Electricity systems combine different sources of low‑carbon power – from nuclear to wind and solar. Credit: Image: Shutterstock / jaroslava V

At the time of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, we were at very different stages of our lives: Vero was a first‑year university student, while Amardeo had a young family with three small children. We were caught off guard by the intensity of the German reaction. The huge media reaction frightened us. The first coalition government in Hesse consisting of the SPD and the Greens reacted dramatically by imposing a limit of 20 Bq/L for milk, which was well below both German and international standards. Amardeo used his holiday allowance to escape the perceived danger with his family by visiting his parents in Cameroon. Vero joined the German anti-nuclear movement, from which she later distanced herself in the wake of the climate debate and her own research on nuclear safety.

Looking back, this was an understandable emotional reaction. But was it rational? Time has passed, and we now have a much clearer idea of what happened. It was a terrible disaster, but Germany clearly overreacted. We went along with that overreaction. Today, the question is: what do UN bodies and other non‑activist assessments tell us?

Why Chernobyl happened

At the time of the Chernobyl accident, the Soviet nuclear industry was a regime of command and control, strict obedience and strict secrecy. Self-criticism and open discussions of mistakes were hardly possible. In the 1980s, the kind of human factors management common today did not yet exist. It was left to individual supervisors’ discretion to determine how much “questioning attitude” was permitted and whether mistakes would lead to learning or to punishment and cover-up. This was one of the systemic conditions that led to the Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986.

A functional test on the electrical systems of the fourth and newest unit at the Chernobyl power plant triggered an unfortunate chain of events that caused the facility to spiral out of control. A nuclear power excursion destroyed the reactor building, and the highly radioactive contents of the reactor core were carried across Europe by early‑summer south‑easterly winds. The accident thus became a transnational catastrophe that sparked political upheaval and efforts at nuclear reform far beyond the site itself.

The Consequences

Around 30 people died in the days and weeks following the accident, and in total, between 50 and 60 deaths can be clearly and directly attributed to the radiation released at Chernobyl. Most of those who died were power plant employees, first responders and firefighters whose selfless efforts likely helped to prevent even worse consequences.

The WHO and other UN bodies estimate that the long‑term consequences for the most highly exposed groups could amount to around 4,000 additional cancer deaths, although this figure is uncertain and cannot be observed directly in epidemiological data. Between April 1986 and 1995, an area of around 2,600 square kilometres in the north‑west Kyiv area, together with large regions in southern Belarus and western Russia, was evacuated; in total, approximately 170,000 people lost their homes and almost all their possessions. Various assessments put the total economic damage caused by the accident at around €170 billion.

The most clearly established long‑term health effect is an increased incidence of thyroid cancer among young people living in the most contaminated regions. Several thousand cases have been diagnosed, and a significant proportion of these are attributable to radiation from the accident, although the exact number remains uncertain. Although thyroid cancer is a serious diagnosis, the prognosis is generally good, and many cases are treatable with appropriate care. UN reviews conclude that, for most of the population in the affected countries, radiation doses were low enough that no detectable increase in radiation‑related disease is expected. People, therefore, do not need to live in constant fear of serious health consequences from Chernobyl.

Investigating Chernobyl in the Soviet Union

Around 600,000 people from across the Soviet Union were involved in the “liquidation” of the accident – the Soviet Union’s last major joint effort before its dissolution five years later. The response to the accident echoed the fight against Germany in the Second World War, and the symbolic language used in the years immediately afterwards was deliberately modelled on wartime imagery.

Initially, the Soviet leadership fell back into old patterns of behaviour, despite the reform rhetoric of the new party leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. In the initial days, the accident was kept secret until radiation measurements in Scandinavia pointed to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as the source of elevated levels, forcing Moscow to admit what had happened. Even then, the population was largely kept in the dark about the consequences of the accident: the measures taken were not explained, and no measurement data were published. There was little “nuclear literacy” among the public – and even among medical personnel – meaning that there was a lack of reliable knowledge about radioactivity, how to deal with contamination and what health effects could be expected. As a result, rumours and prejudices spread, making life after Chernobyl even more difficult. Evacuees were shunned by their new neighbours as if they were spreading a contagious disease, and thousands of women were urged to terminate their pregnancies even though this was medically unnecessary in most cases.

Meanwhile, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a state investigative commission sought the causes of the accident but initially produced only a whitewashed version of the facts that aligned with the government’s agenda. Culprits were sought and found to avoid having to question the Soviet nuclear industry system. A number of scapegoats from the plant management and the Chernobyl operating crew were sentenced to harsh prison terms in a show trial. The version attributing the accident to “human error” and mistakes by plant management was also presented to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at its conference in the summer of 1986 and recorded in the IAEA’s first Chernobyl report.

It was not until four years later, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, that a newly appointed investigative commission submitted a report (IAEA INSAG‑7) identifying the systemic causes of the accident. The graphite‑moderated, water‑cooled RBMK reactor, a Soviet design that had previously enjoyed high prestige as the country’s “national reactor”, turned out to be structurally flawed. The large core of RBMK units was susceptible to significant neutron-flux instabilities. Because the reactor used graphite as a moderator and light water as a coolant, it had a positive void coefficient of reactivity: increased steam bubble formation in the boiling coolant raised reactor power instead of reducing it, unlike in water-moderated reactors. This effect was particularly pronounced at low power and with high fuel burnup – precisely the conditions that prevailed in Unit 4 on the night of the accident.

In addition, design peculiarities meant that the shutdown system had serious safety deficiencies. Not only was it very slow, but in certain operating modes, inserting the control rods caused a brief increase in reactivity. This is why Chernobyl‑4 experienced a catastrophic power surge at the moment of shutdown at the end of the test programme.

The operating crews at the end of the chain of command had been systematically excluded from information about these weaknesses. At the same time, the limited automation of the RBMK’s protection system meant that, shortly before the accident, operators could intervene in ways that created the conditions for the subsequent course of the accident. It later emerged that serious incidents involving fuel-element damage due to physical instabilities in RBMK plants had been documented since 1975, and that commissioning tests had already revealed the reactor’s accident-prone neutron-physical characteristics. Together with the initial cover-up of the scale of the accident, these findings destroyed Soviet citizens’ trust in the state and in nuclear experts. Nevertheless, Chernobyl was the first public disaster in Soviet history to be shown on television, albeit in a censored form.

Chernobyl and Germany

For reasons of reactor physics, the kind of reactivity accident that occurred at Chernobyl cannot happen in Germany’s light‑water‑moderated power reactors. Nevertheless, Chernobyl served as a catalyst for a paradigm shift in the German nuclear industry. First, from then on, beyond‑design‑basis accidents were treated as a real possibility rather than being relegated to the realm of “residual risk”. Second, numerous retrofits were undertaken in German nuclear power plants to prevent or mitigate such accidents. Many of these measures were based on insights that had already been developed before Chernobyl in the German Risk Study on Nuclear Power Plants (1979–1990). In the 1990s, German plant containments were retrofitted with filtered venting systems for severe accidents, hydrogen recombiners, and – in pressurised‑water reactors – additional valves for primary‑side pressure relief.

