitzenhoffer—a friend and peer of Milton Erickson—wrote, "Has NLP really abstracted and explicated the essence of successful therapy and provided everyone with the means to be another Whittaker, Virginia Satir, or Erickson?...[NLP's] failure to do this is evident because today there is no multitude of their equals, not even another Whittaker, Virginia Satir, or Erickson. Ten years should have been sufficient time for this to happen. In this light, I cannot take NLP seriously...[NLP's] contributions to our understanding and use of Ericksonian techniques are equally dubious. Patterns I and II are poorly written works that were an overambitious, pretentious effort to reduce hypnotism to a magic of words."

Clinical psychologist Stephen Briers questions the value of the NLP maxim—a presupposition in NLP jargon—"there is no failure, only feedback". Briers argues that the denial of the existence of failure diminishes its instructive value. He offers Walt Disney, Isaac Newton and J.K. Rowling as three examples of unambiguous acknowledged personal failure that served as an impetus to great success. According to Briers, it was "the crash-and-burn type of failure, not the sanitized NLP Failure Lite, i.e. the failure-that-isn't really-failure sort of failure" that propelled these individuals to success. Briers contends that adherence to the maxim leads to self-deprecation. According to Briers, personal endeavour is a product of invested values and aspirations and the dismissal of personally significant failure as mere feedback effectively denigrates what one values. Briers writes, "Sometimes we need to accept and mourn the death of our dreams, not just casually dismiss them as inconsequential. NLP's reframe casts us into the role of a widower avoiding the pain of grief by leap-frogging into a rebound relationship with a younger woman, never pausing to say a proper goodbye to his dead wife." Briers also contends that the NLP maxim is narcissistic, self-centered and divorced from notions of moral responsibility.

Other uses

Although the original core techniques of NLP were therapeutic in orientation their generic nature enabled them to be applied to other fields. These applications include persuasion, sales, negotiation, management training, sports, teaching, coaching, team building, and public speaking.

Scientific criticism

In the early 1980s, NLP was advertised as an important advance in psychotherapy and counseling, and attracted some interest in counseling research and clinical psychology. However, as controlled trials failed to show any benefit from NLP and its advocates made increasingly dubious claims, scientific interest in NLP faded. Numerous literature reviews and meta-analyses have failed to show evidence for NLP's assumptions or effectiveness as a therapeutic method. While some NLP practitioners have argued that the lack of empirical support is due to insufficient research testing NLP, the consensus scientific opinion is that NLP is pseudoscience and that attempts to dismiss the research findings based on these arguments "[constitute]s an admission that NLP does not have an evidence base and that NLP practitioners are seeking a post-hoc credibility." Surveys in the academic community have shown NLP to be widely discredited among scientists. Among the reasons for considering NLP a pseudoscience are that evidence in favor of it is limited to anecdotes and personal testimony, that it is not informed by scientific understanding of neuroscience and linguistics, and that the name "neuro-linguistic programming" uses jargon words to impress readers and obfuscate ideas, whereas NLP itself does not relate any phenomena to neural structures and has nothing in common with linguistics or programming. In fact, in education, NLP has been used as a key example of pseudoscience.

As a quasi-religion

Sociologists and anthropologists—amongst others—have categorized NLP as a quasi-religion belonging to the New Age and/or Human Potential Movements. Medical anthropologist Jean M. Langford categorizes NLP as a form of folk magic; that is to say, a practice with symbolic efficacy—as opposed to physical efficacy—that is able to effect change through nonspecific effects (e.g., placebo). To Langford, NLP is akin to a syncretic folk religion "that attempts to wed the magic of folk practice to the science of professional medicine". Bandler and Grinder were (and continue to be) influenced by the shamanism described in the books of Carlos Castaneda. Several ideas and techniques have been borrowed from Castaneda and incorporated into NLP including so-called double induction and the notion of "stopping the world" which is central to NLP modeling. Tye (1994) characterizes NLP as a type of "psycho shamanism". Fanthorpe and Fanthorpe (2008) see a similarity between the mimetic procedure and intent of NLP modeling and aspects of ritual in some syncretic religions. Hunt (2003) draws a comparison between the concern with lineage from an NLP guru—which is evident amongst some NLP proponents—and the concern with guru lineage in some Eastern religions. 

