Breakthrough Inst shill

===

shill in lmbrg tag

pielke

curry

morano?

bari weiss

wildfire bs cited by raga

see shellenbeger, nordhaus,  shill jumped ship to environmetal progress ?  (superceded this? outed? "grassroots" allows eco-death bs?)

founding myth between brookings and aei

blurb for smil with ier, gates, myrvold

–Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, co-authors of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, and co-founders of Breakthrough Institute

“Vaclav Smilis a giant among energy scientists and historians. In this book, he explains why fossil fuels remain dominant, why it is so hard to scale up wind and solar technologies, and why nuclear power, despite having been over-hyped in the past, is one of our best hopes for meeting future energy needs and dealing with global warming.”

===

team red raga fuckery cites

Perma | How much did increasing “Climate… | The Breakthrough Institute

Summary

So, let’s recap. At the annual timescale that is most relevant to the Los Angeles fires…

• Figure 1: There is no clear increase in overall whiplash occurrence or wet-to-dry whiplash occurrence in Los Angeles in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
• Figure 2: There is no clear increase in overall whiplash occurrence or wet-to-dry whiplash occurrence over southern California in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
• Figure 3: There is a long-term decrease in whiplash events globally over land (where it matters) in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
• Figure 5: There is no increase in the variability (standard deviation) of annual SPEI either for all months or centered on January) in the Los Angeles grid point using the pre-existing standard SPEI dataset.
• Figure 6: There has been a decrease in the variability (standard deviation) of SPEI over global land since the 1980s using the pre-existing standard SPEI dataset.
• Figure 7: There is no agreement on the direction of change (if any) in annual precipitation variability (standard deviation) over the Los Angeles area across eight different precipitation datasets.
• Figures 8 and 9: There is no agreement on the direction of change (if any) in annual precipitation variability (standard deviation) globally across eight different precipitation datasets.

While “climate whiplash events” may be increasing in frequency under most of the very specific, selected definitions used and datasets investigated in Swain et al. (2025), the general idea that annual precipitation (or more generally, the water cycle, which includes evaporation) is becoming dramatically more variable is not supported when a broader set of datasets and definitions are used.

Would a reader of Swain et al. (2025), or especially its coverage, have any idea about the weakness of its broader conclusions or the lack of robustness of its results to different definitions and datasets? Almost certainly not, and I contend that this is a major problem for public understanding and trust in climate science.

Why don't we see a robust increase in water cycle variability given the strong theory underpinning “wet gets wetter, dry gets drier”? For one thing, the theoretical size of the effect is known to be quite small relative to natural, unforced variability, making it inherently difficult to detect. For example, we see in Figure 7 above that year-to-year rainfall in Los Angeles naturally varies by as much as 300%, yet the signal we are looking for is one to two orders of magnitude less than this. It is also apparently the case that observational uncertainty is larger than the signal (or there would not be such disagreement between datasets). Physically, perhaps increasing mean precipitation is offsetting the increase in calculated evaporation in the SPEI index, reducing its variability. Maybe reduced temperature variability (via arctic amplification) is reducing calculated evaporation variability.

I don’t know the full answer, but these would be great research questions to identify and outline in a Nature review like Swain et al. (2025). Unfortunately, Swain et al. (2025) missed this opportunity because the paper seemed so focused on assembling evidence in favor of increasing water cycle variability that contradictory evidence was never presented or seriously grappled with.

My main discomfort with Swain et al. (2025) and its rollout is that it appears that the primary goal was to create and disseminate the “climate whiplash” meme rather than conduct a truly rigorous evaluation of the evidence, including countervailing evidence. Ultimately, this makes the research a much larger advance in marketing than an advance in science.

---

MMA

Under the leadership of Bari Weiss, The Free Press’ climate change coverage mirrors that of right-wing media outlets like Fox News

As the editor-in-chief of CBS News, Weiss will oversee the broadcast news leader in climate coverage

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

Published 11/04/25

In early October, Paramount Skydance bought the The Free Press and hired its founder, Bari Weiss, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, a newly created position which will shape how the newsroom covers major stories which could include the climate crisis.

Notably, among the national broadcast networks, CBS has led coverage of climate change for at least the past four years, airing the most coverage, the most climate scientist guest appearances, and the most segments that discussed climate solutions as compared to ABC and NBC. But its role as network leader is already under threat. Reported by HEATED, as part of a series of layoffs at the network, the “majority of the five person team supporting CBS News’s climate coverage” were fired. In the memo announcing the layoffs, the new chief executive David Ellison said “he was ‘phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities.’”

And there are other changes that could compound this threat: On October 24, it was reported that Weiss was interested in poaching Fox News anchor Bret Baier, who has a troubling record on climate reporting to “potentially helm the *CBS Evening News.” Additional reporting suggests that she may also be interested in bringing on board another conservative voice, CNN contributor Scott Jennings. And on October 27, *CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson announced he was leaving the network at the end of the year.

Though Weiss infrequently focused her contrarian opinions on climate-related issues in her pieces for The New York Times and on her podcast, under her leadership as founder and editor-in-chief, The Free Press has published a number of articles undermining climate science and promoting contrarian views that mirror commentary from right-wing media outlets like Fox News.

The Free Press has undermined climate science

On August 19, The Free Press reported on a widely criticized climate study from the Department of Energy through an interview with one of its authors, Steven Koonin, a climate contrarian who has appeared on several right-wing media programs including several appearances on Fox. The interview included questions such as “what about climate change is real?” and provided a platform for Koonin to misrepresent a report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that affirmed the link between climate change and extreme weather events.

Koonin has made the same false claims on Fox, including on the August 10, 2021, edition of Special Report with Bret Baier, where he downplayed the findings of the IPCC’s sixth climate assessment. Koonin dismissed the connection between extreme weather and climate change, a key finding of the report, claiming that natural disasters are “on the face of it, weather. If they were climate, we would see trends over several decades in those phenomena, and we don't.”

In fact, climate scientists have been able to estimate how much climate change affects any given extreme weather event for years. Notably, researchers found that the heat wave that sent temperatures in the Pacific Northwest and Canada into triple digits just six weeks before the release of the 2021 report would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming.

In January of this year, The Free Press interviewed Koonin to downplay the role of climate change in intensifying the LA wildfires. Similar to right-wing media outlets like Fox, The Free Press misleadingly suggested that then-President Joe Biden and many climate scientists claimed climate change was the cause of the fires rather than a contributing factor to the intensity of the blazes.

In 2023, The Free Press published one of its signature contrarian pieces – titled “I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published” by Patrick T Brown. In the piece, the author, who works for Breakthrough Institute, which was founded by anti-renewable advocate Michael Shellenberger, claims to have purposely limited his research paper showing warming temperatures increased the likelihood of wildfire growth in California in order to prove that articles in scientific journals were “distorting the scientific process by focusing too narrowly on climate change.” As reported by The Washington Post, “The opinion piece quickly provoked backlash from scientists and the editor of Nature herself.”

The stunt by Brown reflects the decades-old right-wing media narrative that climate scientists are “cooking the books” or playing “fast and loose” with data in order to manufacture a climate crisis.

The Free Press elevates contrarian and conservative voices to disparage climate activism and action

In February of this year, The Free Press published a piece by Doomberg, an independent publication focused on energy, finance and geopolitics, titled “Everybody Freeze! It’s the Climate Police,” which used a proposed policy in the the city of Ottawa “limiting residents from using remote car starters to warm up their vehicles for more than one minute before driving” and reporting that a “Washington Democrat hopes to study the impact of medical anesthesia on climate change” as proof that efforts to address climate change have gone too far – and as a result caused a “global popular revolt” against climate action.

It is the kind of cherry-picked reporting Fox News does to paint the climate movement as out of touch and radical. And like with Fox’s coverage, it feels disingenuous in its failure to either acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis or present the mainstream efforts to decarbonize the economy through policies, like renewable energy deployment, that are both popular and effective.

:{In March, The Free Press published a story on the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to claw back $20 billion of congressionally appropriated climate funds titled “A $20 Billion Slush Fund—Paid by You to Progressive Nonprofits.” The piece largely represents the position of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin that the funds were somehow fraudulent. It also pushes the Fox News narrative that the funding is a slush fund for the left, including Democratic politicians, that was rushed out the door before Biden’s term ended like “gold bars” tossed “off the Titanic.”

The “gold bars” which Fox News has repeatedly mentioned are a reference to a video from Project Veritas — an organization built on deceitful tactics — in which a purported EPA employee was filmed with a hidden camera saying the Biden administration tried to quickly spend federal money before Donald Trump resumed office. He said, “We’re just trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all,” comparing the effort to “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.”}:

But, as Politico noted, the “EPA had already obligated the $20 billion in climate grants months before a conservative activist group shot that video.” In fact, the climate funds were not hastily approved as Biden left office – the funding was legally appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress in 2022, and grants were awarded through established procedures, with public announcements made months before the election.

Additionally, as The New York Times reported, a lawyer for the EPA staffer who appeared in the video “has since said he was not referring to the $20 billion grant program.” The Washington Post also reported that the former employee “had ‘nothing to do with the evaluation and selection’ of the recipients, said a former EPA official briefed on the matter.” These facts were largely absent from the Free Press piece.

In 2024, The Free Press published a contrarian piece by a “retired sustainability influencer” who is also the social media editor for the outlet: “I Helped Make Standing Rock Go Viral. Now I Regret It.”

The author lamented that as an early social media influencer she presented the Native American-led protest against an oil pipeline as “black and white” or “good versus evil.” She claimed her opinion on the Dakota Access Pipeline and fossil fuels changed after she “began reading books and news sources that strayed from the progressive party line, titles like Unsettled by Steve Koonin, Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger, and Fossil Future by Alex Epstein. I realized that the environmental causes I had so breathlessly championed were much more complicated than good versus evil.”

Notably, the titles that she cited and their authors – Koonin, Shellenberger and Epstein – frequently appear across right-wing media to downplay the climate crisis, disparage renewable energy, and/or promote fossil fuel use.

Similarly, in 2023, a former member of Extinction Rebellion UK penned a piece for The Free Press, “Climate Activism Has a Cult Problem,” in which the author argued that the climate action organization, known for controversial direct actions, is run by a cult leader.

The piece was published at a time when right-wing media hostility against climate activists was at a fever pitch and some right-wing media personalities were cheering on calls for violence against climate groups.

Conservative journalists like Bret Baier could undermine CBS’ leadership in climate coverage

For at least the last four years, CBS has led its broadcast counterparts in volume of climate coverage. In 2024, the network accounted for 50% of total broadcast TV news climate reporting – 381 minutes of 771 minutes across all three national broadcast networks. The network also led in the number of climate scientist guest appearances it aired and the number of segments it ran that discussed climate solutions.

Meanwhile, the climate denial that has for decades been a staple of Fox News opinion shows has also appeared on the so-called straight news program anchored by Bret Baier. Fox’s flagship Special Report has repeatedly softened or distorted the stakes of global warming and climate action. From 2009 through May 2021, more than 87%of its climate segments contained misinformation or misleading narratives.

More recently, Baier conducted a nearly 10-minute interview with Trump EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in which Baier promised a “fair” and “balanced” conversation. Instead, he helped the administration justify repealing the endangerment finding — potentially the most consequential climate rollback in modern history.

While Americans may be changing how they consume the news, legacy media and broadcast journalism at networks like CBS still matter, as the entire media landscape still relies on traditional journalism as part of the beginning of the information food chain. This includes how anchors report on extreme weather events, climate action, and scientific reports and findings. If CBS under Weiss approaches this reporting like the outlet she founded or like the anchor she seeks to poach, the network will risk becoming another cog in the machinery of climate denial and delay.

//

1. ### Trump celebrates CBS News’ new leadership as “the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press”

:{11/03/25

2. ### CBS Evening News fails to cover Trump's pardon of cryptocurrency executive with ties to Trump business venture

:{10/24/25

3. ### Bret Baier touts CBS News’ move toward “more balance” and “coverage that’s fair”

10/24/2

---

House Bill 6 Committee Activity | 133rd General Assembly | Ohio Legislature

grfs file:///C:/Users/patmc/Downloads/testimony_michaelshellenbergervisuals_ip.pdf

partic KIA? jobs

file:///C:/Users/patmc/Downloads/testimonybymichaelshellenberger.pdf

Testimony by Michael Shellenberger, energy and environmental policy analyst, Time

Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” President of Environmental Progress

June 12, 2019

Dear Mr. Chairperson, and members of the committee,

Thank you for accepting my testimony. I am happy to be back in Ohio to present it.

As background, I am a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book of the

Year winner, and president of Environmental Progress, an independent nonprofit

research organization.

I am here today because I am concerned by the threat that potential nuclear plant

closures pose to energy security and public health. Without its nuclear plants, the

people of Ohio will be more vulnerable to the increases in electricity prices and air

pollution that always occur whenever nuclear plant closes, from California and Vermont

to Germany and Japan.

