Michael Shellenberger

Shellenberger is a heterodox independent who came up on the environmental left and now spends most of his energy on causes associated with the right, especially opposition to what he calls the 'censorship-industrial complex.' A longtime progressive activist, he broke with green orthodoxy as a pro-nuclear ecomodernist ('Apocalypse Never,' 2020), criticized progressive homelessness policy in 'San Fransicko,' left the Democratic Party in 2021, and ran for California governor as an independent in 2022. He was one of the Twitter Files journalists in 2022-23 and founded the Substack outlet Public; he also holds the CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship and Free Speech at the University of Austin. In 2025 he remained active on this front, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee in February 2025 and publishing investigations alleging coordinated censorship efforts by EU, UK, and Latin American officials. He self-describes as independent rather than conservative, but his audience and allies now sit largely on the right.

Positioning as of July 2026 · descriptive, not an endorsement. How we label lean

Michael Shellenberger scores 39.8 out of 100 on the RisingPolitics Credibility Score, ranking #102 among the political creators we track. The score starts with audience size, subtracts accounts that look fake, and weighs how strongly the audience actually engages.

Michael Shellenberger has about 1.4M followers combined across X and YouTube.