In Aupers and Houtman (2010) Bovbjerg identifies NLP as a New Age "psycho-religion" and uses NLP as a case-study to demonstrate the thesis that the New Age psycho-religions such as NLP are predicated on an instrinsically religious idea, namely concern with a transcendent "other". In the world's monotheistic faiths, argues Bovbjerg, the purpose of religious practice is communion and fellowship with a transcendent 'other', i.e. a God. With the New Age psycho-religions, argues Bovbjerg, this orientation towards a transcendent 'other' persists but the other has become "the other in our selves", the so-called unconscious: "[t]he individual's inner life becomes the intangible focus of [psycho-]religious practices and the subconscious becomes a constituent part of modern individuals' understanding of the Self." Bovbjerg adds, "[c]ourses in personal development would make no sense without an unconscious that contains hidden resources and hidden knowledge of the self." Thus psycho-religious practice revolves around ideas of the conscious and unconscious self and communicating with and accessing the hidden resources of the unconscious self—the transcendent other. According to Bovbjerg the notion that we have an unconscious self underlies many NLP techniques either explicitly or implicitly. Bovbjerg argues, "[t]hrough particular practices, the [NLP practitioner qua] psycho-religious practitioner expects to achieve self-perfection in a never-ending transformation of the self."

Bovbjerg's secular critique of NLP is echoed in the conservative Christian perspective of the New Age as represented by Jeremiah (1995) who argues that, "[t]he ′transformation′ recommended by the founders and leaders of these business seminars [such as NLP] has spiritual implications that a non-Christian or new believer may not recognize. The belief that human beings can change themselves by calling upon the power (or god) within or their own infinite human potential is a contradiction of the Christian view. The Bible says man is a sinner and is saved by God's grace alone."

Intellectual property disputes

By the end of 1980, the collaboration between Bandler and Grinder ended. On 25 September 1981, Bandler instituted a civil action against Grinder and his company, seeking injunctive relief and damages for Grinder's commercial activity in relation to NLP. On 29 October 1981, judgement was made in favor of Bandler. As part of a settlement agreement Bandler granted to Grinder a limited 10-year license to conduct NLP seminars, offer certification in NLP and use the NLP name on the condition that royalties from the earnings of the seminars be paid to Bandler. In July 1996 and January 1997, Bandler instituted a further two civil actions against Grinder and his company, numerous other prominent figures in NLP and 200 further initially unnamed persons. Bandler alleged that Grinder had violated the terms of the settlement agreement reached in the initial case and had suffered commercial damage as a result of the allegedly illegal commercial activities of the defendants. Bandler sought from each defendant damages no less than US$10,000,000.00. In February 2000, the Court found against Bandler, stating that "Bandler has misrepresented to the public, through his licensing agreement and promotional materials, that he is the exclusive owner of all intellectual property rights associated with NLP, and maintains the exclusive authority to determine membership in and certification in the Society of NLP."

On this matter Stollznow (2010) comments, "[i]ronically, Bandler and Grinder feuded in the 1980s over trademark and theory disputes. Tellingly, none of their myriad of NLP models, pillars, and principles helped these founders to resolve their personal and professional conflicts." 

In December 1997, Tony Clarkson instituted civil proceedings against Bandler to have Bandler's UK trademark of NLP revoked. The Court found in favor of Clarkson; Bandler's trademark was subsequently revoked.

By the end of 2000, Bandler and Grinder entered a release where they agreed, amongst other things, that "they are the co-creators and co-founders of the technology of Neuro-linguistic Programming" and "mutually agree to refrain from disparaging each other's efforts, in any fashion, concerning their respective involvement in the field of NeuroLinguistic Programming."

As a consequence of these disputes and settlements, the names NLP and Neuro-linguistic Programming are not owned by any party and there is no restriction on any party offering NLP certification.

Associations, certification, and practitioner standards

The names NLP and Neuro-linguistic Programming are not owned by any person or organization, they are not trademarked intellectual property and there is no central regulating authority for NLP instruction and certification. There is no restriction on who can describe themselves as an NLP Master Practitioner or NLP Master Trainer and there are a multitude of certifying associations; this has led Devilly (2005) to describe such training and certifying associations as granfalloons, i.e. proud and meaningless associations of human beings.

There is great variation in the depth and breadth of training and standards of practitioners, and some disagreement between those in the field about which patterns are, or are not, actual NLP. NLP is an open field of training with no "official" best practice. With different authors, individual trainers and practitioners having developed their own methods, concepts and labels, often branding them as NLP, the training standards and quality differ greatly. In 2009, a British television presenter was able to register his pet cat as a member of the British Board of Neuro Linguistic Programming (BBNLP), which subsequently claimed that it existed only to provide benefits to its members and not to certify credentials.

If Progressive Democrats Care So Much About The Climate, Why Are They Trying to Kill Nuclear Power?