Consider the danger of relying almost entirely on natural gas. “‘Heavy’ reliance on one

resource type, such as a resource portfolio composed of 86 percent natural gas-fired

resources... raises questions about electric system resilience,” the electricity market

operator PJM admitted in 2017.1

Historically, Ohio has suffered the highest number of premature deaths of any state

resulting from particulate matter from electricity generation. If Davis-Besse and Perry

close, they will be replaced overwhelmingly by coal and other fossil fuels, and

particulate matter pollution will increase.2

Electricity is not a market like a grocery store. If you go to the grocery store and there

are no apples, you can go next door. But if you are totally dependent on natural gas,

and price start going up and up, you can’t just go next door and buy a nuclear plant.

As such, to the extent there is a market for electricity, it isn’t free. Electricity, like

running water and cable television, is a “natural monopoly.” We don’t want many firms

competing to string up copper wire and so we allow monopolies to exist. In exchange,

we regulate them to make sure they don’t sacrifice lon

...

Testimony

Testimony

Testimony

Senate Committees

Testimony

Testimony

2019 aiken savannah river

the annual Edward Teller Lecture and Banquet, this year featuring Michael Shellenberger, the founder and president of Environmental Progress; and Atoms in the Alley, a family-friendly festival honoring the area's rich nuclear roots."

oversight 9 22 refs hansen

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-needs-nuclear-power-11554420097

About WSJ

    Opinion  Commentary

The Climate Needs Nuclear Power

If governors are serious about global warming, they’ll preserve this vital source of clean energy.

By James Hansen and Michael Shellenberger

April 4, 2019

[pix The Diablo Canyon nuclear-power plant in San Luis Obispo, Calif.Photo: Corbis via Getty Images

Many environmentalists have changed their minds about nuclear energy over the past decade. While the share of energy produced by solar and wind has grown rapidly, nuclear remains America’s largest source of clean, zero-emissions electricity. Anyone seriously interested in preventing dangerous levels of global warming should be advocating nuclear power.

But two-thirds of U.S. nuclear plants in the U.S. are at risk of being closed prematurely and replaced by natural-gas generation, which is currently cheaper in many states. If that happens, carbon emissions could increase by an amount equivalent to adding 47 million new cars to the road.

Ideally, the federal government would solve this problem, but between Republican skepticism of climate change and Democratic opposition to nuclear energy, that’s unlikely to happen before many nuclear-plant operators must decide whether to shut down. Thus the job of keeping these beleaguered nuclear plants open falls to state governments.

Lawmakers in Ohio and Pennsylvania are considering proposals to keep their nuclear plants operating. Ohio is at risk of losing two plants that produce 90% of its clean energy. Pennsylvania’s five nuclear plants produce nearly as much electricity as do all of America’s solar panels and farms. Nuclear accounts for 93% of the Keystone State’s clean, zero-emissions electricity. If Pennsylvania and Ohio’s nuclear plants close and are replaced by facilities that burn natural gas, it would be like adding 13.5 million new cars to the roads.

Nuclear plants can be saved through modest subsidies similar to the ones extended by lawmakers in Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York between 2016 and 2018. Those subsidies have been smaller than the federal subsidy that wind-energy generators have received for 27 years. In 2017 New York energy regulators gave nuclear power generators a subsidy of $17.34 per megawatt-hour. They also subsidized wind generators at $23 per megawatt-hour on top of the federal subsidy of $22 per megawatt-hour.

The fossil-fuel lobby’s objections to nuclear power are understandable. The American Petroleum Institute wants to replace Ohio’s and Pennsylvania’s nuclear plants with natural-gas plants because its members stand to benefit. But why do groups that claim to be concerned about the climate oppose nuclear power?

Some Democratic lawmakers in Pennsylvania and environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council are urging state legislators not to subsidize nuclear without increasing subsidies for solar and wind. While combining subsidies for nuclear with subsidies for wind and solar worked to get legislation passed in New York and Illinois in 2016, such an approach risks backfiring in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where state lawmakers are more fiscally conservative and tend to be skeptical of renewables.

Saving nuclear plants won’t be free, but keeping them open will keep electricity prices lower than if natural gas is allowed to dominate. Both Ohio and Pennsylvania still produce large amounts of electricity from coal, which is being replaced by natural gas. If both coal and nuclear plants are replaced by gas, ratepayers will be vulnerable to future price increases at the hands of monopolistic gas generators.

New York and California, meanwhile, are moving ahead with plans to close two nuclear plants. In the Empire State, Westchester County’s Indian Point will close in 2021 and, on the West Coast, San Luis Obispo’s Diablo Canyon will go offline in 2025. California is already set to miss its 2030 target of a 40% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels. If Diablo Canyon closes and half of its output is replaced by natural gas, there’s no way they’ll get there.

It is notable that while three natural-gas plants are being built to succeed Indian Point, local opposition to the construction of solar and wind farms has kept them from being built at anywhere near the rate necessary to replace the nuclear facility’s output.

We’ve been here before. Environmentalists promised that solar and wind would replace output from California’s San Onofre Generating Station, which closed in 2013, and the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant, which shut down the following year. Instead, they were replaced mostly by natural gas, and emissions rose in both states. At the rate Vermont is building new wind farms, it would take 474 years to match the electricity generation it lost from closing Vermont Yankee.

The problem isn’t only that nuclear plants generate far more electricity. It’s that solar and wind generate it only sporadically, which means they must be backed up by other sources of power 100% of the time. There is great hype about batteries, and using dams as pumped storage. But those solutions remain extremely expensive, which is why whenever nuclear plants close anywhere in the world, they are usually replaced by coal or natural-gas plants—not solar, not wind and not batteries.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The governors of California, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania can take actions to keep their nuclear plants operating. Governors in those states have in recent years urged more action out of Washington to address climate change. They’ll have far more credibility and influence if they first take action in their home states.

Mr. Hansen is a climate scientist and head of Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program at Earth Institute Columbia University. Mr. Shellenberger is president of Environmental Progress.

Appeared in the April 5, 2019, print edition as 'The Climate Needs Nuclear Power'.

===

How low can they go? Hansen, Shellenberger shilling for Exelon

Nuclear Monitor Issue:

#822

4553

21/04/2016

Michael Mariotte − President of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service

Article

While some potential legal challenges remain, the approval of the Exelon-Pepco merger by the Washington, D.C. Public Service Commission means that Exelon is now not only the largest nuclear powered utility in the U.S., it is the largest electric utility period. And with that steady stream of regulated, and non-nuclear, Pepco money filling its coffers, you'd think that Exelon's continuing "threats" to close up to three of its Illinois reactor sites unless it obtains more bailouts from beleaguered Illinois taxpayers and ratepayers would fall on deaf ears. Or maybe Exelon is now trying to achieve "too big to fail" status?

That Exelon's "threats" to close these reactors are considered by the utility – and its backers – threats at all is an indication of how perverse the discussion in Illinois is (and really, wherever Exelon operates, where such threats to close reactors without bailouts are commonplace). After all, these reactors (the single reactor at Clinton and the two-unit Quad Cities) are demonstrably uneconomic – they just can't compete with gas or wind, or solar for that matter. They also are aging and increasingly unsafe; the two Fukushima-clones at Quad Cities especially so, although Clinton too has a weak GE pressure suppression containment system.

And, given the large amount of wind power available to the region, and the potential for large amounts of solar power if Exelon didn't keep trying to shoot it down, they aren't needed for power supply reasons, nor to ensure low carbon emissions. Whatever of their power actually needs to be replaced, and it's not like Illinois is facing imminent power shortages, can be done so economically and quickly with renewables, efficiency and storage.

Enter the pro-nuke "environmentalists"

Enter the pro-nuke "environmentalists". Specifically, renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen and industry-oriented Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute came to Illinois in early April to weigh in on the Exelon bailout debate.¹ And no, they didn't support renewables or other clean energy technologies. They didn't question whether the nation's largest electric utility really needs to gouge Illinoisans for another $300 million to keep aging, money-losing reactors open. Their message was pretty simple: in an open letter to Illinois legislators they, and several dozen others (most of whom are long-standing nuclear advocates) urged them to "do everything in your power to keep all of Illinois's nuclear power plants running for their full lifetimes."

Sometimes Dr. Hansen just makes you wonder if he isn't undertaking some bizarre experiment to see how far he can undermine his own credibility before it all blows up in his face. Back in November 2013 he and three colleagues wrote an open letter to us nuclear opponents urging us to reconsider nuclear power.² It's worth going back and reading some of that letter:

"As climate and energy scientists concerned with global climate change, we are writing to urge you to advocate the development and deployment of safer nuclear energy systems," the letter began. It added, "We call on your organization to support the development and deployment of safer nuclear power systems as a practical means of addressing the climate change problem."

And this: "We understand that today's nuclear plants are far from perfect. Fortunately, passive safety systems and other advances can make new plants much safer."

Note the emphasis: Hansen is clearly talking about "safer" nuclear reactors. To be precise, he was seeking environmentalist support for development and deployment of Generation IV reactors. Which, to date, do not exist.

NIRS and Civil Society Institute organized a response, signed by 300+ organizations, to Hansen's letter explaining our continued opposition to nuclear power as a climate response and calling for a public debate on the issue.³ We never received a reply.

Now jump ahead to December 2015, just four months ago. Shortly before the Paris COP-21 climate talks, Hansen et. al. issued a new missive:

"Nuclear power, particularly next-generation nuclear power with a closed fuel cycle (where spent fuel is reprocessed), is uniquely scalable, and environmentally advantageous. Over the past 50 years, nuclear power stations – by offsetting fossil fuel combustion – have avoided the emission of an estimated 60bn tonnes of carbon dioxide. Nuclear energy can power whole civilizations, and produce waste streams that are trivial compared to the waste produced by fossil fuel combustion. There are technical means to dispose of this small amount of waste safely. However, nuclear does pose unique safety and proliferation concerns that must be addressed with strong and binding international standards and safeguards. Most importantly for climate, nuclear produces no CO2 during power generation."

While there is much to dispute in this paragraph, again note the emphasis on safety and "next-generation nuclear power" and continued acknowledgement of nuclear's "unique safety and proliferation concerns."

Fukushima-clone Quad Cities, which began operation in 1972, and Clinton, which began operation in 1987, clearly do not fall under the "safer" or "next-generation" nuclear memes. By endorsing not only their continued operation, but their continued operation enabled by forcing the people of Illinois to further line Exelon's pockets, Hansen has made a mockery of his earlier safety concerns and exposed himself as no different than any other Exelon-paid-for Nuclear Matters spokesperson.

Over the credibility cliff

But it gets worse, because by allying himself with the Breakthrough Institute's Shellenberger, Hansen has gone a step even further, a step right over the credibility cliff. Because as Midwest Energy News reported: "Shellenberger described next-generation technology as farther away from viability than he had previously hoped, and urged more focus on the nation's existing reactors. "How much safer could they be?" he said. "If you have nuclear plants that don't hurt anyone, keep running them."⁴

In other words, Shellenberger dismisses Hansen's support of Generation IV reactors in one phrase and argues in essence that because Fukushima hasn't happened yet at Quad Cities, well, hell, it never will; keep them running. But Fukushima did, in fact, happen. And there were supposed to have been lessons learned from that disaster. One of those is to be highly skeptical of GE Mark I nuclear reactor designs that are essentially identical to Fukushima, and that have been highly controversial even since their inception in the 1960s.

Thus, Hansen and Shellenberger (and the rest of the letter's signers, most of whom probably know little about the actual situation in Illinois)are now dismissing any pretense of caring about nuclear safety. For what? To enable Exelon, the largest electric utility in the nation, to gouge Illinoisans for another $300 million to keep open three aging, uneconomic and unsafe nuclear reactors, because of their low carbon emissions.

Arguing for environmentalists to consider Generation IV reactor technology was one thing. For many reasons, we rejected that approach and explained in detail why we did so, but at least it was a fair challenge. But actively working to prevent the shutdown of three reactors of 1960s nuclear technology under the pretense that it would matter for the climate is a leap too far. I hate to say it, but it is a leap so far that it brings into question Hansen's credibility on the far more important issues of his climate science generally. I have long trusted Hansen on climate issues; now, I am nervous about that. If he can be so wrong in Illinois, and so far removed from his own previous statements on nuclear safety, and seems willing to sell himself to the nation's largest, and quite possibly greediest, electric utility, well, how can I trust his other work?

I have been telling myself – and others – as Hansen's pro-nuclear statements have become more and more strident and outlandish over the past few years that, well, Hansen is a climate expert, not an energy expert, and there is a big difference between the two. That's still true, of course. But I'm having my doubts. Could some of his climate statements – that I'm not expert enough to evaluate the way I am expert enough to evaluate his nuclear statements – be as far removed from reality as his Illinois positions? Fortunately, there are a lot of other climate experts out there. I'll start listening more closely to them. And there are lots of real energy experts out there, but I already know them and I'll continue to listen to them. As for Hansen, I probably won't listen to him anymore on either subject.

As for Illinois, closing Clinton and Quad Cities would not only save its citizens' money and reduce the daily risk these dangerous reactors pose, it would help usher in substantial new clean energy investment, something the state desperately could use. That would be the kind of win-win situation – for the state and the climate, if not for Exelon – that the legislature hopefully will recognize.