At the same time, influenced by the post‑Chernobyl debate on the “human factor” in nuclear power plants, operators began to introduce systematic incident reviews, structured work planning and pre‑job briefings – practices that had not previously existed in German facilities. All these communication and planning tools were designed to strengthen the workforce’s “questioning attitude” and to minimise the influence of internal hierarchies and power dynamics on open discussion of errors.

In the public debate, however, there was little room for a “lessons learned” perspective or for a clear distinction between Chernobyl’s RBMK design and a German PWR with its sophisticated, highly automated safety systems. Instead, nuclear energy as such was held responsible for Chernobyl.

Nuclear power gradually became morally associated with evil, especially after 1986. Being anti‑nuclear turned into a core identity marker for much of the German left, and over time this stance was also adopted by parties in the political centre and on the centre‑right. This moral certainty fostered a culture in which only anti‑nuclear narratives were socially acceptable, while any pro‑nuclear argument was quickly branded as serving corporate interests. Many people in politics, academia and the media had good reason to fear for their careers if they were seen as sympathetic to nuclear energy.

In his book Akte Atomausstieg: Das Ende der Kernkraft und das Scheitern der Energiewende (“The Nuclear Phase‑out Files: The End of Nuclear Power and the Failure of Germany’s Energy Transition”), journalist Daniel Gräber uses internal government documents to show how German industry gradually succumbed to growing political pressure and how party‑political goals were often placed above the long‑term interests of the country. German unions and the SPD, traditionally the closest allies of industrial workers and engineers, ultimately abandoned those very groups in the nuclear sector.

Two personal experiences illustrate how far Germany has drifted from other countries when it comes to the treatment of nuclear workers. When we joined the protest against the closure of the Fessenheim plant in France, there was a large local gathering that included the mayor, city councillors and members of the CGT and other trade unions; Amardeo was even asked to give a short statement, offering a rare German pro‑nuclear voice. By contrast, when we later joined a protest at the Philippsburg plant in Germany as it was shut down, it was environmentalists from Poland who had travelled to speak out – unions and local representatives remained conspicuously absent, and workers had been warned not to take part despite the looming loss of their jobs. Workers told us that EnBW management had warned union representatives that if there were any public protests, the severance plan providing financial security for early retirees would be at risk.

While Ukraine, home to Chernobyl, and Japan, site of the Fukushima accident, remain committed to nuclear energy, Germany succumbed to the pressure of this new moral identity and chose to phase out nuclear power. The phase‑out was initiated by the first SPD–Green coalition and then given its definitive form by the CDU/CSU–FDP government in 2011, in the wake of Fukushima.

Countries that suffered major nuclear accidents kept nuclear power in their energy mix. Germany suffered a psychological blackout instead and decided to walk away from one of its safest and cleanest sources of electricity.

Risks of the Phase-out

When discussing the risks of any technology, it is essential to compare them with the risks of doing without it and with the risks of the available alternatives. Otherwise, we cannot know whether our actions produce a net benefit or a net harm.

In the case of nuclear energy, this means looking not only at the risks of accidents, but also at the risks of abandoning nuclear and replacing it with other sources. In Ten Years of Fukushima Disinformation (2021), Anna Veronika Wendland and I cited work by Pushker A. Kharecha and Makiko Sato showing that Japan and Germany together could have avoided around 28,000 premature deaths between 2011 and 2017 if they had phased out coal instead of nuclear power.

A much more comprehensive and up‑to‑date assessment has now been published by WePlanet DACH, in collaboration with the Anthropocene Institute, under the title The German Nuclear Phase-out: The true cost in monery, lives and carbon of Germany’s Atomausstieg. According to this updated 2026 analysis, Germany’s nuclear phase‑out has already led to more than 24,000 additional deaths from air pollution and around 950 million tonnes of extra CO₂ emissions. It has also imposed over €74 billion in extra EU ETS costs – roughly €1,800 per household.

These are not hypothetical accident scenarios but realised harms from burning more coal and gas instead.

This in no way belittles the harm caused by the Chernobyl disaster. Rather, it shows that reacting in panic, or without considering all the consequences, could lead to a different kind of disaster – one that is many times larger, but distributed in time and space and therefore much less visible.

Germany’s Energy Policy Ignores the Evidence

Scepticism in the early phases of nuclear power was understandable. Today, however, we have several decades of experience and enough data to compare all major energy systems. Many of the original fears have not been borne out by the evidence, as I argued in Unmasking the Claims of the Antinuclear Movement: Climate, Health, and Energy at the Crossroads.

Together with Austria, Germany has built an anti‑nuclear identity that is unique among industrialised democracies. In this Central European anti‑nuclear heartland, mass protests from Wyhl to Wackersdorf in Germany shaped the public debate, and a razor‑thin referendum majority in 1978 stopped Austria’s completed nuclear plant at Zwentendorf from ever operating.

Much of the public discussion focuses on climate, the environment and health. So where do we stand on these dimensions? Beyond a sober comparison of accident risks, we must also ask how countries that have chosen to rely mainly on wind and solar for electricity generation have fared. Here, I am not referring to “renewables” in general, since that category includes hydroelectric power, which can provide reliable baseload electricity for an industrial economy.

The experience of recent decades tells a clear story for industrialised countries. Those – such as Germany and Denmark – that rely primarily on wind and solar tend to have comparatively high electricity generation emissions and some of the highest consumer prices. By contrast, countries with a large share of firm low‑carbon capacity – whether nuclear, hydro or geothermal – generally fare better on all three fronts: low emissions, more moderate prices and a more reliable power system.

Source: Our World in Data https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity

Recent lifecycle data on electricity generation in 2025 confirm this pattern. Germany has one of the highest carbon intensities in Europe, whereas Austria performs somewhat better thanks to its substantial hydroelectric baseload. Both countries still have a higher carbon intensity than France, Sweden and Finland, which rely heavily on nuclear and hydroelectric power. Countries with a heavy reliance on coal, such as Poland, have an even higher carbon intensity, although Poland now plans to reduce this by adding nuclear power to its energy mix in the 2030s.

Yet despite these differences in real‑world emissions and health impacts, Chernobyl remains an emotional instrument of anti‑nuclear politics in countries like Germany and Austria. The disaster is routinely cited to underline the dangers of nuclear power, while careful assessments by UN bodies and scientific reviews of its actual long‑term health effects are largely ignored. In this way, Chernobyl is used not to illuminate the full spectrum of energy risks, but to sustain a political agenda that treats nuclear risk as absolute while ignoring the benefits of nuclear power and the real, statistically greater harms of the alternatives.

These patterns are rarely reflected in German mainstream media coverage and are often downplayed or ignored in political debates. Too many decision‑makers prefer reassuring narratives that avoid uncomfortable evidence.

Organisations such as Global 2000 in Austria actively campaign against nuclear projects in other countries, including attempts to derail planned reactors in Poland. Courts in Germany and at the European level, for their part, often appear to have limited technical understanding of power systems and nuclear safety, and they tend to accord disproportionate weight to the most radical activist positions.

In the meantime, most countries have drawn their own conclusions and are reluctant to copy the German Energiewende. Germany and Austria, however, still invest considerable political capital in trying to dissuade others from choosing a different path, especially if that path includes nuclear power.

Return to Reason

We now face a choice. We can continue down the Austro‑German path of ideologically driven energy policy, or we can return to a more evidence‑based approach – the path most other countries in Europe and around the world have either adopted as official policy or are gradually moving towards.

There is no one‑size‑fits‑all solution that can be applied to every country. Some countries have abundant hydropower or geothermal resources. What we do know is that relying on weather‑dependent wind and solar alone will not suffice for any industrial society. Backup systems are either high‑emission, such as gas, or will not be available at scale for a long time, including the massive investments in infrastructure they would require. For the foreseeable future, therefore, nuclear power will remain necessary as a source of firm low‑carbon capacity wherever hydro or geothermal power is not available at scale.

Returning to reason in energy policy does not mean ignoring risks. It means weighing all risks and harms, including those arising from well‑intentioned but misguided decisions. Countries like Germany are, of course, free to opt for a “renewables‑only” electricity system. However, this is not a responsible option for anyone who takes workers, prosperity and the climate seriously. Excluding nuclear power in advance would put all three at risk, with far more negative consequences than using it.

We write this as people who grew up on the left and still care about its original commitments to workers, engineers and broad‑based prosperity. We also welcome a new generation of environmental movements – such as WePlanet, which we support and have helped to build – that link health and environmental concerns with a commitment to prosperity for all. The question is whether countries like Germany and Austria are prepared to heed this call and return to reason.

References

Official and technical reports

• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 1992. The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG‑1 (INSAG‑7). Report by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group, Safety Series No. 75‑INSAG‑7, Vienna.

• WHO/IAEA/UNDP et al. 2005. Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio‑Economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

• WePlanet DACH & Anthropocene Institute. 2026. The German Nuclear Phase-out: The true cost in monery. lives and carbon of Germany’s Atomausstieg. WePlanet DACH. Available online at: https://weplanet-dach.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/The-German-Nuclear-Phase-out-Report-2026.pdf

• Kharecha, Pushker A., and Makiko Sato. 2019. How energy choices after Fukushima impacted human health and the environment. State of the Planet (June 17). Available online at: https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/06/17/post-fukushima-energy-japan-germany/

Articles and chapters by the authors

• Sarma, Amardeo, and Anna Veronika Wendland. 2021. Ten Years of Fukushima Disinformation. Skeptical Inquirer 45(2).

• Sarma, Amardeo. 2024. Fukushima, Jahr 13: Fakten gegen Desinformation und Mythenbildung. WePlanet DACH. Available online at: https://weplanet-dach.org/fukushima-jahr-13-fakten-gegen-desinformation-und-mythenbildung/

• Sarma, Amardeo. 2023. Unmasking the Claims of the Antinuclear Movement: Climate, Health, and Energy at the Crossroads. Skeptical Inquirer 47(1).

• Wendland, Anna Veronika. 2019. Nuclearizing Ukraine – Ukrainizing the Atom: Soviet Nuclear Technopolitics, Crisis, and Resilience at the Imperial Periphery. Cahiers du Monde Russe 60(2–3): 335–367.

• Wendland, Anna Veronika. 2015. Inventing the Atomograd: Nuclear Urbanism as a Way of Life in Eastern Europe, 1970–2011. In Thomas Bohn, Thomas Feldhoff, Lisette Gebhardt and Arndt Graf (eds.), The Impact of Disaster: Social and Cultural Approaches to Fukushima and Chernobyl, Berlin, 261–287.

• Wendland, Anna Veronika. 2016. Tschernobyl: (K)eine visuelle Geschichte. Nukleare Bilderwelten in der Sowjetunion und ihren Nachfolgestaaten. In Melanie Arndt (Hg.), Politik und Gesellschaft nach Tschernobyl, Berlin, 182–210.

• Wendland, Anna Veronika. 2020. Ukrainian Memory Spaces and Nuclear Technology: The Musealization of Chornobyl’s Disaster. Technology & Culture 61(4): 1162–1177.

• Wendland, Anna Veronika. 2023. Das Kernkraftwerk Zaporižžja: Kriegsschauplatz und Testfall der Reaktorsicherheit. OSTEUROPA 73(10–11): 125–161. Available online at: https://zeitschrift-osteuropa.de/blog/das-kernkraftwerk-zaporizzja/

• Wendland, Anna Veronika. 2023. Der Tschernobyl‑Reaktor RBMK – The Chernobyl Reactor RBMK. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 71(1): 137–165.

Books and broader essays

• Gräber, Daniel. 2025. Akte Atomausstieg: Das Ende der Kernkraft und das Scheitern der Energiewende. Freiburg: Herder.

• Weart, Spencer R. 1988. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Weart, Spencer R. 2012. The Rise of Nuclear Fear. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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In philosophy, the naturalistic fallacy appears when people infer what ought to be done directly from what is the case—treating descriptive facts as if they carried their own moral instructions. The moralistic fallacy is the reverse: inferring what is true from what we want, fear, or morally approve of—letting “ought” to decide “is”.

Note: In an earlier version of this essay I called the latter the “idealistic fallacy”; “moralistic fallacy” is the standard term in the literature on metaethical logic and argumentation theory.

Both fallacies show up in current debates, but in different ways.

• Moralistic fallacy: “Genetic engineering is unnatural and run by evil companies. It is therefore dangerous and must be rejected.” The undesirability of a scenario is quietly turned into a claim that it is dangerous or fraudulent.

• Naturalistic fallacy: “Climate models and impact studies show serious risks. Science commands that we adopt this program.” Here, descriptive findings are treated as if they logically implied a unique policy, closing legitimate moral and political debate.

These are not just conceptual curiosities. They shape how people—from activists to commentators to scientists—talk about vaccination, climate risks, nuclear energy, population, agriculture, and much more. They also provide ammunition to those who want to undermine scientific disciplines.

The moralistic fallacy: wishing cannot make it so

The moralistic fallacy is very tempting in emotionally charged fields. It often appears in two logically opposite, but structurally similar, forms:

• “Because we don’t like X, X is dangerous, cannot be true or cannot work.”

• “Because we like Y, Y is benign, must be true or must work.”

X has often been nuclear energy or genetic engineering, while Y was renewables, “natural” medicine or organic farming.

Pessimistic environmentalists are so concerned about the risks of unconstrained human development that they treat abundant energy, industrial agriculture, or advanced technologies as inherently suspect, and therefore assume any promise of abundance must be illusory. Optimistic enthusiasts so deeply value economic growth and innovation that they believe climate risks must be modest, easy to engineer away, and that policies and interventions are neither needed nor even harmful.

Examples are easy to find:

• Energy abundance: Critics claim that nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, or large-scale carbon removal “cannot work” or “will never happen” primarily because they dislike the idea of a world with cheap, dense, widely available energy. Their discomfort with abundance turns into empirical certainty about technical failure.

• Food and agriculture: Others insist that genetically modified crops or intensive agriculture cannot help reduce hunger, not because the data say so, but because they associate “industrial” food systems with moral or aesthetic decline.

• Free‑market absolutism: Some argue that free markets will automatically solve environmental and social problems and therefore view governmental or international climate policies as harmful intrusions that violate their core values of liberty and autonomy.

In all these cases, the moral or ideological story comes first; the “facts” are adjusted to fit, whether or not they are true. That is precisely what science should not be about.

Climate doomsday and the PIK Nature retraction

The recently retracted Nature paper by a team at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is a revealing case where a dramatic, doomsday-like outcome was presented as far more certain than the data suggest. The study claimed that climate change could reduce global income by around one-fifth by mid-century. This finding was eagerly cited by central banks, the media, and activists as proof of catastrophic economic damage. Later scrutiny uncovered data problems (including flawed country statistics) and methodological issues in the statistical treatment of regional impacts. Due to the scale of the corrections and the increased uncertainty, the authors and the journal agreed on a full retraction and revision rather than a minor erratum.

Important points follow from this episode:

• The retraction itself is a sign that self-correction is (still) working.

• The existence of serious climate risks is not in question; the mainstream literature is clear that warming will have substantial effects.

• But the originally dramatic framing was rapidly turned into a moral symbol—confirmation that “the system” is heading toward collapse—well before the robustness of the numbers had been thoroughly tested.

Once a result is embedded in a narrative of imminent disaster, it becomes difficult to disentangle evidence from expectation. When such a paper is later retracted, it is immediately weaponised by climate‑policy opponents as proof that climate science is driven by alarmism rather than rigour. The risk is not merely local; each high-profile exaggeration that fails gives those who are hostile to climate policy an excuse to doubt all climate research.

This is the cost of the moralistic fallacy when it operates inside science itself: hoping for firm, galvanising conclusions can tempt some researchers and communicators to oversell fragile results. When those claims collapse, trust does too.

Mainstream climate science and cautious voices

Against this background, the tone set by mainstream, methodologically cautious climate scientists is essential to maintain public trust in science.

Klaus Hasselmann, Nobel laureate for foundational work on climate models and detection–attribution, has always combined explicit acknowledgement of human-driven warming with insistence on transparency about uncertainty. He has emphasised that the signal of anthropogenic climate change emerges from natural variability in ways that can be quantified statistically, but has also stressed that long-term projections, and especially socio-economic impact assessments, are inherently uncertain and must be communicated as such.

Hans von Storch has likewise argued for methodological humility. He has been critical of scientists who present themselves as preachers of definitive truth, and of using extreme scenarios as if they were straightforward “business‑as‑usual” forecasts, given changing technological and policy trends. He has pointed out that if models systematically deviate from observations, the community must be ready to revisit key assumptions, rather than defending them as articles of faith.

Both exemplify a scientific attitude:

• recognising the robustness of core findings (the reality and anthropogenic nature of warming),

• clearly stating where uncertainty is significant, and

• refusing to dress scientific results in the costume of moral certainty or political inevitability.

In an age where climate talk oscillates between denial and doom, this mainstream stance is neither tepid nor evasive; it is precisely what protects the long-term credibility of climate science.

The naturalistic fallacy: when science is treated as a moral oracle

If the moralistic fallacy smuggles “ought” into “is”, the naturalistic fallacy does the reverse: it tries to derive an “ought” straight from the “is”. In climate debates, this appears when people claim that science “tells us” which measures to take or even which political or economic system humanity must adopt.

Examples include:

• The science of climate change proves we must adopt a degrowth agenda and dismantle capitalism.

• Because we know that carbon emissions lead to global warming, science demands that we rely exclusively on renewables or even manage a transition by some date.

• Since models show serious risks, any disagreement with this specific policy pathway is anti-science or denial.

Science can tell us that greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation, that doubling CO₂ raises equilibrium temperature by a specific range, that different emissions scenarios lead to different risk profiles, and that some technologies are more effective than others at reducing emissions. It cannot, by itself, tell us whether we ought to prioritise speed over equity, how to weigh short-term costs against long-term benefits, or which mix of values (freedom, security, equality, innovation, stability) society should adopt.

When activists or commentators present a particular ideology—whether radical degrowth, total system transformation, or, on the opposite side, unbounded techno‑optimism—as “what the science says”, they turn science into a moral authority it cannot be. This not only misrepresents the nature of scientific inquiry; it also hands critics a powerful line of attack: “If ‘science’ tells me what to think politically, maybe science itself is just politics.”

The naturalistic fallacy thus damages the same thing that the moralistic fallacy does: public trust in science that is distinct from political and moral advocacy.

Science at large is at risk, not just climate science

Climate science may be the most visible arena where these fallacies play out, because it sits directly at the intersection of physics, economics, ethics, and geopolitics. But it is unlikely to remain the only one. The same patterns are already emerging in other fields.

Two obvious candidates are:

• Public health and epidemiology: During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific findings about transmission, masks, vaccines, and lockdowns were rapidly absorbed into tribal identities. Some actors overstated certainty or downplayed trade-offs, insisting that “the science” dictated a single policy path. Others rejected basic epidemiology because it clashed with their political preferences. The result was a collapse in shared trust: people on all sides began to see epidemiology less as a neutral discipline and more as a weapon in culture wars.

• Genetics and sex/gender biology: Research into biological sex, intersex conditions, and gender identity has become highly politicised. Some actors try to derive social or moral norms directly from biological findings. Others confuse sex (biological) and gender (identity/roles) and wrongly claim that ‘sex is a spectrum’ in a way that ignores the fundamental anisogamous nature of sexual reproduction in most animals and plants and all mammals, where two distinct gamete types (eggs and sperm) define the basic male–female categories and intersex variations are exceptions rather than a third type.

If the climate arena normalises a pattern in which every methodological dispute is treated as a political betrayal, and every attempt at nuance is read as denial or alarmism, these habits will spread. Once the public begins to see all of science as a series of tribal narratives, the gains of the Enlightenment—shared standards of evidence, cross-cultural reproducibility, the possibility of correcting errors—are at stake.

In that sense, climate science may be only the first apparent victim. If allowed to metastasise, the same logic could engulf fields from ecology and demography to psychology, nutrition, and AI safety.

Why avoiding both fallacies is essential

If trust in science is to survive, both the moralistic and naturalistic fallacies must be resisted.

1. Keep facts and values distinct, even when closely related
   Facts inform values: knowing the likely impacts of warming, or the comparative risks of different energy sources, should shape our moral and political reasoning. Values guide how we respond: science cannot tell us how to trade off present costs against future harms, or which distribution of burdens is just. Recognising this division does not weaken the case for climate action; it strengthens it by making the reasoning explicit rather than smuggling politics in under the banner of “what science says”.

2. Guard against wishful thinking in both directions
   People on all sides of environmental debates are vulnerable to the cognitive bias of believing what they want to be true, rather than what the evidence supports. Those who advocate for ecological restraint should resist the temptation to assume that technologies they distrust cannot work, regardless of the empirical record. Supporters of free markets should not assume that market forces will always overcome physical or ecological limits. Markets tend to be most efficient at allocating resources over relatively short time horizons and often discount or ignore long‑term environmental externalities. The real world is constrained by biophysical laws, not by ideological narratives, and ignoring these constraints is itself a form of wishful thinking.

3. Present uncertainty honestly, without paralysis or drama
   Many mainstream climate scientists show that it is possible to be both frank about serious risks and rigorous about uncertainty. Their example should be the norm: clear on established results (e.g., the basic greenhouse effect), transparent about where knowledge is limited (e.g., regional impacts, extreme events), and honest about the fact that different value frameworks can lead to different policy choices even when everyone accepts the same evidence.

4. Protect science as a universal attitude with robust methods, not as a partisan tool
   The more science is presented as “on the side” of one political tribe, the easier it is for others to reject it wholesale. Science must remain open to critique, replication, and revision from all directions and must welcome disagreement about policy, provided it does not involve denial of basic empirical facts.

If we fail to do this, climate science will not be the only field to suffer. Once trust in science is replaced by suspicion that every claim is merely a vehicle for someone’s cultural project, the very idea of objective inquiry becomes fragile.

Scientific temper asks for something more demanding but more hopeful: to accept that reality is not obliged to match our wishes, and that our moral commitments, however sincerely held, do not confer automatic authority on our factual claims. That discipline—distinguishing what is from what we want and what we ought to do—is hard. But it is also the only way to preserve science as a genuine common language in a fractured world.

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Further reading

The Nobel Prize (2021). Interview: Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 – Klaus Hasselmann. NobelPrize.org.

Jaeger, C. C., & Jaeger, J. (2022). Klaus Hasselmann and economics. Journal of Physics: Complexity, 3(4), 041001.

Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Wittlin, M., Slovic, P., Ouellette, L. L., Braman, D., & Mandel, G. (2012). The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change, 2(10), 732–735.

Kahan, D. M. (2013). Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government (Yale Law School Public Law Working Paper No. 307).

Kotz, M., Levermann, A., & co-authors. (2024). The economic commitment of climate change. Nature, 628, 123–129. (Retracted 2025).

Retraction Watch. (2025, December 3). Authors retract Nature paper projecting high costs of climate change. Retraction Watch. ​

von Storch, H. (2009, March 22). Klimawandel-Essay: Am Ende des Alarmismus. Der SPIEGEL.

Welsch, H., & Biermann, P. (2022). What shapes cognitions of climate change in Europe? Climatic Change, 170(1–2), 1–23.

This is intuitive. Impact increases if the population grows, if each person’s consumption increases, or if the technologies we use are dirty and inefficient.

This has often been summarised as the following identity: I = P x A x T, where I is impact, P is population, A is affluence, and T is technology.​

Apart from this formula, what matters is that there are two very different interpretations of this basic idea: an outdated, neo-Malthusian interpretation and a modern, humane, evidence-based interpretation. These interpretations lead to opposing conclusions about the kind of future we should strive for and the policies we should advocate.

The Old Story: More People + More Prosperity = Disaster

In the 1960s and 70s, a pessimistic narrative dominated much environmental thought, popularised most famously by Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb.

The logic went like this:

• More people inevitably strain the planet’s finite resources.

• More prosperity means more consumption and therefore more damage.

• Technology mainly amplifies harm, letting us extract and burn more, faster.

If every term in I = P x A x T can only make things worse, then humanity itself becomes the problem.

The implication was clear and disturbing: to avoid ecological collapse, both population and economic growth must be restrained – if necessary, by coercive means.

This worldview led to:

• Calls for coercive population control and “optimal population” targets.

• Hostility to economic growth.

• Deep suspicion toward modern technological development.

Essentially, it was a neo-Malthusian narrative: the future was defined by scarcity and fixed limits, with collapse almost inevitable unless humanity abandoned the idea of universal prosperity and accepted living with far fewer people.

However, recent global development history has proven this view to be profoundly mistaken.

What Actually Happened: The Demographic Transition

If the old narrative were right, development and rising living standards would drive a permanent “population explosion”.

Instead, the exact opposite happened.

Across the world, as societies became wealthier, healthier, more educated, and more stable, people chose to have fewer children. In this demographic transition, societies move from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as incomes and life expectancy rise.

So how did this happen?

• Child mortality collapsed. Families could count on their children surviving.

• Women gained access to education and work. They understood contraception.

• Urbanisation raised the cost of large families.

• Social security systems reduced the need for many children as “old‑age insurance”.​

The result is a sharp decline in fertility rates. The global fertility rate has fallen from around five children per woman in the 1960s to below 2.5 today, with many countries now falling well below the replacement level of 2.1–2.2 children per woman. This includes several countries that most people would not expect to have a fertility rate below the replacement level, as the Our World in Data graphics below show.

Source: Our World in Data - The global decline of the fertility rate

This pattern is one of the most robust findings in social science: prosperity, education, and rights – in particular for women – drive fertility down.

China is the perfect case study: fertility was dropping fast even before the one‑child policy, and now China is desperately trying to reverse a dangerously rapid population decline. A different lesson comes from India, where the coercive sterilisation campaigns during the Emergency in the mid‑1970s provoked such a backlash that they helped bring down Indira Gandhi’s government in the 1977 elections.

The broader lesson is powerful: there is no humane, democratic way to “force” population reduction at scale. Population stabilises when people become healthier, wealthier, and better educated – not when states impose draconian controls.

Prosperity and Technology: From Threats to Tools

The traditional interpretation of IPAT saw both prosperity and technology in a largely negative light: increased income led to greater consumption, and new technologies simply magnified the scale of damage.

However, modern evidence tells a different story.

As societies grow richer, they do not simply consume more of everything. They also demand cleaner air, safer water, better infrastructure and protected natural areas.

Prosperity enables governments and citizens to invest in environmental protection and cleaner systems. However, this still requires active policies, regulations and innovations, rather than a laissez-faire belief that growth alone will solve all problems.

In practice, this has meant that:

• Many richer countries have sharply reduced local air pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and fine particulate matter in recent decades.

• Forest cover has stabilised or even expanded in several high‑income regions as agriculture has intensified and marginal farmland has been abandoned.​

• Environmental regulation and enforcement are generally stronger in high‑income democracies than in very poor states with weak institutions.

In other words, poverty is not green. Poverty forces people to burn wood and charcoal, clear forests, consume bushmeat, and use land inefficiently. Development brings the technologies and incentives needed for environmental stewardship.

The landscape of technology has changed significantly since the 1960s. Thanks to the Green Revolution, synthetic fertilisers, improved crop varieties and precision agriculture, global food production has soared without the need for proportional increases in farmland.

At the same time, modern energy systems and materials science are making it possible to “decouple” economic output from emissions and resource use:

• Many high-income countries have increased GDP while reducing territorial CO₂ emissions since around 2005.

• Several economies show signs of absolute decoupling – emissions falling even as output continues to rise.​

• Energy use per unit of GDP has declined in much of the OECD, reflecting improved efficiency.

The following graph shows the decoupling for the European Union.

Source: Our World in Data - Change in per capita CO₂ emissions and GDP, European Union

This is not yet universal or fast enough, but the trend shows that growth and emissions are no longer locked together as they were in the mid-20th century.

In short, prosperity and technology are not inherently enemies of the environment. Used well, they become the main tools for shrinking humanity’s ecological footprint while improving lives.

Modern IPAT: A Humane, Evidence-Based Interpretation

The I = P x A x T identity itself is neutral; it is just a way to structure thinking about impact. What changed is our understanding of how each term behaves in the real world:

• Population (P) does not grow without bound; it stabilises and can even shrink as societies develop.

• Affluence (A), beyond a certain point, is associated with lower fertility and greater environmental capacity, not just more consumption.

• Technology (T) is not a simple multiplier of harm; it is the main lever for decoupling output from emissions and resource use.

A modern, empirically grounded IPAT perspective, therefore, looks like this:

1. Prosperity is the best contraceptive. As incomes, education, and health improve, fertility falls sharply and voluntarily. Degrowth proposals that would freeze poor countries at low-income levels risk keeping them in the high-fertility, high-pressure phase indefinitely.

2. Affluence enables environmental stewardship. Affluent societies invest in clean technology, environmental regulation, and restoration.​ They move away from biomass and other destructive, low-efficiency energy sources towards more compact, cleaner systems.

3. Technology drives decoupling. High-yield agriculture reduces land requirements per unit of food. Low-carbon power, electrification, and efficiency gains reduce emissions per unit of GDP. Many high-income countries already demonstrate that emissions and GDP can move in opposite directions over multi-decadal periods.

In this modern view, two of the three factors – affluence and technology – can actually reduce environmental harm as they improve, and the third – population – is shaped by them in a benign direction.

The policy implication is not “less prosperity and less technology”, but smarter prosperity and smarter technology.

Two Worldviews, Two Futures

These two interpretations of the same identity lead to very different visions of the future.

The Old Neo‑Malthusian Story

• Humans are inherently destructive.

• Growth is dangerous and must be restrained.

• Technology amplifies damage.

• Coercive measures to limit population and consumption are required.

This story still surfaces today in rhetoric about “too many people”, “overshoot”, “ending affluence”, or strict “limits to growth”.

The Modern, Humane, Evidence-Based Story

• As people become healthier and wealthier, they choose smaller families.

• Prosperity gives societies the means and motivation to clean up and protect ecosystems.

• Technology enables large reductions in pollution and resource use for each unit of well-being produced.

• Human ingenuity is central to solving environmental challenges.

Humanity is not a plague that must be contained. Rather, humanity is the primary agent in building a sustainable and flourishing future.

This view is supported by demographic data, economic history and mainstream scientific assessments, including IPCC mitigation scenarios and UN population projections.

Why This Matters for the People and the Planet

Even today, some ecological and activist communities continue to be influenced by Ehrlich’s outdated thinking.

Messages that focus on ‘ending affluence’, romanticise poverty as ‘low impact’, or advocate coercive population control not only conflict with evidence, but also collide with core democratic and human rights values.

A modern perspective points in a different direction:

• Development stabilises population. Countries move through the demographic transition as incomes, health, and education rise.

• Prosperity improves environmental capacity. More affluent societies have more tools and stronger institutions for environmental protection.

• Innovation enables decoupling. Clean energy, efficient infrastructure, and advanced materials allow growth with shrinking emissions and resource use.

This approach is more practical because it builds on existing trends. It is also more humane, as it is based on freedom, rights and opportunity rather than coercion.

Finally, it is more consistent with an open society because it avoids treating people, especially the poor, as the problem to be solved.

A Better Path Forward

If we take the modern, evidence-based interpretation of IPAT seriously, a more straightforward strategy emerges:

• Support global development. Promote policies that lift people out of poverty, expand education – particularly for girls and women – and strengthen health systems. These are the engines of the demographic transition and the foundation of environmental stewardship.

• Accelerate clean technology. Invest in low-carbon energy, efficient buildings and transport, high-yield and low-impact agriculture, and circular material flows. Technology is the main lever for decoupling, not a side issue.

• Defend human dignity and liberal democracy. Reject coercive population policies and regressive “degrowth” ideas that would lock billions into poverty. Sustainable societies must be compatible with rights, pluralism, and individual freedom.

• Challenge simplistic doom narratives. Acknowledge real risks and uncertainties while also recognising the documented progress in demography, health, and environmental performance. Fear can mobilise attention, but it is a poor guide to long-term, constructive policy.

Humanity is not the problem. Humanity – prosperous, educated, and technologically creative – is the solution.

Scientific Temper and Humane Environmentalism

So, what are the core commitments towards a better, evidence-based approach to elevate humanity and towards a liveable planet?

• Place human welfare, dignity and freedom at the heart of environmental thinking.

• Defend scientific temper – a mindset of critical inquiry and openness to evidence against denial and dogma, and promote science-based education from primary school level.

• Embrace innovation and prosperity as vital tools for creating a sustainable future, rather than viewing them as threats.

The traditional IPAT narrative implied that saving the planet required turning against people, prosperity, and progress.

The modern, humane narrative, which is grounded in data, demography and real technological change, shows that it is precisely people, prosperity, progress and science-based education, beginning in schools, that can save both humanity and the biosphere on which we depend.

Readers wishing to explore these themes further will find a growing ecosystem of science-based, evidence-focused organisations. WePlanet advocates environmentally friendly, innovation-driven solutions, while organisations such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, publisher of Skeptical Inquirer) and the German Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) promote scientific scepticism and critical thinking in public debate. Finally, Our World in Data and Hans Rosling’s Gapminder Foundation help us identify our misconceptions.

I also recommend reading another closely related piece posted today by Hannah Ritchie entitled ‘Can we break the human development–environment trade-off?’.