Jan 17, 2019, 10:44am

Michael Shellenberger Contributor 

Original link:   https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3207547956289570927#editor/target=post;postID=8712461888178486576

Democratic Party mega-donor and energy investor Tom Steyer, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cruz, and Sen. Bernie SandersWikipedia

Since taking office earlier this month, Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has captured the public imagination with her proposal for a “Green New Deal” to create millions of good jobs while accelerating the transition to clean energy.

Now, a debate has broken out among environmentalists and Democrats over whether a Green New Deal will include or exclude nuclear energy.

Ocasio-Cortez, 29, says “It’s not something that we’ve just ruled out” while her colleague and Green New Deal supporter, Chellie Pingree, 63, (D-Maine), says “I think on nuclear energy, we all have a general resistance to it,” and pointed to the 2011 accident in Fukushima, Japan, and nuclear waste.


Pingree is not alone. Progressive heavyweights like Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, (I-VT) and Sen. Ed Markey, 72, (D-MA), are vehemently anti-nuclear and have supported closing nuclear plants in their home states.

They are backed by Democratic mega-donors like Tom Steyer, 61, who made his fortune investing in coal, natural gas, and renewables, and financed a failed effort to close a large nuclear plant in Arizona. 

Indeed, from Illinois and New York to South Korea and Taiwan to France and Germany, progressive politicians ostensibly committed to aggressive action on climate change have sought to shut down nuclear plants, which would be replaced almost entirely by fossil fuels.

What gives? Are nuclear plants really so dangerous? Or is something else going on?

The Truth About Nuclear Danger

A decade ago, when I was rethinking my views about nuclear energy, I read the United Nations scientific reports on Chernobyl and was shocked.

As an anti-nuclear activist, I had been told that the accident had killed one million people.

But scientists reporting to the U.N. found that a total of 28 people who responded to the accident died from acute radiation syndrome within a few months, and concluded that around 160 people will eventually die from thyroid cancer over their lifetimes.

That’s it. There was no increase in any other cancer rates — including among the firefighters and “liquidators” who cleaned up the accident.

Living in a big city is more dangerous than cleaning up Chernobyl

Contrast that to the normal operation of fossil fuel energy sources, which kill 4.2 million people per year, according to the World Health Organization.

As a result, nuclear is the safest way to make reliable electricity. In fact, the climate scientist James Hansen finds nuclear plants have actually saved 1.8 million lives to date by preventing the pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.

What about Fukushima? According to the World Health Organization, “even in locations within Fukushima prefecture, the predicted risks remain low and no observable increases in cancer above natural variation in baseline rates are anticipated.”

In other words, the second worst nuclear disaster in history will have no impact on cancer rates even in the area where the accident occurred.

Does this mean there’s no chance that trace quantities of radiant particulate matter will harm anyone? Of course not. It simply means that whatever harm is caused will pale against all of the other things that cause cancer, from diet and air pollution to genetics and old age.

Meanwhile, the stress, interrupted medical care, and suicide from the panicky and unnecessary evacuation of Fukushima killed 2,000 people.

That tragedy led independent radiation scientists to conclude that “the evacuation was a mistake...” says Philip Thomas of the University of Bristol, “We would have recommended that nobody be evacuated.”

What about the waste? I used to think that nuclear waste was a green liquid that occasionally leaked, largely because I got my information from “The Simpsons.”

In reality, the nuclear waste everyone worries about are used fuel rods, which are neither liquid nor green, and never hurt anyone. All of the used fuel from U.S. nuclear plants can fit on a football field stacked just 50 foot high.

Solar panels produce 300 times more waste for the amount of energy created than do nuclear plants, according to simple calculations done by Mark Nelson and Jemin Desai of Environmental Progress.  (DJS -- and that waste is radioactive, just like the exhaust from coal burning plants.)

And, at the end of their life, solar panels are usually destined for landfills, often in poor nations, where workers and residents are at risk of exposure to the panels’ dangerously toxic heavy metals.

Wind and solar generate energy for just a fraction of the year which is why, when nuclear plants are shut down, they are mostly replaced with fossil fuels, something even some anti-nuclear groups are starting to acknowledge.

Why, then, are Democratic members of Congress like Rep. Pingree, who support a Green New Deal, squeamish about nuclear energy? And why does it seem like Baby Boomers are so much more anxious than Millennials like Ocasio-Cortez?

The Climate Bomb

In the 1950s and 60s, Democratic politicians were mostly pro-nuclear energy. In fact, men like Sen. Al Gore Sr. and California Gov. Edmund Brown Sr. felt the government wasn’t doing enough to promote civilian nuclear energy.

