Breakthrough Institute

The Breakthrough Institute is an environmental research center located in Oakland, California. Founded in 2007 by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus.[1] The Institute is aligned with ecomodernist philosophy.[2][3] Such thought advocates for increased use of natural resources through an embrace of modernization, technological development, and increasing U.S. capital accumulation, usually through a combination of nuclear power and urbanization.[4][5][6][7] Since its inception, many environmental scientists and academics outside of the institute have disagreed with Breakthrough's environmental positions.[8][9][10][11][12][13]

For the Australian Breakthrough Centre visit Breakthrough - National Centre for Climate Restoration.
Purposeenvironmental research
Location

People

Breakthrough's executive director is Ted Nordhaus.[14] Others associated with Breakthrough include former National Review executive editor Reihan Salam, journalist Gwyneth Cravens, political scientist Roger A. Pielke Jr., sociologist Steve Fuller, and environmentalist Stewart Brand.[15][16]


Programs and Philosophy

Breakthrough Institute maintains programs in energy, conservation, and food.[17] 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.

However, scholars such as Professor of American and Environmental Studies Julie Sze and Environmental Humanist Michael Ziser criticize Breakthrough's philosophy as one that believes "community-based environmental justice poses a threat to the smooth operation of a highly capitalized, global-scale Environmentalism."[9] Further, Environmental and Art Historian TJ Demos has argued that Breakthrough's ideas present a "nothing more than a bad utopian fantasy" that function to support the oil and gas industry and work as "an apology for nuclear energy."[10]

Journalist Paul D. Thacker alleged that the Breakthrough Institute is an example of a quasi-lobbying organization which does not adequately disclose its funding.[12]

The 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 Thacker has noted, the institute's funding remains largely opaque.[12]

Climate scientist Michael E. Mann also questions the motives of the Breakthrough Institute. According to Mann, the self-declared mission of the 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.[13]

Publications

"The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming in a Post-Environmental World"

In 2004, Breakthrough founders Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger coauthored the essay, “Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World.”[18] The paper argued that environmentalism is incapable of dealing with climate change and should "die" so that a new politics can be born.

Former Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope called the essay "unclear, unfair and divisive." He said it contained multiple factual errors and misinterpretations. However, former Sierra Club President Adam Werbach praised the authors' arguments.[19]

Michel Gelobter and other environmental experts and academics wrote The Soul of Environmentalism: Rediscovering transformational politics in the 21st century in response, criticizing "Death" for demanding increased technological innovation rather than addressing the systemic concerns of people of color.[8]

Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility

In 2007, Nordhaus and Shellenberger published their book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. The Institute described it as "a book of historical significance."[20]

However, Julie Sze and Michael Ziser argued that Break Through continued the trend Gelobter pointed out related the authors' commitment to technological innovation and capital accumulation instead of focusing on systemic inequalities that create environmental injustices. Specifically Sze and Ziser argue that Nordhaus and Shellenberger's "evident relish in their notoriety as the 'sexy' cosmopolitan 'bad boys' of environmentalism (their own words) introduces some doubt about their sincerity and reliability." The authors asserted that Shellenberger's work fails "to incorporate the aims of environmental justice while actively trading on suspect political tropes," such as blaming China and other Nations as large-scale polluters so that the United States may begin and continue Nationalistic technology-based research-and-development environmentalism, while continuing to emit more greenhouse gases than most other nations. In turn, Shellenberger and Nordhaus seek to move away from proven Environmental Justice tactics, "calling for a moratorium" on "community organizing." Such technology-based "approaches like those of Nordhaus and Shellenberger miss entirely" the "structural environmental injustice" that natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina make visible.[9]

An Ecomodernist Manifesto

In April 2015, An Ecomodernist Manifesto[21] was issued[22] 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[23]

The Manifesto was met with critiques similar to Gelobter's evaluation of "Death" and Sze and Ziser's analysis of Break Through. Environmental historian Jeremy Caradonna and environmental economist Richard B. Norgaard led a group of environmental scholars in a critique, arguing that Ecomodernism as presented in the Manifesto "violates everything we know about ecosystems, energy, population, and natural resources," and "Far from being an ecological statement of principles, the Manifesto merely rehashes the naïve belief that technology will save us and that human ingenuity can never fail." Further, "The Manifesto suffers from factual errors and misleading statements."[24]

T.J. Demos agreed with Caradonna, and wrote in 2017 that "What is additionally striking about the Ecomodernist document, beyond its factual weaknesses and ecological falsehoods, is that there is no mention of social justice or democratic politics," and "no acknowledgement of the fact that big technologies like nuclear reinforce centralized power, the military-industrial complex, and the inequalities of corporate globalization."[25]

Breakthrough Journal

In 2011, Breakthrough published the first issue of the Breakthrough Journal, which aims to “modernize political thought for the 21st century.”[26] 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,[27] and the National Review called it “the most promising effort at self-criticism by our liberal cousins in a long time.”[28]

References
  1. "About". The Breakthrough Institute. Retrieved 2022-04-28.
  2. Porter, Eduardo (April 15, 2015). "A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development". New York Times.
  3. Kloor, Keith (December 12, 2012). "The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement". Slate.
  4. "Orion Magazine - Evolve". Orionmagazine.org. Retrieved 13 August 2018.
  5. Daren Samuelsohn, "Report: Treat climate change like 'Fight Club'," Politico, July 26, 2011
  6. Lisa Friedman, "'Climate pragmatists' call for an end to Kyoto process" ClimateWire, July 26, 2011
  7. Walsh, Bryan (July 26, 2011). "Fighting Climate Change by Not Focusing on Climate Change" – via content.time.com.
  8. Gelobter, Michel; Dorsey, Michael; Fields, Leslie; Goldtooth, Tom; Mendiratta, Anuja; Moore, Richard; Morello-Frosch, Rachel; Shepard, Peggy M.; Torres, Gerald (27 May 2005). "The Soul of Environmentalism Rediscovering transformational politics in the 21st century". Grist. Archived from the original on 11 July 2005.
  9. Ziser, Michael; Sze, Julie (2007). "Climate Change, Environmental Aesthetics, and Global Environmental Justice Cultural Studies". Discourse. 29 (2/3): 384–410. JSTOR 41389785.
  10. Demos, TJ (2017). Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today. MIT Press. pp. 46–49. ISBN 9783956792106.
  11. Caradonna, Jeremy L.; Norgaard, Richard B.; Borowy, Iris (2015). "A Degrowth Response to an Ecomodernist Manifesto". Resilience.
  12. "The Breakthrough Institute's Inconvenient History with Al Gore". ethics.harvard.edu.
  13. Michael E. Mann, Tom Toles: The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy. Columbia University Press 2016
  14. "Technological Solutions to Environmental Challenges". The Breakthrough Institute. Retrieved 2022-03-09.
  15. "Technological Solutions to Environmental Challenges". The Breakthrough Institute. Retrieved 2022-03-10.
  16. "Technological Solutions to Environmental Challenges". The Breakthrough Institute. Retrieved 2022-03-09.
  17. "Programs". Breakthrough Institute.
  18. Garofoli, Joe (June 16, 2011). "Thinkers take liberalism apart in order to save it". San Francisco Chronicle.
  19. "Dead movement walking?". Salon.com. 14 January 2005. Retrieved 13 August 2018.
  20. "'Break Through' The Book". The Breakthrough Institute. Retrieved 2022-03-10.
  21. "An Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015. A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.
  22. Eduardo Porter (April 14, 2015). "A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development". The New York Times. Retrieved April 17, 2015. On Tuesday, a group of scholars involved in the environmental debate, including Professor Roy and Professor Brook, Ruth DeFries of Columbia University, and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, Calif., issued what they are calling the “Eco-modernist Manifesto.”
  23. "Authors An Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015. As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.
  24. Caradonna, Jeremy L.; Norgaard, Richard B.; Borowy, Iris (2015). "A Degrowth Response to an Ecomodernist Manifesto". Resilience.
  25. Demos, TJ (2017). Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today. MIT Press. pp. 46–49. ISBN 9783956792106.
  26. "About". Breakthrough Journal.
  27. Schmitt, Mark (June 30, 2011). "Breakthrough Journal: Has Liberalism Entered a Post-Obama Era?". New Republic.
  28. Hayward, Steven (July 18, 2011). "An Environmental Reformation". National Review.
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