Michael Mariotte regularly writes at the GreenWorld blog, http://www.safeenergy.org

References:

1. http://midwestenergynews.com/2016/04/05/climate-scientist-james-hansen-s...
2. www.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scientists-le...
3. http://safeenergy.org/2014/01/09/the-grassroots-response-to-dr-james-han...
4. http://midwestenergynews.com/2016/04/05/climate-scientist-james-hansen-s...

===

text

THE SCIENCE BEHIND IMPACTS OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS117th Congress (2021-2022)

House Committee Meeting

Committee:|House Science, Space, and Technology|

Related Items:|Data will display when it becomes available.|

Date:|03/12/2021|

Location:|Data will display when it becomes available.|

Website:|https://science.house.gov/

Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman,

Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of

Representatives................................................ 9

Written Statement............................................ 10

Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member,

Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of

Representatives................................................ 10

Written Statement............................................ 11

Witnesses:

Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, Albert G. Milbank Professor of

Geosciences and International Affairs, Princeton University

Oral Statement............................................... 13

Written Statement............................................ 16

Dr. Zeke Hausfather, Director of Climate and Energy, The

Breakthrough Institute

Oral Statement............................................... 36

Written Statement............................................ 38

Dr. Noah S. Diffenbaugh, Kara J. Foundation Professor, Department

of Earth System Science, Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow, Woods

Institute for the Environment, Stanford University

Oral Statement............................................... 76

Written Statement............................................ 78

Dr. Paula S. Bontempi, Dean, Graduate School of Oceanography,

Professor of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island

Oral Statement............................................... 88

Written Statement............................................ 91

Discussion....................................................... 101

...

TESTIMONY OF DR. ZEKE HAUSFATHER,

DIRECTOR OF CLIMATE AND ENERGY,

THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE

Dr. Hausfather. Thank you. Good morning, Chairwoman

Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, and Members of the Committee. My

name is Zeke Hausfather. I'm a climate scientist and Director

of Climate and Energy at The Breakthrough Institute.

In many ways 2020 was the year in which both climate

change and the accelerating energy transition became impossible

to ignore. On the climate front, we saw 2020 tie with 2016 as

the warmest year since records began, with global temperatures

of around 1.3 degrees Centigrade, or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit,

above temperatures of the late 1800's. Land areas, where we all

live, were nearly 2 degree Centigrade, or 3.6 degrees

Fahrenheit, warmer. We saw devastating wildfires in California

and Australia, extreme heat in Siberia, and the second lowest

level of Arctic sea ice ever observed, among other climate

extremes.

At the same time, the world has made substantial progress

in moving away from the worst-case outcomes of climate change

over the past decade. Rather than a 21st century dominated by

coal the energy modelers foresaw, global coal use peaked in

2013, and is now in structural decline. We have succeeded in

making clean energy cheap, with solar power and battery storage

costs falling tenfold since 2009, and the world has produced

more electricity from clean energy, solar, wind, hydro, and

nuclear, than from coal over the past 2 years. And according to

major oil companies, peak oil is soon upon us, not because we

have run out of cheap oil to produce, but because demand is

falling as consumers shift to electric vehicles (EVs).

Current policies adopted by countries today put us on

track for around 3 degrees Centigrade of warming by the end of

the century, compared to the late 1800's. Including pledges and

targets, such as those in the Paris agreement, brings us down

to 2.5 degrees Centigrade. We have seen a proliferation of

longer term decarbonization commitments in recent years, with

countries representing around half of global emissions,

including China, pledging to reach net zero by 2050 or 2060. If

these longer-term commitments are achieved, it would bring end

of century warming down close to the global target of 2 degrees

Centigrade.

Now, some caution is warranted here. Long term pledges

should be discounted until reflected in short term policy

commitments, and warming could well be notably higher or lower

than these best estimates, given scientific uncertainties

surrounding both the sensitivity of climate to our greenhouse

gas emissions and likely changes in the ability of the land and

oceans to absorb a portion of what we emit. CO2

accumulates in the atmosphere over time, and until emissions

reach net zero, the world will continue to warm. This is the

brutal math of climate change, and it means that full

decarbonization is not a matter of if, but when.

Cost declines in clean energy go a long way toward making

deep decarbonization more achievable at a lower cost than

appeared a decade ago. Low cost renewables can provide a

sizable share of our energy needs in modern grid integration

models. In the near term, however, America's cheap and abundant

supplies of natural gas will play a key role in filling in the

gaps as we buildup more wind and solar, and keep existing clean

energy sources, like nuclear, online.

In the longer term, there's a growing recognition of both

the need for complementary technologies, such as grid-scale

storage and long distance transmission, as well as clean firm

generation, like advanced nuclear, enhanced geothermal, and gas

with carbon capture and storage, to ultimately wean the system

off its dependence on natural gas. Studies have consistently

shown that low carbon power grids with a sizable portion of

clean, firm generation are a lower cost option than wind,

solar, and hydro alone. CO2 removal technologies

will also play an important role to offset the long tail of

hard to reduce emissions from sectors like aviation. The 2020's

is the decade to invest in maturing a range of technologies

that improve options for the long terms.

Debates around climate mitigation are often framed as a

choice between the technologies we have today and future

innovations. In reality, we need to do both, to deploy what is

cost-effective today, and to invest in the range of solutions

needed to tackle the hard to decarbonize parts of the economy.

The recent omnibus bill takes an important step in this

direction, authorizing billions of dollars for investments in

clean energy, vital energy R&D (research and development), and

grid modernization. It shows that there is real potential for

bipartisan energy solutions that both reduce emissions and

create jobs. If we want to ensure that the rest of the world

follows the U.S. lead in reducing CO2 emissions,

there is no better step we can take than making clean energy

technologies cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. Making

clean energy cheap can set the U.S. up to be a leader in

developing and selling these technologies to the rest of the

world, while building new industries, and creating jobs at

home.

Climate change impacts pose a serious threat to our way of

life, but are unlikely to lead to human extinction. However,

existential risks are an unnecessarily high bar to take action.

Nearly every other challenge we have dealt with in the past,

poverty, war, hunger, disease, did not literally threaten the

survival of our species. The impetus to mitigate climate change

is less about enabling humanity to survive, and more about

enabling it to thrive, and to leave our children a natural

world that, while far from untouched, is at least largely

intact. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Hausfather follows:]

[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

Chairwoman Johnson Thank you very much. We'll now hear

from Dr. Diffenbaugh.

...

bice

I'll start with Dr. Hausfather. Is it safe to say that

global economic development can rely on fossil fuel, at least

in the near term, but, in your opinion, when we're looking

toward the future, would it be better to give developing

countries money to combat climate change, or the technological

tools that we may be developing here in this country to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions?

Dr. Hausfather. So I think it is important to recognize

that we're not going to get rid of fossil fuels anytime in the

near future. But at the same time, there's sort of an order of

operations for fossil fuels, right? Coal is by far the most

carbon intensive, then comes oil, then comes natural gas. And

so if you look at the type of models that we developed that

look at how the globe might be carbonized, you see a transition

away from coal first, then away from oil, and then ultimately

away from natural gas.

As to your second question, you know, I think geothermal's

a really exciting area right now. You know, I think it's, in

many ways, in a similar position to where the fracking

revolution was 2 decades ago, and, you know, diamond drill

bits, which you mentioned in your opening, are actually playing

a huge role in unlocking enhanced geothermal today. And so this

is one of the type of technologies, you know, renewables are

obviously another, advanced nuclear is a third, where making

them cheap enough so that they can compete with fossil fuels on

the market is going to go a huge way to get them adopted by the

rest of the world. You know, direct support is important in

some occasions, particularly for adaptation health, but

ultimately, given the scale of the energy transition needed,

particularly in middle income countries like India and China,

it's making clean energy cheap that is the single biggest lever

we have to drive adoption and emission reductions by the rest

of the world.

Mrs. Bice. Anyone else like to comment on that?

Dr. Diffenbaugh. Yeah, I would add that--go ahead,

Professor Oppenheimer.

Dr. Oppenheimer. Quickly, I'd just like to add, you know,

I actually agree with Dr. Hausfather said, with the caveat

that--be careful with the ordering of fossil fuels. They all

have problems, and in particular, unless the leaks of natural

gas due to drilling, transmission, and distribution are

eliminated, then the benefits of using natural gas for

greenhouse gas emissions reduction are largely eroded.

...

via drilled

**the New Denial Is Delay**

How an attempt to revolutionize the environmental movement became a push to delay action on climate change.

By Paul D. Thacker

In October 2004, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, the founders of a scrappy Bay Area think tank called The Breakthrough Institute, published “The Death of Environmentalism,” an essay that argued the environmental movement had failed. To knock back critics, the duo constantly underlined their environmental credentials and years of experience providing public relations advice to green groups like the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council.

Seeking to define themselves as different from run-of-the-mill climate skeptics, Shellenberger told a reporter around that time, “We’re not like Bjorn Lomborg or whatever.” Lomborg, of course, is the Danish climate contrarian best known for the fact-challenged book Cool It and, more recently, False Alarm.

A few years after seeking to differentiate the Breakthrough Institute from Lomborg, Shellenberger joinedthe Danish writer on a panel at Brown University, where both urged more tempered rhetoric on climate change. As reported by the Brown Daily Herald, Shellenberger argued that climate change experts dismissed him and Lomborg because policy experts did not allow for their “alternative voices.”

[janus forum pix]

More than a decade later, Shellenberger has left the Breakthrough Institute, but little else has changed. Both Shellenberger and Lomborg have released new books—as in the past, experts immediately savaged them. In a review at Yale 360, Pacific Institute emeritus president Peter Gleick wrote, “Bad science and bad arguments abound in 'Apocalypse Never' by Michael Shellenberger.” Taking a pickaxe to Lomborg’s book False Alarm, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote in the New York Times, “This book proves the aphorism that a little knowledge is dangerous. It’s nominally about air pollution. It’s really about mind pollution.”

--

A decade after theBreakthrough Institute burst on the scene firing shots at Big Green, Shellenberger followed Sierra Club president Mike Brune onto the stage for Brainstorm Green, Fortune Magazine’s 2014 conference for environmental leaders. After opening remarks from Brune, dressed the part of an environmental nonprofit boss in boring suit and tie, Shellenberger stepped up to the podium in slacks and a fitted shirt—uniform-ready to host an inspiring Ted Talk.

He then proceeded to berate Brune for failing to offer real solutions to climate change.

By this point, Shellenberger no longer felt the need to namecheck his environmental roots before launching a missile at Big Green. He recounted how, in contrast to Brune and his ineffective Sierra Club, he and Breakthrough co-founder Ted Nordhaushad successfully lobbied for the New Apollo Project, a coalition advocating for cleantech and renewable energy. Shellenberger added that the New Apollo later convinced the Obama administration to put $150 billion into a stimulus bill.

After leaving the podium, Shellenberger sat down next to Brune to continue the debate. Brune then punched back, “We operate differently from your Breakthrough Institute. We are not a think tank; we are a group that gets results...on the ground.”

With a grin and a shrug,, “We had pretty good results with the stimulus, actually.”

The sparring was vintage Breakthrough: tiny, Left Coast think tank smacks down Big Environment for sclerotic thinking and green solutions less palatable than last week’s stale, organic, whole grain muffins. Also standard: Shellenberger’s Apollo parable relied on a string of selective facts, loudly paraded onto stage for political theater.

Started in the early 2000s, the Apollo Alliance banded together dozens of labor unions and green groups in a coalition that advocated for federal funding to advance technologies and create jobs for clean energy. Members included everyone from the NAACP, SEIU, Greenpeace, Tides Foundation, League of Conservation Voters, and the AFL-CIO. Anyone who was anyone began adopting Apollo-like rhetoric, including Bill Clinton, and The Nationeditor and publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel. Not surprisingly, a founding board memberof Apollo was the Sierra Club’s executive director, which makes it odd that Shellenberger would try to seize sole credit for the coalition’s purported success, let alone use it against Brune.

In reality, Nordhaus and Shellenberger were two of the many, many people that helped get the coalition off the ground. And in 2005, nearly a decade before that public spat with Brune, Shellenbergerannounced that he had left Apollo over disagreements with members. In a recent interview with Drilled,Shellenberger put it more bluntly: “I was shitcanned from Apollo over ‘Death of Environmentalism.’”

Despite that happening more than fifteen years ago, Shellenberger still references his time with the Apollo Alliance when plugging his tale as a hero to save the planet from climate change. In January 2020, for example, when he testified before the House Science Committee, Shellenberger noted “In 2003 I co-founded the Apollo Alliance to advocate for a Green New Deal, which we called a ‘New Apollo Project.’” He added that Obama’s stimulus (passed in 2009) funded many Apollo proposals for renewables, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles.

In speaking with Drilled, Shellenberger claimed to have had a hand in that stimulus as well, after meeting with Obama’s policy team. “And the Obama people, they got it right away,” Shellenberger said. “And then the rest is history. They basically were like, ‘Yeah, we want to do a big investment in clean energy.’ And that was the stimulus investment.”