Was it the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island that turned liberal Baby Boomers against nuclear energy? That’s the oft-repeated story — and it’s wrong. The New Left, environmentalists, and Baby Boom liberals started turning against nuclear energy in the early 1960s.

Various reasons were given but the underlying fear was the association with nuclear weapons.

The invention of nuclear weapons created deep psychological stress and trauma. For the first time our history, Americans were threatened militarily by external enemies and could do nothing about it, given the revolutionary nature of nuclear weapons.

In the 50s and 60s, Hollywood produced film after film about monsters, ants, and lizards made large from nuclear weapons radiation that the film’s heroes — often scientists and the military — would, in the end, vanquish and kill.

According to critic Susan Sontag, the films were a way for audiences to resolve, however temporarily, the psychological discomfort created by the bomb.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government sponsored propaganda showing nuclear blasts and gave instructions on how to survive nuclear war that frightened the public, especially Baby Boomer children.

Until the mid-1960s, schools taught children to "duck and cover" in case of nuclear war.US Civil Defense

When Rep. Pingree was in kindergarten in the early 1960s, many American schools were still requiring children to practice “duck and cover” in case of nuclear war. And when she was seven years old, the world came closer than it ever has to nuclear war, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Scare.

When psychologists interviewed young adults like Rep. Pingree in the 1970s, they found lasting memories of nuclear terror, including in their nightmares.

“Nuclear weapons had become almost inseparable in the minds of many young people from overwhelming death itself,” notes Weart.

Left and Right resolved their anxieties in different ways. American conservatives sought “nuclear superiority” over the Soviet Union, and missile defense, so we could supposedly fight and “win” a nuclear war. American liberals sought nuclear disarmament so we could supposedly eliminate the risk of nuclear war.

Neither approach worked. It’s impossible to “win” a full-scale nuclear war without suffering an unacceptably large death toll. Meanwhile, it proved impossible to ban nuclear weapons; warheads are too small and easy to hide. Even if humankind got rid of them all, any two nations that went to war would race to build a nuclear weapon and use it on the other.

Frustrated by their inability to ban the bomb, progressives displaced their anxieties onto nuclear power plants, and sought to halt their construction in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the 1970s, Amory Lovins and other environmentalists called for a “soft energy path” focused on radical reductions in energy consumption, renewable energies, and the decentralized use of fossil fuels, particularly coal, in order to move away from nuclear energy.

Lovins in 1976 claimed that the “unilateral adoption of a soft energy path by the United States can go a long way to control nuclear proliferation-perhaps to eliminate it entirely... the genie is not wholly out of the bottle yet — thousands of [nuclear] reactors are planned for a few decades hence, tens of thousands thereafter-and the cork sits unnoticed in our hands.”

The anti-nuclear movement was hugely successful. It managed to kill or get cancelled half of the nuclear plants that utilities had planned to build. In their place, utilities built coal plants.

The anxiety created by nuclear weapons didn’t go away but died down with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. What emerged in its place was fear of climate change — a problem for which progressives already had an answer: radical reductions in energy consumption, renewables and the decentralized use of fossil fuels, particularly natural gas.

Over the next two decades, progressive love for renewables grew as strong as progressive hatred of nuclear. The goal for Baby Boomers traumatized by the Bomb was nothing less than healing humankind’s relationship with Nature.

In the same way that grocery shoppers believed products marketed as “natural” were healthier than other products, progressive Democrats came to believe that products marketed as “renewable” were better for the environment.

That turned out to be horrifyingly wrong. Solar farms require 450 times more land and nine times more materials (and thus mining and waste) as nuclear plants. Wind turbines may make a bat species go extinct and are a grave threat to migratory and raptor bird species.

But, backed by fossil-renewable energy investors like Tom Steyer, and Wall Street tycoons that stand to profit from complex carbon trading schemes, environmental groups like NRDC and EDF work with Democratic politicians like Bernie Sanders to a fossil-renewables fuel mix to replace nuclear plants.

Given who’s paying for those efforts, it’s not surprising that the spread of solar and wind is locking-in fossil fuels and raising electricity prices, which has made dealing with climate change harder, not easier.

The Courage to Lead?

Where does that leave Millennials like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez?  

The good news is that she is smart. She makes an effort to get the science right. She even won a prize for her microbiology research.

And Ocasio-Cortez is courageous. She stood up to the Democratic Party elite and joined a protest in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 78.

But will Ocasio-Cortez make an effort to learn the facts about nuclear and renewables?

And will she be courageous enough to stand up to Democratic Party elders like Bernie Sanders and mega-donors like Tom Steyer?

Only time will tell.

Michael Shellenberger, President, Environmental Progress. Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment."