SOURCE: Wikipedia, captured 2020-07-20
The Breakthrough Institute is an environmental research center located in Oakland, California. The Breakthrough Institute is "committed to modernizing environmentalism for the 21st century." Founded in 2003 by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Breakthrough Institute has policy programs in energy and climate, economic growth and innovation, conservation and development. The Breakthrough Institute publishes a policy journal, organizes an annual conference, and offers a fellowship program for recent college graduates and graduate students. Breakthrough Institute's analyses of energy, climate, and innovation policy have been cited by The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and C-SPAN. Philosophically, the Breakthrough Institute is associated with ecomodernism [an environmental philosophy which argues that humans can protect nature by using technology to "decouple" anthropogenic impacts from the natural world]. The Breakthrough Institute promotes technological solutions to environmental problems, especially nuclear energy and industrial agriculture.
The Breakthrough Institute's executive director is Ted Nordhaus. The Breakthrough Institute also has a number of senior fellows including sociologist Bruno Latour, journalist Gwyneth Cravens, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Burton Richter, political scientist Roger A. Pielke Jr., sociologist Dalton Conley, Oxford professor Steve Rayner, plant geneticist Pamela Ronald, sociologist Steve Fuller, and environmental thought leader Stewart Brand.
The Breakthrough Institute maintains programs in energy, conservation, and food. Their website states that the energy research is "focused on making clean energy cheap through technology innovation to deal with both global warming and energy poverty." The conservation work "seeks to offer pragmatic new frameworks and tools for navigating" the challenges of the Anthropocene, offering up nuclear energy, synthetic fertilizers, and genetically modified foods as solutions.
In 2004, Breakthrough Institute founders Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger coauthored the essay, "Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World." The paper argues that traditional environmentalism must die so that a new kind of politics can be born. The essay sparked a large debate in the environmental community, which was covered by the New York Times and Salon.
In 2007, Nordhaus and Shellenberger published their book "Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility," which was called "prescient" by Time and "the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring'" by Wired Magazine. the Breakthrough Institute has gone on to argue that climate policy should be focused on making clean energy cheap through technological innovation and has been critical of climate policies like cap and trade and carbon pricing that are focused primarily on making dirty energy expensive.
The Breakthrough Institute has engaged in bipartisan efforts to produce a new strategy for climate and energy policy in the wake of cap and trade. In 2010, the Breakthrough Institute, along with the Brookings Institution and right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, published the report "Post-Partisan Power," which calls for increased federal subsidies in order to make nuclear energy cheap. The report was widely praised and endorsed.
The Breakthrough Institute has engaged in extensive work showing that the federal government played a crucial role in the development of major technological innovations from the iPhone to the transcontinental railroad to the shale gas revolution, with its work referenced by many including the New York Times, and President Barack Obama.
In 2011, the Breakthrough Institute published its extensive investigation into the origins of today's natural gas boom, showing that the government was critical to the shale gas revolution as well. The Breakthrough Institute's findings were cited in the New York Times and by President Barack Obama in his 2012 State of the Union and were substantiated by the Associated Press as well as the American Energy Innovation Council.
In 2012, the Breakthrough Institute partnered with Brookings Institution and the World Resources Institute on the report "Beyond Boom and Bust" which aimed to reform energy policy in order to make clean energy technologies subsidy independent. The report generated wide bipartisan interest and endorsements.
The Breakthrough Institute has also authored analyses on the planetary boundaries hypothesis, promoted expansion of nuclear power, and questioned the value of energy efficiency in the context of the Rebound Effect (conservation).
In April 2015, "An Ecomodernist Manifesto" was issued by John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist, Stewart Brand, Barry Brook. Ruth DeFries, Erle Ellis, Christopher Foreman, David Keith, Martin Lewis, Mark Lynas, Ted Nordhaus, Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Rachel Pritzker, Joyashree Roy, Mark Sagoff, Michael Shellenberger, Robert Stone, and Peter Teague.
In 2011, the Breakthrough Institute published the first issue of "The Breakthrough Journal," which aims to "modernize political thought for the 21st century." The New Republic called "Breakthrough Journal" "among the most complete efforts to provide a fresh answer to" the question of how to modernize liberal thought, and the National Review called it "the most promising effort at self-criticism by our liberal cousins in a long time." Steven F. Hayward's essay "Modernizing Conservatism" received a Sidney Award from New York Times columnist David Brooks. "Conservation in the Anthropocene" by Peter Kareiva, Michelle Marvier, and Robert Lalasz sparked a discussion on the future of the Anthropocene in the New York Times, and Scott Winship's "The Affluent Economy" was debated in the National Review, the Economist, the New York Times, and the Dish.
The Breakthrough Institute has been criticized by both the right and the left. On the right, they have been criticized for arguing about the importance of the federal government in producing technological innovations. On the left, they have been criticized for arguing that carbon pricing is not the solution to climate change, for being pro-nuclear, for promoting industrial agriculture that is highly dependent on fossil fuels, and for touting natural gas as a way to decrease coal usage.
Journalist Paul D. Thacker alleged that the Breakthrough Institute is an example of a quasi-lobbying organization which does not adequately disclose its funding.
The Breakthrough Institute has also been criticized for promoting industrial agriculture and processed foodstuffs while also accepting donations from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, whose board members have financial ties to processed food companies that rely heavily on industrial agriculture. After an IRS complaint about potential improper use of 501(c)(3) status, the Institute no longer lists the Nathan Cummings Foundation as a donor. However, as journalist Thacker has noted, the Institute's funding remains largely opaque.
Climate scientist Michael E. Mann questions the motives of the Breakthrough Institute. According to Mann the self-declared mission of the Breakthrough Institute (BTI) is to look for a breakthrough to solve the climate problem. However Mann states that basically the BTI "appears to be opposed to anything -- be it a price on carbon or incentives for renewable energy -- that would have a meaningful impact." He notes that the BTI "remains curiously preoccupied with opposing advocates for meaningful climate action and is coincidentally linked to natural gas interests" and criticises the BTI for advocating "continued exploitation of fossil fuels." Mann also questions that the BTI on the one hand seems to be "very pessimistic" about renewable energy, while on the other hand "they are extreme techno-optimists" regarding geoengineering.
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