A recently retired Hill staffer, who did not want his name in the media, said he worked for decades on appropriations for the House but never heard of the Breakthrough Institute. He wondered how Shellenberger—or anyone—could claim personal credit for passing billions of dollars in renewable energy policy with just one or two meetings, when the Hill is swarming with professional lobbyists working around the clock.

“He’s constantly reinventing his story to build the appearance of power and access,” said Kert Davies, who spent 13 years at Greenpeace examining energy policy, before founding the Climate Investigations Center in 2013. Davies said he first met Shellenberger in the early 2000s, when Shellenberger was vying to get a communications contract with Greenpeace.  “He takes credit for things [that happened] years after he was boosted from the Apollo Alliance. He can say whatever he wants, and it’s all vapor because the organization is now gone.”

“They aren’t players up here on the Hill,” a Democratic Committee staffer said of The Breakthrough Institute. This staffer has spent almost two decades in Congress working on environmental and climate change policy but is not authorized to speak to the media. “They spend most of their time shooting spitballs at mainstream environmental organizations and that makes them a bright, shiny object to some journalists.”

Nonetheless, when Nordhaus and Shellenberger flew from California to Washington in 2009 to discuss climate policy, NPR interviewed them outside the Senate Dirksen Office Building, and reported their funder Peter Teague’s claims that President Obama had adopted Breakthrough’s “language and visionary rhetoric.”

--

Jockeying to position themselves as the smart, thoughtful adults on environmental policy is core to the Breakthrough model, and to Shellenberger's approach post-Breakthrough as well, along with constant bashing of “Big Environment.” In 2005, after Greenpeace created the website Exxon Secrets to track the oil company’s funding for climate change disinformation, Mother Jones published a sprawling investigationdetailing how Exxon was throwing buckets of cash at forty organizations that attacked the scientific consensus on climate....

https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/how-much-radiation-is-too-much

How Much Radiation Is Too Much?

An Interview with Edward Calabrese

Apr 20, 2016

Everyone knows that the dose is critical when you are taking a prescription medication: a small amount can provide significant benefit, but a large dose can kill you. This “non-linear” effect is taken for granted in pharmaceuticals, but is not generally adopted for regulating the risks of radiation. Dr. Edward Calabrese is a professor and toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Department of Environmental Health Sciences. He has spent his career studying non-linear effects in different carcinogens. From hundreds of studies, he has concluded that radiation should be treated more like pharmaceuticals, and regulators needs to change how they think about radiation risks and harm.

What’s the history of the linear-no-threshold, or LNT, framework, and how did it come to be the standard?

The rise of LNT theory was really the result of a political motivation by a group of radiation geneticists. I’m sure they believed that dose response was linear, but they also wanted to scare the hell out of society to increase their stature and grant funding for their research, and they wanted people to think they were the only ones who could save the world from the harms of atomic weapons testings, etc. It was a paternalistic behavior.

We know it’s the dose that makes the poison, but is it also the dose that makes the benefit? Or are some substances simply benign or have no effect at low doses?

It depends on how you define “low” and how you define “benign.” Essentially everything has a dose response relationship, meaning everything is harmful at high enough doses, but then we get into some complexity. A lot of things are essential, like minerals and vitamins, and it may well be that radiation is essential at low doses. Most agents are going to be toxic at high doses, but we’ve found that most agents have a biphasic relationship.

How do regulatory bodies like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or International Atomic Energy Agency set dose limits for radiation?

They have a long history, and they make use of their long history. When you regulate carcinogens, you assume that the dose response in linear. If it’s a non-cancer endpoint, you assume there’s a threshold. If you’re dealing with radiation, you have much more stringent controls. The buy-in to linear dose response has a huge effect on industry. And this decision to go linear, which was made in the 1950s, was the most impactful environmental regulatory change in the modern world.

What’s the evidence that LNT is not the right model, can you give a concrete example?

From 1985 on, I began to study this and tried to take a look at alternative models, including the hormetic dose response model,which was marginalized and neglected. I found that this phenomenon occurs quite widely. The EPA’s default models, for example, are arbitrary. Numerous studies are cited in my publications that support the hormesis model. The reader simply has to read the literature and get educated. While this is not an easy exercise, it is necessary in order to understand the breadth and significance of the hormesis database and its impact on toxicology and risk assessment. Such an assessment will show that the hormesis phenomenon is far more common than previously recognized and outcompetes the LNT and threshold models in head-to-head competition. This is documented in the peer-reviewed literature.

How do you determine the threshold between beneficial and harmful?

You have to do this through study, and that’s what we’ve done. There’s a lot of historical clinical research that does exist which we have now summarized and evaluated in the biomedical literature. If people wanted to use this, the dosages are pretty well worked out. This country needs to overcome its often irrational fear of radiation to take a more informed approach to exposure and use the newly assessed information for clinical benefit.

What’s been the experience of others who had tried to replicate your results?

I have a long experience conducting my own lab experiments. But I have also done a large amount of research assimilating the work of others. My laboratory work is very replicable. In the general world of hormesis, these studies are more challenging than most. In the traditional work of toxicology, you’re looking for the dose that produces harm. In hormesis, the beneficial effects are very constrained. You have to have enough doses and replications of your findings to ensure that your results are reproducible and real.

If regulators shifted from relying on an LNT model to a hormetic dose model, how much would limits actually change?

Getting rid of regulations based on the LNT theory would result in an increase in the acceptable dosage by at least several hundred fold. And that would have a huge impact. This would have a positive effect on human health as well as save billions and billions and billions of dollars. The regulatory agencies are kind of a cult, but they don’t know they’re part of a cult.

One challenge with low dose radiation, is that certain radioisotopes accumulate in the food supply or in certain organs. If we had higher limits for radio-isotope releases, would we need to pair that with better monitoring of food or personal doses, making sure that individuals don’t exceed the threshold and go into high dose range?

Well, I think that that would be true. They’d have to look at every situation. The optimal dose is very close to the level where it crosses over into being harmful. And there are personal differences as well, what’s optimal for you might be different for another person. But it’s an important challenge, you have to solve the problem differently now. We can’t just keep saying “lower is always better.”

For vaccines we know the mechanism for how they work, what’s the mechanism for the benefits of low-dose radiation.

Our understandings of hormetic mechanisms in the last decade have really exploded. We’ve learned a lot about signaling pathways and so many different components for the mechanisms have been identified. I can’t say that the mechanisms are fully understood, but we can tell which receptor and cell signaling pathways are involved in mitigating or promoting a certain effect.

Finally, it seems like there has been some movement at NRC to revisit and maybe revise LNT, have you been involved in this effort and what’s your prognosis?

I submitted comments during the review process. I never thought I’d live to see the day where a regulatory agency would take our efforts seriously. I hoped they would, but I never imagined it would happen. They opened it up for four months of comments. I read all of them, most comments weren’t serious. About 60% of those that were serious were in support of the change. There’s little question that the science is on the hormesis side. You know, we use hormesis in the whole pharmaceutical industry, and if the NRC is taking any of these medical drugs they are already relying on hormetic science.

Jessica Lovering

Jessica Lovering is a Fellow at Energy for Growth. She was the Director of Energy at Breakthrough.

===

==

7/20 stewart brand

https://thebreakthrough.org/about/who-we-are/senior-fellows

pamela ronald gmo uci

===

720

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-medias-favorite-climate-contrarians-go-fox-shows-bash-bidens-climate-plan

ted mcD

Climate contrarians Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg both got airtime on Fox shows this week to attack Joe Biden’s recent climate plan and promote their new books, which similarly downplay the seriousness of the climate crisis. This claim is wrong, of course, and plays right into the hands of the right-wing media which is all too eager to use their message to delay necessary climate action.

On July 14, Environmental Progress founder Shellenberger appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight to discuss Biden’s new climate plan. With his recent book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All in the background behind him, Shellenberger falsely accused renewable energy of being costly and inefficient, lamented why natural gas and nuclear power weren’t taken seriously by the Biden campaign, and accused “United Nations officials and some scientists” of wanting to “control energy and food production around the world.”

On July 15, Danish political scientist Lomborg appeared on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. to discuss Biden’s new climate plan and to promote his new book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.He called Biden’s plan “a very poor deal” that is “phenomenally expensive,” stated that “we need to get out of this ‘it’s the end of the world’ sense” on climate change, and promoted continued investment in research and development of new energy technologies as the sensible solution to climate change.

On July 16, Lomborg appeared on Fox Business’ Making Money with Charles Payne. He referred to Biden’s climate plan as “a phenomenally large cost for not very much benefit” and dismissed dire climate claims, stating that “we've been so force-fed with all these stories that are a little true and a lot of false.”

Shellenberger is a pro-nuclear advocate who has a history of criticizing renewable energy, singing the praises of natural gas, and pushing contrarian and bad-faith views about the environmental movement. He’s espoused deliberately misleading claims on recent issues including the Amazon fires of 2019 and the recent Australia wildfires. Similarly, Lomborg has his own history of downplaying the dangers of climate change. As Media Matters wrote last year, he’s “been long discredited within the climate science community,” including being “caught downplaying the risks of sea level rise and even misrepresenting Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.” His claim to fame, the book The Skeptical Environmentalist, was so riddled with errors that a Danish government committee found him guilty of “scientific dishonesty,” and a website was created specifically to debunk these errors.

Neither of these individuals, of course, are climate scientists.

Their appearances on Fox shows, which have been notorious purveyors of climate misinformation, were the culmination of a slew of op-eds and appearances by Shellenberger and Lomborg in various right-wing media outlets. Although their arguments have been picked apart by actual climate experts, that won’t stop right-wing media from using their works to continue pushing for delay on climate action.

Both books are being heavily promoted by climate deniers and right-wing media

Shellenberger has claimed, “No book on the environment has ever been praised by a more prestigious group of scientists & scholars than ‘Apocalypse Never.’” However, a look at the discourse surrounding his book showed that the praise largely came from climate skeptics within right-wing media.

In the days before and after the release of his book on June 29, climate denier and Fox News staple Marc Moranopraised Shellenberger, lumping Apocalypse Never, in with another set of contrarian climate works as “A Winning Trifecta for Climate Science & Rationality.”

The conservative, climate-denying Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) shared an op-ed Shellenberger wrote for Forbes that teased some of the arguments made in the book -- the article has since been taken down by Forbes due to violating its standards of self-promotion (and not, as Shellenberger has claimed, due to censorship). 

The climate-denying CO2 Coalition also tweeted in support of his new book.

Breitbartwrote an article on it, and noted how Shellenberger “issued a public apology for the unfounded panic caused by environmentalists over the fabricated horrors of global warming.” This was followed by a fawning profile of Shellenberger’s claims by James Delingpole, who has called climate change “the biggest scam in the history of the world.”

Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist with white supremacist ties, called Shellenberger’s book “really a big deal.” The Daily Wire republished an excerpt of his since-deleted Forbes article in which, “on behalf of environmentalists,” he apologizes for the “climate scare.”

Zero Hedge, whose recent climate screeds have included “Global Warming Fraud Exposed In Pictures” and “Climate Change is real, but its manufactured. Weather is the new battlefield,” also tweeted about Forbes’ removal of Shellenberger’s piece. Finally, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who recently and falsely claimed that “the data are mixed” on climate change, tweeted a Wall Street Journal review that praised Shellenberger’s book, calling it “worth reading.”

Prior to appearing on Fox News, Shellenberger made the conservative media rounds, appearing on Glenn Beck’s right-wing, * podcast, the Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia, and the podcast of The Heartland Institute, a group that has “been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.”

Lomborg’s book, published roughly two weeks after Shellenberger’s, has also run the right-wing media gamut. He published op-eds in both the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal. His book has been promoted by The Epoch Times, nihilistic Trump defender Scott Adams, and Climate Depot’s Morano. He conducted an interview with uber-conservative radio host and major climate misinformer Dennis Prager on July 16, and he is scheduled to discuss his book on July 23 with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group with a long history of fossil-fuel backed climate denial.

Actual experts have thoroughly debunked Shellenberger and Lomborg’s arguments

Shellenberger’s Forbes article was admonished by seven climate scientists at Climate Feedback, which bills itself as “a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage.” They referred to many of Shellenberger’s claims as “inaccurate” and made “in support of a misleading and overly simplistic argumentation about climate change.” Climate scientist Peter Gleick reviewed Shellenberger’s book for Yale Climate Connections, calling it “bad science and bad arguments,” and noted its propensity for “strawman arguments, cherry-picking facts, and ad hominem attacks on scientists, media, others.”

Lomborg’s book was given a scathing review in The New York Times by Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz,noting the “many contradictions within the book” and taking to task his “underestimation of the damage associated with climate change.” (Indeed, during Lomborg’s appearances on both Varney & Co.and *Making Money with Charles Payne*, he did not once mention the cost of inaction on climate change, which is estimated to be many trillions of dollars -- much greater than actually taking action.) The Times’ review closed by saying “Lomborg’s work would be downright dangerous were it to succeed in persuading anyone that there was merit in its arguments.”

Unfortunately, climate deniers within right-wing media are all too eager to use these false arguments to contradict the prevailing scientific consensus: Bold and immediate climate action is necessary if we want to maintain a livable climate.

These false claims play right into the hands of those who want to delay climate action

The arguments made by Lomborg and Shellenberger -- who both identify themselves as environmentalists and acknowledge the reality of man-made climate change -- represent a very insidious form of climate skepticism. Doubting the urgency of climate change is one of the three main themes of spreading climate misinformation.

Shellenberger here is just following in the footsteps of Lomborg, who has been at this schtick for years (and making a lot of money in the process). But Shellenberger’s case is particularly egregious because he took the authority to speak on behalf of the entire environmental movement. By painting himself as some sort of reformed environmentalist, he gains a lot of credibility and legitimacy with his readers who either outright deny climate change or are skeptical about it in the first place.

In fact, Shellenberger’s book was explicitly tailored for climate skeptics -- as journalist and meteorologist Eric Holthaus pointed out, Shellenberger’s publicist admitted that the book’s purpose was to get “people to think of climate change as a ‘100 year problem’ not a ‘10 year problem.’” Obviously, climate change is a serious problem that needs to be taken care of right now -- to argue otherwise is to encourage inaction on the issue.

By appearing on Fox to promote their books, they are just showing who their true audience really is -- those who want to kick the can down the road and avoid taking necessary action to address climate change.

==

==

1/2018

http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission

Environmental Progress has requested the U.S. Department of Justice take over from the California Department of Justice the investigation of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for possible criminal activities relating to the closure of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).

More than 18 months have passed since California’s Attorney General assured a reporter that the investigation had not stalled; it is now abundantly clear that it has.

Letter can be downloaded (PDF),and full text of the letter follows:

January 10, 2018

The Honorable Alex G. Tse

Acting U.S. Attorney, Northern District of California

Federal Courthouse, 11th Floor

450 Golden Gate Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94102

Dear Mr. Tse:

I am writing as president of Environmental Progress, a not-for-profit (501c3) research and policy organization, to respectfully request the expediting of the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation of a possible criminal conspiracy at California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and its separation from the investigation underway by the California Department of Justice.

In November 2014, agents with the U.S. DOJ and California DOJ raided the offices of the CPUC in a joint investigation of potential criminal activities relating to the permanent closure of, and settlement proceedings for, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).

More than 18 months have passed since California’s Attorney General assured a reporter that the investigation had not stalled; it is now abundantly clear that it has.[[1]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_edn1)

Since the announcement, a new Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown.  Mr. Becerra has never stood for election, but instead owes his position to a possible person-of-interest in DOJ’s investigation, has not recused himself due to conflict-of-interest, and has, as best we can tell, stopped investigating.

Additional urgency to separate DOJ’s investigation comes from the fact thatCPUC will likely vote this week to approve another settlement for the closure of yet another nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon,after years of private negotiations involving Pacific Gas & Electric, top advisors to Gov. Brown, including the former head of the California Energy Commission, and Brown appointee, John Geesman, and Lt. Gov. Newsom.[[2]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_edn2)

We still have no resolution with respect to the CPUC’s refusal to turn over 60 or more emails from Governor Brown’s office to the CPUC relating to the closure of SONGS.  During the timeframe of the SONGS settlement, CPUC’s then-president communicated regularly with current CPUC President Michael Picker.

Mr. Picker, at the time of the privately-negotiated SONGS settlement, was working as an advisor to Governor Brown.[[3]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_edn3) According to the San Diego Union Tribune, in July 2013, both former President Peevey and current President Picker attended a three-hour post-San Onofre “strategy dinner,” and Commissioner Picker was on Gov. Brown’s “loss of SONGS task force.”[[4]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_edn4)

The Associated Press and San Diego Union Tribune reported that CPUC ”opposed providing records to investigators as required by three different search warrants approved in 2015 and 2016”:

Commission lawyers argued that prosecutors failed to properly serve the warrants — even though they agreed to the process in advance."Here, the CPUC has engaged in inequitable conduct, by insisting upon a method of execution of a search warrant and now claiming that execution was improper," Judge William C. Ryan wrote in a ruling last year that was unsealed this week. "The Attorney General relied upon CPUC's promise that it would comply with the warrant if served in the manner agreed upon."[[5]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_edn5)

California’s institutions have proved themselves unwilling to root out possible criminal activity.

a.     In 2014, a group of CPUC attorneys publicly warned that their colleagues may have been destroying evidence relating to another criminal investigation of CPUC relating to a Pacific Gas & Electric natural gas explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people.[[6]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_edn6)

b.    The California legislature passed legislation to reform the CPUC in August 2016, but it was killed at the last minute by CPUC President Picker, according to reports by the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union Tribune. The legislation would have allowed for the Superior Court to review decisions when regulators refuse California Public Records Act requests, as the CPUC did regarding email exchanges with President Picker while he was working on behalf of the Governor.[[7]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_edn7)

c.     A state Superior Court highlighted the public interest in the email correspondence when it ruled the CPUC should have to justify why it would not release emails. Judge Ernest Goldsmith made a strongly worded call for CPUC to disclose Picker’s SONGS correspondence first in November 2015 and again in January 2016. In November, 2015, Judge Goldsmith wrote:

i.         This is a big deal. This is not a trivial issue to the taxpayers of California. And just like the San Bruno events [natural gas explosion that killed eight people] were not a trivial deal, and when something is big enough, it’s just got to come out. It’s going to come out, and it’s either going to be horribly painful, or you can just do the right thing.[[8]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_edn8)

d.    In January 2016, Judge Goldsmith wrote:

i.         Withholding records of allegedly ex parte secret deals resulting in shifting $3.3 billion of utility losses to ratepayers cannot possibly be a regulatory function of the PUC. It is not realistic that the Legislature intended that [Public Utilities Code] Sec. 1759 should be invoked to insulate PUC officials accused of corruption from public scrutiny. (…) The core value of a democracy is the right of citizens to know the actions of public officials.[[9]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_edn9)

In such circumstances, when a state’s political establishment refuses to act in the public interest, it is incumbent upon the U.S. Department of Justice to do so.

We strongly encourage you to take swift and strong action to investigate, independent of the California Attorney General, and bring charges, if criminal activity is found, against all culpable parties.

Sincerely,

Michael Shellenberger

President

cc:

The Honorable Jeff Sessions

Attorney General of the United States

United States Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20530-0001

[[1]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_ednref1) Jeff McDonald, “AG Says CPUC Probe Hasn’t Stalled,” San Diego Union Tribune, May 14, 2016.

[[2]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_ednref2) Office of Gavin Newsom, “Lt. Governor Newsom orders review of California’s nuclear and energy future, http://www.ltg.ca.gov/news.2015.12.18_DiabloCanyon.html

[[3]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_ednref3) Jeff McDonald, “Aguirre Pushing for Brown’s Emails,” San Diego Union-Tribune, November 13, 2015.

[[4]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_ednref4)  Jeff McDonald, “San Onofre Plan Details Under Scrutiny,” San Diego Union-Tribune, March 14, 2015.

[[5]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_ednref5) Associated Press, Utility Regulators Used Private Lawyers to Challenge Probe

[[6]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_ednref6) Tony Kovaleski, Liz Wagner and Felipe Escamilla, “Attorneys Suggest Evidence Isn’t Safe at CPUC Amid Federal Investigation,”NBC News, Bay Area, Oct 16, 2014. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Attorneys-Suggest-Evidence-Isnt-Safe-at-CPUC-Amid-Federal-Investigation-279510462.html

[[7]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_ednref7) Jeff McDonald, “2 PUC Reform Proposals Die, Emails Will Stay Secret,” San Diego Union-Tribune, September 1, 2016. Melanie Mason, “Brown vetoes transparency bills for troubled commission, “ Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2015.

[[8]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_ednref8) Jaxon Van Derbeken, “Judge: Regulator should release Brown emails on nuclear plant shutdown,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 2015.

[[9]](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/10/environmental-progress-urges-us-justice-department-action-against-corrupt-california-public-utility-commission#_ednref9)  Jeff McDonald, “Judge Calls for Review of Emails,” San Diego Union Tribune, January 15, 2016.

==

404 debate on parks scu

https://web.archive.org/web/20170418162031/https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/debates/conservation-in-the-anthropocene-a-breakthrough-debate

==

shillenberger update chernoble, green cause extinction?! forbes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/#7054f47b1b8a

==

anti-agroecology. pro GMO

https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/synthetic-fertilizer-infographic

===

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/07/agroecology-as-innovation.html

Agroecology as Innovation

Posted on July 18, 2019 by Yves Smith

By Timothy A. Wise, a Senior Researcher on the Land and Food Rights Program at Small Planet Institute and a researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. He is the author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (New Press, 2019). Originally published at Triple Crisis

Recently, the High Level Panel of Experts of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released its much-anticipated report on agroecology. The report signals the continuing shift in emphasis in the UN agency’s approach to agricultural development. As outgoing FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva has indicated, “We need to promote a transformative change in the way that we produce and consume food. We need to put forward sustainable food systems that offer healthy and nutritious food, and also preserve the environment.Agroecology can offer several contributions to this process.”

The commissioned report, “Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition.” Two years in the making, the report makes clear the urgent need for change. “Food systems are at a crossroads. Profound transformation is needed,” the summary begins. It stresses the importance of ecological agriculture, which supports “diversified and resilient production systems, including mixed livestock, fish, cropping, and agroforestry, that preserve and enhance biodiversity, as well as the natural resource base.”

It is not surprising, of course, that those with financial interests in the current input-intensive systems are responding to growing calls for agroecology with attacks on its efficacy as a systematic approach that can sustainably feed a growing population. What is surprising is that such responses are so ill-informed about the scientific innovations agroecology offers to small-scale farmers who are being so poorly served by “green revolution” approaches....

==

open letter 2

Open Letter to Heads of Government of the G-20 from Scientists and Scholars on Nuclear for Climate Change

October 25, 2018

President Emmanuel Macron

President of the French Republic

55 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré

75008 Paris, France

CC:

Prime Minister Mark Rutte

President Mauricio Macri

The Honourable Scott Morrison

His Excellency Michel Miguel Elias Temer Lulia

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau

President Xi Jinping

His Excellency Donald Tusk

Chancellor Angela Merkel

Prime Minister Narendra Modi

President Joko Widodo

President Sergio Mattarella

His Excellency Shinzo Abe

President Enrique Peña Nieto

President Vladimir Putin

King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

His Excellency Cyril Ramaphosa

President Moon Jae-in

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

The Right Honourable Theresa May

President Donald Trump

Dear President Macron,

We are writing as scientists, scholars, and concerned citizens to warn you of a persistent anti-nuclear bias in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reporton keeping global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.[1]

While many of the scenarios in the IPCC report call for the expanded use of nuclear energy, the report nonetheless repeats misinformation about nuclear energy, contrasts nuclear negatively to renewables, and in some cases, suggests an equivalency with fossil fuels.

While IPCC authors note that public fears of nuclear are an obstacle to its diffusion, in several instances they reinforce unfounded fears.Please consider the following:

Nuclear is the safest way to make reliable electricity[2] and has saved over 1.8 million lives that would have been lost prematurely to deadly air pollution.[3]

Nuclear plants produce just 12 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour (kWh) as compared to coal plants, natural gas plants, biomass plants, and solar farms which produce 820, 490, 230, and 48 grams of CO2/kWh, respectively, as used in the IPCC’s own publications.[4]

Of humankind’s exposure to ionizing radiation, 88% comes from natural causes and 12% from human-made causes with just 0.04% from nuclear plant emissions.[5]

The increased risk of mortality from living in a large city, where concentrations of air pollution are high, is 2.8 times greater than the increased risk of mortality for Chernobyl clean-up workers who received the highest levels of radiation exposure.[6]

There is a consensus among leading radiation scientists that nobody should have been relocated after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi because the evacuation caused far more harm than the radiation that escaped from the plant could have.[7]

Because uranium has an energy density one to three million times higher than coal, nuclear plants require the fewest fuel and material inputs, giving them the smallest mining and land use impact of all energy sources.[8]

While nuclear provided 11% of electricity globally last year, solar and wind provided only 1.3% and 3.9%.[9]

Because of their inherently intermittent nature, solar and wind energy sources rarely substitute on a one-to-one basis for fossil fuels and must be backed up by fossil fuels, hydroelectric dams, or some other form of large-scale storage.[10]

The peak deployment of nuclear energy around the world has occurred more than 10 times faster than the peak deployment of solar and wind, according to a 2016 study published in the journal Science.[11]

The above facts are crucial for putting the role of nuclear in context and yet were either not included in the IPCC report or were insufficiently highlighted.