Further Reading

Breakthrough Institute. (2021, April 5). Absolute decoupling of economic growth and emissions in 32 countries. The Breakthrough Institute. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/absolute-decoupling-of-economic-growth-and-emissions-in-32-countriesthebreakthrough​

Breakthrough Institute. Energy and Climate - Make clean energy cheap. The Breakthrough Institute. https://thebreakthrough.org/energy

Freire-González, J., Ho, M. S., & Managi, S. (2024). World economies’ progress in decoupling from CO₂ emissions. Scientific Reports, 14, Article 20545. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-71101-2

Hepburn, C., & co‑authors. (2018). The long-run decoupling of emissions and output: Evidence from the largest emitters (IMF Working Paper No. 18/56). International Monetary Fund. https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/wp/2018/wp1856.pdf

Our World in Data. (2014). The global decline of the fertility rate (M. Roser). Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate

Our World in Data. (2021). Many countries have decoupled economic growth from CO₂ emissions (H. Ritchie). Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling

Our World in Data. (2025). China’s fertility rate has fallen to one, continuing a long decline that began before and continued after the one-child policy (H. Ritchie & E. Mathieu). Our World in Data – Data Insights. China’s fertility rate has fallen to one, continuing a long decline that began before and continued after the one-child policy

Scientific Temper. (2025). Scientific Temper 2025: Together with gbs for Critical Thinking and Education. Scientific Temper gUG. https://scientifictemper.org/en/news/scientific-temper-2025-together-with-gbs-for-critical-thinking-and-education

United Nations Population Fund. (2025). Understanding fertility decline: Developing rights-based solutions for achieving desired fertility. UNFPA. https://turkiye.unfpa.org/en/news/understanding-fertility-decline-developing-rights-based-solutions-achieving-desired-fertility

United Nations Population Fund. (2025). The real fertility crisis (State of World Population thematic report). UNFPA. https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/swp25-layout-en-v250609-web.pdf

However, Gates’s core argument is often overlooked: while climate change is urgent, immediate threats such as poverty, malnutrition and disease remain far more pressing for billions of people, particularly in the Global South. Building resilient societies by investing in health, innovation and access to modern energy is essential to successfully adapting to a warming world. This view is reflected in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which treat climate action as one of many interconnected priorities (United Nations, 2024).

Crucially, focusing on resilience and development does not mean stopping the reduction of emissions. Rather, policymakers must balance conflicting goals and timeframes. For many developing nations, rapidly cutting fossil fuels is less urgent than escaping poverty — a fact that Western critics often overlook. A balanced approach, as proposed by Gates and organisations such as WePlanet, must respect diverse global realities while advancing both short-term well-being and long-term sustainability.

The African “Just Stop Cooking” Campaign

WePlanet’s “Just Stop Cooking” campaign perfectly illustrates this ethos. Over three million people, mainly women and children, die annually from indoor air pollution caused by open-fire cooking (International Energy Agency, 2025; Euronews, 2025), while millions more spend countless hours gathering firewood, fuelling deforestation and perpetuating cycles of poverty (WePlanet Africa, 2025; Just Stop Cooking, 2025). Rapid progress requires scalable, context-sensitive solutions. Where full electrification isn’t viable, even LPG — a fossil fuel — dramatically cuts pollution, empowers women and protects forests.

Old vs. new: biomass cooking versus clean energy (solar, LPG as a transitional solution, and nuclear) uplifting community health. AI-generated illustration for editorial purposes; no real people depicted.

Equally importantly, energy innovation isn’t about picking sides; rather, it requires a broad, pragmatic mix. Advanced renewables, nuclear power and modern fuels all have a part to play, as does local agency. The same realism is desperately needed in food and agriculture.

However, wealthy nations have repeatedly hindered real progress. For example, under pressure from Germany, the World Bank refused to fund nuclear projects in Africa for many years, thereby denying millions of people access to reliable clean energy (African Business, 2025; Africsis, 2025). Similarly, Western NGOs and government donors have blocked genetic engineering initiatives such as Golden Rice, thereby harming nutrition and health in much of the Global South. In contrast, Bangladesh’s experience with Bt brinjal demonstrates the potential of smart innovation (Golden Rice Project, 2024; Alliance for Science, 2020; PubMed, 2025; ISAAA, 2025).

The German Cautionary Tale

The German experience offers a cautionary tale. Once the “poster child” for activists, Germany has performed poorly in terms of emissions and public health metrics since closing its nuclear power stations. The German Nuclear Phase-Out Report (Anthropocene Institute, 2025) reveals that Germany’s rejection of nuclear power hindered efforts to reduce emissions and resulted in tens of thousands of premature deaths due to air pollution, as the closure of nuclear power stations led to increased reliance on fossil fuels. In numbers, this resulted in over 730 million additional tonnes of CO₂ being emitted, 19,200 premature deaths, and 177,000 cases of serious illness — stark example of how well-intentioned policies can have unintended consequences.

Furthermore, this formerly leading industrial nation now has the highest electricity prices in Europe, which are 37% above the EU average (European Commission, 2024; Clean Energy Wire, 2025; Global Petrol Prices, 2025). As of 2025, the average price of electricity for German households was €0.38–€0.39 per kWh, the highest of any major European nation. These soaring costs exacerbate inequality, battering key industries and threatening job security and competitiveness. In short, there are more emissions, more premature deaths, higher bills for the poorest in society, and a weakened economy, while profits flow to a small group of wind and solar energy producers.

These poor outcomes contrast with the original intentions and make a compelling case for a science-based, pragmatic energy and development policy that focuses on innovation and affordability. Such a policy would offer a far better path for climate and societal progress.

Rational Discourse Instead of Personal Attacks

Critiques of Gates by activists and scientists, which are often marked by personal attacks or ‘soft denial’ claims, miss the substantive point: real gains in resilience, prosperity and adaptation (McKibben, 2025; Mann, 2025). Notably, those who criticise ‘inauthentic’ pragmatism remained silent or were supportive when ample supplies of low-carbon nuclear energy were shut down, thereby undermining the core mission of mitigation.

More revealing than these rhetorical battles are the objective results. Despite high-profile disasters, data from global monitoring agencies show that deaths from climate- and weather-related hazards have plummeted over the last century. Gapminder data show a fall from 181 deaths per million people worldwide in 1900 to only 11 per million people in the 2000s — less than 6% of the historical rate (Rosling, 2018; Pinker, 2018; Gapminder). While financial losses from disasters are increasing, this is mainly due to more property and people in vulnerable areas, not reduced resilience. Human societies have become far better at weathering storms.

Climate Policy and COP30

Fossil fuels pose a major threat to public health—millions die each year from air pollution that is unrelated to climate change itself (International Energy Agency, 2025; Euronews, 2025). Yet, the grave health impacts of fossil fuels are rarely at the heart of climate activism or debate, which tends to focus primarily on temperature targets. Phasing out fossil fuels for reasons beyond climate change alone is vital, but this must be done in a way that also safeguards energy access, prosperity and resilience.

