Controversial Bay Area activist launches independent bid against Gavin Newsom

A Bay Area author and activist is hoping to unseat California Gov. Gavin Newsom this fall.

Michael Shellenberger announced his bid to run as a no-party-preference candidate on Fox40 Thursday, joining a small field that so far includes the incumbent Democrat and Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle.

Shellenberger said he is running to help California “realize its potential.”

“I’m running because I’m absolutely heartbroken by the humanitarian homeless disaster occurring on our streets,” Shellenberger told KTXL-TV. “I’m also really angry that the politicians won’t do what everybody knows must be done to deal with that problem. I think the third reason is I’m really inspired by the potential to create a statewide psychiatric and addiction care system to finally solve this problem after 30 years.”

The Berkeley resident has written several books on the environment and on his website he notes others have described him as an “environmental guru” and “high priest” of the environmental humanist movement. Most recently, he published “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” In 2020, he published “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.”

Per his website, he advises governments around the world, including in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.

One of his TED talks, titled “Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet” has more than 6 million combined views on TED’s website and on YouTube.

His writings have received mixed reviews.

One critic, writing in the online publication Yale Climate Connections, described “Apocalypse Never” as “bad science” and slammed Shellenberger for “cherry picking facts,” “strawman arguments,” and “ad hominem attacks on scientists.”

A review of the same book by the Los Angeles Review of Books noted that Shellenberger’s writings have been embraced by the far-right.

Last month, Shellenberger was kicked out of a linkage center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district after scaling a fence to get in. The center connects people to drug treatment, housing and other services while offering a place where people in need can access showers, food, bathrooms and other basic necessities, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

He told the Chronicle his cameras were confiscated and he was booted from the center.

“I was in the linkage center monitoring it as is my right as a citizen,” Shellenberger told the Chronicle. “I was covering a secret and illegal medical experiment. I was evicted from the site.”

Heading into the November election, Newsom is bolstered by a $25 million war chest and a solid base of Democratic support. Democrats make up about half of all registered voters in California. The other half is made up of a nearly-even split between Republicans and no party preference voters.