Moreover, in several instances IPCC authors make misleading claims about nuclear power including:

An alleged debunking of the above-mentioned 2016 study in Science through the use of a 2018 study published in a journal[12] with an impact factor of just 10 percent of that of Science;

The suggestion that building new nuclear plants must be a slow process[13] despite evidence from the recent past that nuclear capacity can be installed very rapidly when required[11];

A statement[14] suggesting a connection between “nuclear installations” and “childhood leukemia,” and no mention of recent research finding higher radiation exposure from coal plants and the manufacturing of solar panels than from nuclear.[15] While the authors acknowledge that there is “low evidence/low agreement” to support their claim, in reality there is no valid evidentiary support for it and the supposed connection has been thoroughly dismissed in the literature[16];

A claim that nuclear power “can increase the risks of proliferation”[17] and that the "use of nuclear power poses a constant risk of proliferation"[18] even though no nation in history has ever created a nuclear weapon from civilian nuclear fuel under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency;

A claim that nuclear has “mixed effects for human health when replacing fossil fuels,”[19] which is contradicted by the large body of scientific research, cited above, showing that nuclear saves lives;

Repeated concerns raised about nuclear waste[20] without acknowledgment or clarification that spent fuel is safely contained, usually on site, nor any mention of the waste from other low-carbon energy sources, including solar panels, which contain toxic metals including lead, chromium, and cadmium, and which in most of the world lack safe storage or recycling.[21]

Such fear-mongering about nuclear has serious consequences. As IPCC itself acknowledges, public fears of nuclear are behind the technology’s slower-than-desirable development.[22] Equally troubling, public fear of nuclear drove the panicked over-reaction to past nuclear accidents, including mass evacuations, which health experts agree had a far larger negative impact on human health than the low-levels of radiation that escaped from the plants.[23]

Where nuclear has proven capable of providing cheap and reliable zero-carbon power to large modern economies from France to Canada to Sweden, solar and wind, which IPCC treat more favorably, have not, in large measure because they require a constant source of back-up energy. And where IPCC report authors offer “policy interventions” to mitigate the challenges of scaling up solar and wind, they do not offer similar policy interventions for nuclear.

While we are gravely disappointed by the double standard with which the IPCC treated nuclear and other low-carbon energy sources, we are hopeful that you, as the head of state of a large modern economy, can rectify such misinformation through your words and actions.

We strongly encourage you to do everything in your power to speak out for nuclear and expand its share of electricity production, heating, and transport, including shipping production, to achieve the intertwined goals of climate change mitigation, pollution reduction, and poverty alleviation.

Signed,

NOT HANSEN

Tom Wigley, Climate and Energy Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado

Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

David Lea, Professor, Earth Science, University of California

Barry Brook, Professor of Environmental Sustainability, University of Tasmania

Paul Robbins, Director, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Richard Rhodes, author, Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Gerry Thomas, Professor of Molecular Pathology, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London

Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management, University of Bristol

Wade Allison, Professor Emeritus of Physics, Oxford University

Joe Lassiter, Professor, Harvard Business School

Peter H. Raven, President Emeritus, Missouri Botanical Garden. Winner of the National Medal of Science, 2001

Andrew Klein, Past President, American Nuclear Society

MarkLynas,Alliance for Science, Cornell University, author, The God Species, Six Degrees

Bill Lee, Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Imperial College London and Bangor University, U.K.

Steven Pinker,Harvard University, author of Better Angels of Our Nature

Michelle Marvier, Professor, Environmental Studies and Sciences, Santa Clara University

Tony Roulstone, Department of Engineering, Cambridge University

Martin Lewis, Department of Geography, Stanford University

Simon Henry Connell, Department of Mechanical Engineering Science, University of Johannesburg

Joshua S. Goldstein, Professor Emeritus, International Relations, American University

Malcolm Grimston, author of The Paralysis in Energy Decision Making, Honorary Research Fellow, Imperial College London

Robert Coward, Past President of ANS

David Dudgeon, Chair Professor of Ecology & Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong

Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World

Robert Stone, filmmaker, “Pandora’s Promise”

Myrto Tripathi, Voices for Nuclear, France

Staffan Qvist, co-author, A Bright Future (PublicAffairs 2019)

Norris McDonald, President, Environmental Hope & Justice

Valerie Gardner, founder, Climate Coalition

Carl Page, co-founder, Anthropocene Institute

Kirsty Gogan, Executive Director, Energy for Humanity

Michael Shellenberger, Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” President, Alan Medsker, Environmental Progress

Steve Kirsch,  CEO, Token

Rauli Partanen, Ecomodernist Society (Finland)

Olguita Oudendijk, ECOMODERNISME NL, (Ecomodernist Society, Netherlands)

Steven Savarense, Saving Our Planet (France)

Kristin Zaitz and Iida Ruishalme, Mothers for Nuclear (U.S. and Switzerland)

Rainer Klute, Nuklearia, Germany

Rebecca Lohfert Boas, Ren Energi Oplysning (Denmark)

Amardeo Sarma, co-founder of the German Ecomodernist Society Ökomoderne e.V.

Robin Thiedmann, Chairman of the German Partei der Humanisten

===

Breakthrough Institute is grateful for the support of the following foundations and individuals:

• #### Pritzker Innovation Fund
• #### William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
• #### The Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust
• #### Rodel Foundations
• #### Aimee and Frank Batten Jr. Foundation
• #### Bellwether Foundation
• #### Comer Family Foundation
• #### Crary Family Foundation
• #### Anthropocene Institute
• #### Fieldstead and Co.
• #### Swartz Foundation
• #### NAU
• #### Garrett Gruener & Amy Slater Fund
• #### Inge Foundation
• #### Michael Burnam-Fink
• #### The Jeff and Jacqueline Miller Fund
• #### Steven and Michele Kirsch Fund
• #### John and Kathe Dyson
• #### Ross Koningstein
• #### Mac McQuown
• #### Ray Rothrock
• #### Matt Winkler

===

off bs

Linus is the director of the Conservation and Food & Agriculture programs at the Breakthrough Institute and a co-author of*An Ecomodernist Manifesto*. Through June 2019, Linus is also a visiting researcher at the University of Tasmania where he is part of a team studying drivers of agricultural expansion and forecasting future land-use change. Linus is interested in how technology can help decouple environmental impacts from economic growth, as laid out in his landmark report *Nature Unbound: Decoupling for Conservation*. His current work focuses on strategies to address the twin challenges of meeting food demand and protecting biodiversity.

Linus has published widely in the areas of conservation, agriculture, and environmental policy. He has co-authored seven peer-reviewed papers and two book chapters, covering topics from ecological tipping pointsto livestock systems, food demand, ecological footprint accounting, planetary boundaries, ecosystem services, and forecasting methods. (See Google Scholar page here.) He has edited and contributed to Breakthrough’s web series The Future of Food, and has written blogs and essays on issues ranging from decoupling to land sparing, precision agriculture, aquaculture, feedlots, and fertilizers.

Linus’ work has been featured in publications such as *The Economist*, *The Wall Street Journal*, *Scientific American*, *New Scientist*, *Wired*, *The Guardian*, and many others. He is a former PERC Lone Mountain fellow, and is on the advisory committee of Nature Needs Half.

Linus holds an MESc from Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where he specialized in environmental economics, and a BA in Geography from Cambridge University. Prior to joining Breakthrough Institute in 2011, Linus worked for several conservation organizations including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and BirdLife Europe.

Linus’ interest in conservation and wildlife has taken him into the field, with experiences ranging from integrated conservation and development projects in rural Ecuador, raptor migration in the Mediterranean, livelihoods and endangered species conservation in the highlands of Kenya, biological surveys in Mediterranean wetlands, to bird banding on the Baltic Sea island of Öland. Outside of work, Linus has also had the privilege of visiting some of the world’s most spectacular sites for nature and wildlife, including the Brazilian Pantanal, the Galapagos Islands, various corners of the Amazon Basin, the Andes, Serengeti, and Anatolia.

Linus was born and raised in Sweden and has been based in the US since 2011. In his free time, he enjoys birding, motorcycling, photography, jazz, and running, although not all at the same time.

==

Breakthrough Institute – Linus Blomqvist

https://thebreakthrough.org/people/linus-blomqvist

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1.

:{:{Linus:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:' :{work:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: has been featured in publications such as The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, New Scientist, Wired, The Guardian, and ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Missing: oakland ‎| ‎Must include: ‎oakland

The Breakthrough Institute - Decoupling or Degrowth?

https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/about/.../linus-blomqvist/is-decoupling-doomed

Why "Peak Stuff" May Not Be As Dire As You've Heard. {photo_credit}. April 04, 2018 | Linus Blomqvist. Share. Email; facebook; Tweet; Print; Google.

The Breakthrough Institute - Magical thinking won't help us reconcile ...

https://thebreakthrough.org/.../magical-thinking-wont-help-us-reconcile-biodiversity-a...

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1.

:{November 15, 2018 | :{Linus Blomqvist:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: ... on farmland, rangelands, forests, and other :{working:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: lands, authored by Claire Kremen and Adina Merenlender.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Linus Blomqvist - Director of Conservation - The Breakthrough Institute ...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/linusblomqvist

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1.

:{View :{Linus Blomqvist's:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. :{Linus:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: has 4 jobs listed on ... :{Linus Blomqvist:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. Director of Conservation at The :{Breakthrough Institute:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: ... :{Oakland:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, CA ... Spanish. Limited :{working:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: proficiency ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Breakthrough Institute - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Institute

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

2.

:{The :{Breakthrough Institute:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: is an environmental research center located in :{Oakland:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, California. ... Breakthrough has engaged in extensive :{work:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: showing that the federal government played a crucial ... In April 2015, An Ecomodernist Manifesto was issued by John Asafu-Adjaye, :{Linus Blomqvist:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, Stewart Brand, Barry Brook.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Talk:Breakthrough Institute - SourceWatch

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Talk:Breakthrough_Institute

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

1.

:{Jul 2, 2015 - The :{Breakthrough Institute:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, 436 14th Street, Suite 820 :{Oakland:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, California 94612 .... Breakthrough has engaged in extensive :{work:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: showing that the .... :{Linus Blomqvist:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:; Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger (June 11, 2012).:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

:{:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:

:{Oct 1, 2015 - By Linus Blomqvist, Ted Nordhaus, Michael Shellenberger on October ... :{Linus Blomqvist works at the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, Calif.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/.../how-modern-agriculture-can-save-the-gorillas-...

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2.

How Modern Agriculture Can Save the Gorillas of Virunga - Scientific ...

===

interview ed calabrese honesis radiation good for you

Jessica Lovering is Director of Energy at Breakthrough. She coauthored the report,*How to Make Nuclear Cheap*, as well as many analyses on nuclear energy policy including:

• "Next Nukes,"November 16th, 2012
• "Cost of German Solar is Four Times Finnish Nuclear," May 14th, 2013
• "Frequently Asked Questions About Nuclear Power," May 22nd, 2013
• "Germany's Energiewende Shows Why We Need Nuclear," July 9th, 2013
• "Trash, Trees, and Taxes," September 13, 2013

Jessica earned an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder, where her studies focused on energy policy. During her last year of school, Jessica created a graduate course in nuclear energy, which she co-taught in the Spring of 2012 with a nuclear physics professor. The course was an interdisciplinary look at all aspects of nuclear power including social, environmental, financial, security, and legal issues. In 2011, Jessica was a Breakthrough Generation Fellow, researching energy access.

In an earlier life, Jessica received a BA in Astrophysics from the University of California Berkeley and an MS in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado. She also worked for two years on NASA's New Horizonsmission, which will fly by Pluto in July 2015. In her free time, she enjoys dystopian fiction, ballet, and enjoying the great outdoors.

==

nyt

United States should emphasize innovation to drive down the cost of clean energy technologies and curb greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report released today by right- and left-leaning policy groups.

A paper by authors from the conservative American Enterprise Institute and liberal Brookings Institution and Breakthrough Institute says policies focused narrowly on driving down clean-energy costs by improving the technologies will win support from an electorate weary of "climate wars" that have long polarized political debates.

Co-authored by Steven Hayward of AEI, Mark Muro of Brookings, and Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, the report focuses on four "post-partisan" proposals with price tags ranging from $15 billion to $25 billion per year.

"This is the first time that really, the two most influential think tanks in Washington have come together around an energy innovation proposal," Shellenberger said in an interview. His think tank is based in Oakland, Calif.

The groups aim to build consensus around a proposal that "reasonable liberals and conservatives" can get behind, he said. "This is the beginning of a new consensus, not the end," he said. "We don't have a bill, we don't have any co-sponsors, we don't think this is going to pass in the next Congress."

Schellenberger describes the groups' proposal as limited and direct.

"It is limited because it is focused, not on reorganizing our entire highly complex energy economy, but rather on specific strategies to drive down the real cost of clean energy technologies," he said in an e-mail. "This framework is direct because the federal government would directly drive innovation and adoption through basic research, development, and procurement in the same way it did with computers, pharmaceutical drugs, radios, microchips, and many other technologies."

The groups' paper focuses on four approaches to energy innovation:

The federal government should expand spending on energy science and education. The Energy Department's Office of Science should have its budget doubled to address scientific obstacles to energy technologies, while a slew of innovation institutes should channel up to $5 billion per year toward energy challenges, and energy education for students of all ages should be earmarked for at least $500 million per year.

The energy innovation system should be completely overhauled to focus on lining up with private-sector and Defense Department demands. In a nod to Energy Secretary Steven Chu's vision for a series of innovation "hubs," the report calls for a national network of decentralized energy innovation institutes bringing public and private researchers together with investors in the mix from the start. It also recommends that DOD's buying power and intense need for energy products be leveraged by targeting federal efforts on that market, giving DOD a greater role in administering DOE's new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E.

Federal subsidies should be overhauled to favor products that consistently fall in price. "Today, firms get subsidies that reward production of more of the same product, not innovation that results in lower prices," the report says, calling for reforms for fossil fuel and clean technologies alike. Congress should provide up to $5 billion per year to help DOD test, demonstrate and purchase energy technologies that can be revolutionary in the private marketplace, as well; the report notes that advanced biofuels, solar thermal and power systems, improved batteries and small nuclear reactor technologies all show promise for DOD use.

Finally, energy investments should be made cost-neutral by some combination of pay-fors that could include phasing out existing subsidies, increasing oil and gas royalties, adding a fee for imported oil, placing a surcharge on electricity sales or imposing a modest carbon price.

The carbon tax, the report says, in the range of $5 per ton, would cost consumers and businesses about a third as much as recent cap-and-trade legislation, according to the authors.

"Any one of these funding sources could raise sufficient funds from within the energy sector itself without appreciably increasing energy prices or impacting American firms or consumers," according to the report.

Familiar ideas, new packaging

Many of the ideas in the joint proposal have been around for years.

DOD already plays an important role in furthering the development of many energy technologies, having been a key driver for fuel cells for building use and advanced biofuels for aviation, for example.

And proposals to dramatically increase funding for DOE's Office of Science and research and development efforts have been included in various legislative efforts on Capitol Hill, with limited interest from Congress.

Shellenberger stressed that putting the proposals together as a coherent package was new and helpful and that the proposal includes elements that hold appeal on both sides of the political aisle. Liberals will still want pollution regulation, while conservatives will still focus on nuclear power, he said.

"Liberals are acknowledging that we need an approach that puts technology first," he said, citing regulations on acid rain and ozone that came only after technologies to control the pollutants were in the marketplace.

Conservatives understand how successful the military has been, Shellenberger said, especially in using its procurement might to channel technology advances. "Our view is that what was important in the framework was to be clear about what really matters, and to provide options to pay for it," he said.

Click here to read the report.

clar: not ctt but indiv authors

==

2013 pro frack?

http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/climate-change/2013/11/6/guess-which-progressive-foundation-is-friendly-to-fracking.html

==

given the invest in R&D is better than regulation, odd that shellen b bashes sierra etc for investments COI (not r&d?)

===

2013 philanthropy

At first glance, it might seem odd that a major environmental funder would be a primary supporter of a group known for heralding the "death of environmentalism."

But in recent years, the Nathan Cummings Foundation (NCF) has been trying to rattle the cage of modern environmentalism, meaning that its close relationship with the Breakthrough Institute is a match made in heaven. (See Nathan Cummings Foundation: Grants for Climate Change.)

From 2007 to 2012, NCF directly granted the Bay Area think tank more than $3 million, championing its work to reframe the climate change debate and the way liberals approach their most difficult challenges. Rather than fighting for carbon caps, the institute — which is a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors — has tried to put public investment in innovation at the core of the climate discussion, while seeking broader, bipartisan support.

"The Breakthrough Institute was founded on the premise that the complaint-based, interest group liberalism born in the 1960s and 1970s is failing to achieve the broad social and ecological transformations America and the world need," the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors site states.

Founders Ted Nordhaus's and Michael Shellenberger's criticisms of traditional liberal strategies have drawn attention to the institute and also ticked off more than a few of their peers.

In 2004, their paper "The Death of Environmentalism" proclaimed that the environmental movement had become an out-of-touch special interest group that was ill-equipped to take on the problem of global warming. The Sierra Club's executive director at the time, Carl Pope, wrote a scathing response, and Bill McKibben has called the two the "bad boys of American environmentalism."

But the report also drew a lot of praise as a wake-up call to progressive leaders. Peter Teague, environment program officer for NCF, underwrote the report and wrote in the introduction:

This article should prompt those of us in the world of philanthropy to engage with each other and with the groups we fund in an honest evaluation of our present situation. The stakes are too high to go on with business as usual.

Since then, the Breakthrough Institute, with support from NCF and Teague, has continued to beat the drum for public and private partnerships for clean energy technology. In short, they want to make clean energy cheap and easy to get, instead of trying to clamp down on dirty energy.

Their reports have called for massive public investments in research and development. They've highlighted the role the federal government has historically played in technological breakthroughs, comparing clean energy innovation with that of satellites, aeronautics, and computing. In recent reports, they've called for reform to clean tech subsidies and partnered with conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute to tout bipartisan support for such investments.

Critics have accused the Breakthrough Institute of oversimplifying the history and complexity of the environmental movement or just trolling for attention. But their approach has definite strengths. For one, the concern that trying to cap carbon is a lost cause has proven mostly valid, as cap-and-trade legislation is dead on arrival amid bipartisan gridlock. But perhaps more compelling is the way their strategy takes into account the developing world when other campaigns do not. By accelerating technology, Breakthrough hopes that advances in clean energy can curb greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States while also safely expanding modernity in places like China and India, where demand for power is only going up. It's a big vision.

Whether that vision takes hold and the institute and NCF can actually spark the breakthrough they're betting on, only time will tell.

==

srcwtch:

Talk:Breakthrough Institute

This material is parked pending review.

**The Breakthrough Institute** (TBI), which describes itself as a "a project ofRockefeller Philanthropy Advisors", is a think tank established by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus. On its website it states that it is "committed to creating a new progressive politics, one that is large, aspirational, and asset-based. We believe that any effective politics must speak to core needs and values, not issues and interests, and we thus situate ourselves at the intersection of politics, policy, philosophy, and the social sciences."^[1]

TBI "believes that we can create a better world by advancing an aspirational vision grounded in America's founding values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." [4]

But in practice, this has translated to advocating "green energy" research but opposing any policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through putting a price on carbon (a.k.a. pricing the externality).

TBI is not a 501(c)(3) nonprofit; it operates under the umbrella of nonprofit Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, so it files no IRS Form 990s documenting revenues, programs or expenditures.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Criticisms
• 2 Programs
  • 2.1 The Science of Security
• 3 Personnel
  • 3.1 Staff
  • 3.2 Senior Fellows
    • 3.2.1 2011
    • 3.2.2 2010
    • 3.2.3 2009
    • 3.2.4 2008
  • 3.3 Advisory Board
    • 3.3.1 Previously
• 4 Funding
• 5 Contact Details
• 6 Articles and resources
  • 6.1 Related SourceWatch articles
• 7 Articles and resources
  • 7.1 References
  • 7.2 Related SourceWatch articles
  • 7.3 External resources
  • 7.4 External articles
• 8 People
• 9 Programs
• 10 Publications
• 11 Breakthrough Journal
• 12 Criticism

Criticisms

"The Breakthrough people and their allies, among whom one must include Lomborg and Pielke Jr. at this point..., are not asking for the technologically impossible. They are asking merely for the technologically possible at an economically impossible cheap price."^[2] "This disinformation campaign is almost entirely driven by fossil fuel companies and conservative media, politicians and think tanks. It is also advanced by the Breakthrough Institute and its president, Michael Shellenberger. His central myth -- a science fiction fantasy, really -- is that it would be possible to sharply reduce emissions without raising the cost of carbon pollution."^[3]

Programs

The Science of Security

TBI has run a program called The Science of Security since 2009 - "dedicated to bringing evidence to ongoing arguments about national security and counterterrorism policy."^[4].

Personnel

Staff

• Michael Shellenberger is co-director of the Breakthrough Institute
• Ted Nordhaus is co-director of the Breakthrough Institute
• Erin Malec is a Strategist for the Breakthrough Institute
• Nick Adams, sociologist, is Director of the Science of Security Program.

Senior Fellows

As of March 2011:^[5]

2011

• Fred Block
• Chris Foreman
• Peter Kareiva
• Steve Rayner
• Harry Saunders

2010

• Ulrich Beck
• Chris Green
• Bruno Latour
• Gregory Nemet
• Daniel Sarewitz, CSPO-ASU, CIRES-CSTPP-UColoBoulder
• Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar at Google

2009

• David Douglas
• Frank Laird, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver; CIRES-CSTPP-UColoBoulder, former CSPO-ASU^[6]
• Siddhartha Shome

2008

• Bill Chaloupka, Colorado State
• Dalton Conley
• Barbara Hill
• Marty Hoffert
• Frank Laird, see above
• Roger Pielke Jr., CIRES-UColoBoulder
• Cara Pike
• Jim Proctor

Advisory Board

As of March 2011:^[7]

• Jane Bennett
• Christopher Foreman
• Natalie Jeremijenko
• Felix Kramer
• Celinda Lake
• Neesha Mirchandani
• Lawrence Wallack
• Adam Werbach, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S

Previously

• James Bernard
• Ginna Green
• Tommy McDonald
• Chuck Sabel
• Robin Templeton
• Elizabeth Wilcox

Source

Funding

At the close of 2011 TBI's website said the organization now has seven foundation funders,^[8] which are:^[9]

• The Comer Foundation
• The Nathan Cummings Foundation
• Nau Partners for Change
• The Lotus Foundation
• The Open Society Institute
• The Bellwether Foundation
• The Arkay Foundation

In early 2011, Ted Nordhaus said "Virtually all of our funding comes from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, trustees of the ...Sara Lee pound cake fortune, and the Lotus Foundation, funded by members of the Pritzker family."^[10]

Contact Details

The Breakthrough Institute, 436 14th Street, Suite 820 Oakland, California 94612

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• think tanks

Articles and resources

References

1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ "Our Mission", The Breakthrough Institute website, accessed May 2009.
2. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Michael Tobis (2010-09-13). The Breakthrough Idea. Only In It For The Gold. Retrieved on 2011-03-27. “We already have the technology. All the Breakthrough people are trying to do is negotiate with Nature over price. But Nature doesn't haggle. ... Breakthrough thinking basically amounts to an idea that if we delay action on climate forcing, the price will go down. [but] It's clear that at some point, if we delay too long, the price will start to go up. The argument is only whether we have passed that point.”
3. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Joseph Romm (2009-04-22). Don't believe the fossil-fuel lies. Salon. Retrieved on 2011-04-13. “.... the Breakthrough Institute doesn't just oppose a carbon price -- it opposes EPA regulations. Shellenberger [the presidentof The Breakthrough Institute] quotes Institute fellow Roger Pielke Jr. that "Republicans must be drooling over the possibility that EPA will take extensive regulatory action on climate change" because Obama and the Democrats will be blamed for any "actual or perceived downsides."”
4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ [1], accessed 2012-01-06
5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ No byline (Undated). Experts. The Breakthrough Institute. Retrieved on 2011-03-27.
6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ [2], accessed 2011-04-14
7. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ No byline (Undated). Advisory Board. The Breakthrough Institute. Retrieved on 2011-03-27.
8. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ {{cite web |url=http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2011/12/top_ten_breakthrough_moments_o.shtml|publisher=The Breakthrough Institute |title=Top Ten Breakthrough Moments of 2011 |quote="Founded in 2003 and first funded in 2007, Breakthrough today has 11 full-time staff, 25 Senior Fellows, 41 Breakthrough Generation Fellows, and seven foundation funders." |accessdate=2012-01-06 |pubdate=2011-12-30
9. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ [3]
10. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Ted Nordhaus (2010-01-11). Comment on Daily Breakthrough: Avatar, Eco-Paranoia, and Technology. The Breakthrough Institute. Retrieved on 2011-03-27.