The real lesson is that compassion and evidence, not slogans, must drive climate policy. Clean cooking, pragmatic energy choices and smart food innovation are central to human dignity and planetary stewardship, not peripheral. Evidence compiled by Rosling, Pinker and others shows that progress is possible. Ahead of COP30, Bill Gates’ intervention is a timely reminder to rethink our way forward. We must reinforce balanced decision-making based on science, evidence, and reason, committing ourselves to all of humanity.

Disclaimer

This article does not claim that science itself advocates any particular course of action or set of policies. Rather, society’s priorities and goals must be collectively determined through democratic processes, ethical reflection and open debate. Science plays a vital evaluative role in this process, enabling us to rigorously assess the effectiveness of various measures in achieving societal goals, while also identifying those that may be ineffective or counterproductive (hvonstorch.de, 2022). This distinction is vital for honest and responsible decision-making in any field, including climate and development policy.

References

• Alliance for Science. (2020). Anti-GMO activists convene to target Golden Rice. https://allianceforscience.org/blog/2018/04/anti-gmo-activists-convene-target-golden-rice/

• African Business. (2025). End of World Bank nuclear ban paves the way for Africa. https://african.business/2025/06/energy-resources/end-of-world-bank-nuclear-ban-paves-the-way-for-africa

• Africsis. (2025). World Bank lifts nuclear funding ban: what this means for Africa. https://africsis.org/?p=20339

• Anthropocene Institute. (2025). The German Nuclear Phase-out Report 2025. https://anthropoceneinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/The-German-Nuclear-Phase-out-Report-2025.pdf

• Clean Energy Wire. (2025). Germany’s household power prices 5th highest in the world – report. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-household-power-prices-5th-highest-world-report

• Euronews. (2025). One in three people worldwide exposed to household air pollution. https://www.euronews.com/health/2025/03/19/one-in-three-people-worldwide-exposed-to-household-air-pollution-researchers-warn

• European Commission. (2024). Electricity price statistics. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics

• Gapminder. Natural Disasters. https://www.gapminder.org/topics/natural-disasters/

• Gates, B. (2025a). Three tough truths about climate. Gates Notes. https://www.gatesnotes.com/three-tough-truths-about-climate

• Gates, B. (2025b). Bill Gates on climate memo, global health, ‘doomsday’ talk. Heatmap. https://heatmap.news/climate/bill-gates-climate-memo

• GlobalPetrolPrices.com. (2025). Germany electricity prices, March 2025. https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Germany/electricity_prices/

• Golden Rice Project. (2024). The Golden Rice Project. https://www.goldenrice.org/

• International Energy Agency. (2025). One billion Africans being harmed by cooking pollution. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-billion-africans-cooking-pollution.html

• ISAAA. (2025). Bangladeshi farmers gain higher yields and profits from Bt brinjal. https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=21535

• Just Stop Cooking. (2025). Just Stop Cooking | Juststopcooking. https://www.juststopcooking.org/

• Mann, M. E. (2025). You can’t reboot the planet if you crash it. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://thebulletin.org/2025/10/you-cant-reboot-the-planet-if-you-crash-it/

• McKibben, B. (2025). Climate Gates: Maybe we don’t need billionaire opinions on everything. https://countercurrents.org/2025/11/climate-gates-maybe-we-dont-need-billionaire-opinions-on-everything/

• NDTV. (2025). Climate crisis won’t lead to humanity’s demise: Bill Gates. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/tough-truths-bill-gates-says-climate-change-wont-end-civilisation-9533827

• Newsweek. (2025). Bill Gates delivers ‘tough truths’ on climate just before U.N. talks. https://www.newsweek.com/bill-gates-delivers-tough-truths-on-climate-before-u-n-talks-10951942

• Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Viking. https://stevenpinker.com/publications/enlightenment-now-case-reason-science-humanism-and-progress

• PubMed. (2025). Farmers’ intention to continue Bt brinjal adoption in Bangladesh. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40946267/

• Rosling, H., Rosling, O., & Rosling Rönnlund, A. (2018). Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world—and why things are better than you think. Sceptre. https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness-book/

• United Nations. (2024). THE 17 GOALS: Sustainable Development. http://sdgs.un.org/goals

• von Storch, H. (2022). Democratic decision making and the role of (climate) science. https://www.hvonstorch.de/klima/pdf/171106.koeln.pdf

• WePlanet Africa. (2025). JUSTSTOPCOOKING. https://weplanetafrica.org/project/juststopcooking/

“The scientific approach, the adventurous and yet critical temper of science, the search for truth and new knowledge, the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, the capacity to change previous conclusions in the face of new evidence, the reliance on observed fact and not on pre-conceived theory, the hard discipline of the mind—all this is necessary, not merely for the application of science but for life itself and the solution of its many problems.”

To bring scientific thinking to everyone, we must harness the transformative power of science-based education, particularly in regions where access to it is limited.

Initiatives such as Science Week at Kasese Humanist School in Uganda, which took place a month ago, deserve our support. The project nurtures curiosity, critical thinking and rational enquiry from an early age, fostering a world in which science and humanism can flourish globally.

Science Week at the Kasese School and Why it Matters

In September 2025, the Kasese Humanist School in Uganda hosted its Science Week – a celebration of curiosity, experimentation, and rational inquiry. This event brought together students, teachers, and community members to explore the power of science in shaping a better future.

Science Week is more than a school event – it is a statement of values. It promotes critical thinking, hands-on learning, and the joy of discovery. In a region where access to scientific education is limited, initiatives like this empower young minds and foster resilience.

The German non-profit organisation Scientific Temper gUG provided financial support and encouragement for the Science Week. We particularly admire the Kasese Humanist School for embodying our values of promoting universal critical thinking and science-based education, as reflected in its motto: ‘With science, we can progress’.

Investing in grassroots education and encouraging rational inquiry from an early age is one of the most valuable contributions to our shared future, and we urge others to join us in this endeavour.

Africa as a Continent of Opportunity

Africa is rich in both resources and potential. Education is the key to unlocking this potential. Investing in science education will empower African students to drive innovation, address local issues and engage in global conversations. It is encouraging to see the engagement and commitment of the school’s director, Robert Bwambale Musubaho, and his team as they lead the way into this future.

Impressions from Kasese

Students exploring basic chemistry during Science Week

Teachers, students, and community members celebrating the Science Week.

Closing Thoughts

Scientific temper begins with education. In Kasese, we see the seeds of a future where reason, science, and humanism can flourish – not just in Uganda, but across the continent.

Visit the school’s website, where you can also make a direct donation, such as sponsoring a child.

We hope to see more such initiatives worldwide.

Coming Next

This is my first post focusing on promoting scientific temper around the world. I will also be posting about the importance of critical thinking, defending science against attacks from all sides, and debunking popular myths that do not align with scientific evidence. Last but not least, I will write about my German book, Scientific Temper, particularly for those who don’t read German.

You can find articles and information in English and German on our website, where you can also support our work.

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