Related SourceWatch articles

• Peter Teague
• Nathan Cummings Foundation

External resources

External articles

According to the website, the Breakthrough Institute is "committed to modernizing environmentalism for the 21st century" and its mission is to “accelerate the transition to a future where all the world's inhabitants can enjoy secure, free, and prosperous lives on an ecologically vibrant planet.”^[1] Founded in 2003 by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Breakthrough Institute has policy programs devoted to Energy and Climate, Economic Growth and Innovation, and Conservation and Development, as well as a policy journal, an annual conference, and a fellowship program for recent college graduates and grad students. ^[2]Breakthrough Institute analyses of energy, climate, and innovation policy have been cited by the New York Times,^[3] National Public Radio^[4], the Wall Street Journal,^[5] and C-SPAN.^[6] Philosophically, the Breakthrough Institute is associated with the ecological modernist movement.^[7][8] Ecomodernists are characterized by their belief that technology can be harnessed to better humanity and the environment, and by their non-apocalyptic worldview. They frequently are pro-GMOs and believe that nuclear energy is necessary in order to address climate change.^[9]

People

Breakthrough’s president is Michael Shellenberger and the chairman is Ted Nordhaus.^[10] Breakthrough also has a number of senior fellows including sociologist Bruno Latour, sociologist Ulrich Beck, journalist Gwyneth Cravens, Nobel prize-winning physicist Burton Richter, political scientist Roger Pielke Jr., sociologist Dalton Conley, and Oxford professor Steve Rayner.^[11]

Programs

Breakthrough Institute maintains programs in Energy and Climate policy, Conservation and Development, and Economic Growth and Innovation.^[12] Their website states that the Energy and Climate program is “focused on making clean energy cheap through technology innovation to deal with both global warming and energy poverty.”^[13] The Conservation Program “seeks to offer pragmatic new frameworks and tools for navigating these challenges.”^[14] And the Economic Growth and Innovation Program “seeks to understand how economic growth and innovation happen in the real world and to consider the implications for policy makers.^[15]

Publications

In 2004, Breakthrough founders Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger coauthored the essay, “Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World.”^[16] 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,^[17] which was covered by the New York Times^[18] and Salon.^[19] 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^[20] and "the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring" by Wired Magazine.^[21] Breakthrough 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. ^[22] [23] Breakthrough 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 left-leaning Brookings Institution and right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, published the report Post-Partisan Power, which calls for increased federal investment in innovation in order to make clean energy cheap.^[24] [25] The report was widely praised and endorsed. ^[26] [27] Breakthrough 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,^[28] with its work referenced by many including the New York Times,^[29] and President Barack Obama.^[30] In 2011, Breakthrough 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.^[31] [32] Breakthrough’s findings were cited in the New York Times^[33] and by President Barack Obama in his 2012 State of the Union^[34] and were substantiated by the Associated Press^[35] as well as the American Energy Innovation Council.^[36] In 2012, Breakthrough partnered with Brookings Institute 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.^[37] The report generated wide bipartisan interest^[38] and endorsements.^[39]

Breakthrough has also authored analyses on the planetary boundaries hypothesis,^[40] nuclear power,^[41] and energy efficiency and rebound.^[42]

Breakthrough Journal

In 2011, Breakthrough published the first issue of the Breakthrough Journal, which aims to “modernize political thought for the 21st century.”^[43] 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,^[44] and the National Review called it “the most promising effort at self-criticism by our liberal cousins in a long time.”^[45]Steven F. Hayward’s essay “Modernizing Conservatism” received a Sidney Award from New York Times columnist David Brooks.^[46] “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,^[47] [48] and Scott Winship’s “The Affluent Economy” was debated in the National Review,^[49] the Economist,^[50] the New York Times,^[51] and the Dish.^[52]

Criticism

Breakthrough 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.^[53] On the left, they have been criticized for arguing that carbon pricing is not the solution to climate change,^[54] for being pro-nuclear,^[55] and for touting natural gas as a way to decrease coal usage.^[56]

1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Mission. Breakthrough Institute.
2. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Breakthrough Institute.
3. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ "The End of Clean Energy Subsidies?" (May 5, 2012).
4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Joyce, Christopher (March 11, 2012). "Nuclear Woes Push Japan Into A New Energy Future".
5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ White, Joseph (January 27, 2011). "Obama’s Energy Shift: It’s Not About Climate".
6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ "Role of Government in Energy Innovation" (May 22, 2012).
7. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Pearce, Fred (July, 15 2013). "New Green Vision: Technology As Our Planet’s Last Best Hope".
8. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Kloor, Keith (December 12, 2012). "The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement".
9. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Pearce, Fred (July, 15 2013). "New Green Vision: Technology As Our Planet’s Last Best Hope".
10. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ People. Breakthrough Institute.
11. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ People. Breakthrough Institute.
12. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Programs. Breakthrough Institute.
13. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Energy and Climate. Breakthrough Institute.
14. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Conservation and Development. Breakthrough Institute.
15. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Economic Growth and Innovation. Breakthrough Institute.
16. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Michael Shellenberger; Ted Nordhaus (2004). Death of Environmentalism. Breakthrough Institute.
17. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ "A special series on the alleged “Death of Environmentalism”" (January 14, 2005).
18. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Barringer, Felicity (February 6, 2005). "Paper Sets Off a Debate on Environmentalism's Future".
19. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Mieszkowski, Katharine (January 14, 2005). "Dead movement walking?".
20. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Walsh, Bryan (September 24, 2008). "Heroes of the Environment 2008".
21. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Horowitz, Mark (September 25, 2007). "Two Environmentalists Anger Their Brethren".
22. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Nordhaus, Ted (November 29, 2010). "How to Change the Global Energy Conversation".
23. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, Jeff Navin, Teryn Norris & Aden Van Noppen. Fast, Clean, and Cheap: Cutting Global Warming's Gordian Knot. Breakthrough Institute.
24. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Steven Hayward, Mark Muro, Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger (October 12, 2010). Post-Partisan Power. Breakthrough Institute.
25. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Leonhardt, David (October 12, 2010). "A Climate Proposal Beyond Cap and Trade".
26. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Levi, Michael. Digging into the "Post-Partisan Power" Study. Council on Foreign Relations.
27. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ "Renewed Energy" (November 13, 2010).
28. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Jesse Jenkins, Devon Swezey, Yael Borofsky. Where Good Technologies Come From. Breakthrough Institute.
29. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Leonhardt, David (January 24, 2011). "What Government Can Do".
30. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Remarks by the President in his State of the Union Address. White House (January 25, 2011).
31. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Shellenberger, Michael (December 16, 2011). "A Boom in Shale Gas? Credit the Feds.".
32. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, Alex Trembath, and Jesse Jenkins (May 23, 2012). Where the Shale Gas Revolution Came From. Breakthrough Institute.
33. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Leonhardt, David (July 21, 2012). "There's Still Hope for the Planet".
34. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ "President Obama's State of the Union Address" (January 25, 2012).
35. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Begos, Kevin (September 23, 2012). "Fracking Developed With Decades of Government Investment".
36. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Burwen, Jason & Jane Flegal (March 2013). Unconventional Gas Exploration & Production. American Energy Innovation Council.
37. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Jenkins, Jesse; Mark Muro, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Letha Tawney, Alex Trembath (April 17, 2012). Beyond Boom and Bust. Breakthrough Institute.
38. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Johnson, Keith (April 17, 2012). "Subsidies for Clean Energy Get Fresh Look".
39. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ "The End of Clean Energy Subsidies" (May 5, 2012).
40. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Linus Blomqvist; Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger (June 11, 2012). Planetary Boundaries: A Review of the Evidence. Breakthrough Institute.
41. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Ted Nordhaus; Jessica Lovering & Michael Shellenberger (July 7, 2013). How to Make Nuclear Cheap. Breakthrough Institute.
42. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Jesse Jenkins; Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger (February 17, 2011). Energy Emergence: Rebound and Backfire as Emergent Phenomena. Breakthrough Institute.
43. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ About. Breakthrough Journal.
44. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Schmitt, Mark (June 30, 2011). "Breakthrough Journal: Has Liberalism Entered a Post-Obama Era?".
45. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Hayward, Steven (July 18, 2011). "An Environmental Reformation".
46. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Brooks, David (December 19, 2011). "The Sidney Awards, Part I".
47. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Revkin, Andrew (April 3, 2012). "Peter Kareiva, an Inconvenient Environmentalist".
48. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Revkin, Andrew (April 10, 2012). "Critic of Conservation Efforts Gets Critiqued".
49. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Salam, Reihan (February 19, 2013). "Absolute Change, Relative Change, and America's Economic Future".
50. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ "The Age of Diminished Expectations" (February 20, 2013).
51. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Douthat, Ross (February 23, 2013). "A World Without Work".
52. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Sullivan, Andrew (February 21, 2013). "Does the Middle Class Really Have it So Bad?".
53. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Samuelson, Robert (July 31, 2013). "[Washington Post George P. Mitchell and the entrepreneurial edge]".
54. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Walsh, Bryan (September 24, 2008). "Heroes of the Environment 2008".
55. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Letzing, John (March 4, 2011). "Notebook: Environmentalists spar over nuclear power".
56. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Carey, John (June 10, 2013). "Gas Pains".

Categories: 

• Stubs
• Think tanks

==

The Technofix Is In

BY CLIVE HAMILTON – APRIL 21, 2015

An Ecomodernist Manifesto fails to acknowledge the political forces at work in the battle over climate change, and so fails to chart a way forward

The world’s best scientists are warning that the world is warming inexorably, the oceans are becoming acidic and have turned into a “plastic soup,” and we are in the middle of the kind of mass extinction event not seen on the planet in millions of years. But don’t worry — a new breed of environmentalists has just released a manifesto declaring that, with a little faith in technology, humanity can move into a “great” new century of prosperity and universal human dignity on a thriving planet. How can this be?

The manifesto’s faith in technological breakthroughs means it substitutes a kind of Californian positivity for the hard reality of climate politics.

For some years the California-based Breakthrough Institute has been vigorously promoting what it claims to be a new “post-environmentalism,” one highly critical of the mainstream environment movement and no longer wedded to the verities of the past.

In a much-discussed 2004 article, “The Death of Environmentalism,” the Institute’s founders, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, argued that mainstream greens had become too professionalised and insular. Caught up in Beltway politics, Big Green failed to recognize that the American political landscape had shifted well to the right. Their messages no longer cut through, and environmentalism needed a bold new vision to inspire citizens.

So far so good. But the bold new vision turned out not to be one calling for a far-reaching shake-up, but the opposite — collaborating with the same conservatives that Shellenberger and Nordhaus said had been winning the battle.

The institute maintains a determinedly optimistic view of the world, although the bright facade frequently veils a rancor directed against other environmentalists. This rancor perhaps explains some of its baffling policy stances.

The institute frequently attacks renewable energy and energy efficiency, at times with a highly tendentious use of data. For an organization concerned about spiraling greenhouse gas emissions, it’s hard to work out why the group is so dismissive, except as a way of differentiating itself from mainstream environmentalism. Conversely, it vigorously promotes nuclear power, also deploying data and arguments in a misleading way.

Nuclear power has become an obsession for the institute, a kind of signifier by which players in the environmental debate are allocated to the “good guys” box or the “bad guys” box. In a perfect example of mimesis, the dogmatic stance of some anti-nuclear campaigners is reflected back by these pro-nuclear campaigners.

Describing themselves as “ecomodernists,” those gathered around The Breakthrough Institute are not anti-science; they are after all ecomodernists. But in order to maintain their belief in a bright new future, they must find ways to temper or reinterpret the increasingly dire warnings from the world’s scientists. The preferred strategy is to scan the world for good news stories and from them create an alternative perceptual reality. (The recently launched “Bright Spots” is a similar approach.)

And this has led them to their most audacious declaration to date: the publication, last week, of what they are calling *An Ecomodernist Manifesto*, a self-consciously provocative attempt to make sense of what some scientists are calling “the Anthropocene,” or the Age of Humans. In the end, however, the manifesto’s faith in technological breakthroughs means it substitutes a kind of Californian positivity for the hard reality of climate politics. As a roadmap out of our ecological and social predicaments it leads us nowhere.

But before I go any further, first some background to understand how we got here.

Anthropocene: good or bad?

When Nobel Prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the term “the Anthropocene” in the year 2000, he was expressing his frustration at the inability of his fellow scientists to see that human activity has changed the Earth System, not just on its surface, but in fundamental ways. We have become so powerful, he argued, that we now rival the great forces of nature, to the point where we have disturbed the functioning of the planet as a whole.

In saying that Earth had passed out of the Holocene epoch and into the Anthropocene, Crutzen mostly expressed anxiety about the effect of carbon emissions and the unfolding catastrophe of climate change. It was global warming above all that he identified as the central process driving Earth into a new and dangerous epoch.

Yet as the scientific debate about the Anthropocene unfolded, some associated with The Breakthrough Institute began to reframe it in an unexpected way. If we live on an Earth dominated by humans, they reasoned, why not embrace our role as “the God species”? If humans have become the dominant force, why not extend our domination and turn it to the good rather than pull back?

The ecomoderns believe that human beings are not destructive creatures — and certainly not sinful ones as some greens imply — but creative, ingenious and basically well-meaning. If it is our destiny to inherit Earth, then the arrival of the Anthropocene is the fulfilment of that destiny.

One scientist close to The Breakthrough Institute, landscape ecologist Erle Ellis, began to do what no one had anticipated. He started to put the word “good” next to the word “Anthropocene.” He wrote of humanity’s transition to a higher level of planetary significance as “an amazing opportunity” and of how “we will be proud of the planet we create in the Anthropocene.”

For many, this was a jaw-dropping reframing of Anthropocene science. But for conservative environmentalists, like the influential Andrew Revkin at The New York Times, the “good Anthropocene” neatly reversed the dispiriting message of a collapsing Earth system, and so it had immediate appeal. (You can find more of Revkin’s thoughts on the Anthropocene here and here.) 

There are facts and there are interpretations put on facts, and sometimes the most robust facts cannot penetrate the defensive walls of the determined optimist. Voltaire satirized Leibniz’s belief “that good ultimately will prevail in the world” in Candide (published in 1759 and subtitledl’Optimisme). But neither the harshest facts nor the sharpest satire can dissuade those determined to declare, “Well, I’m an optimist.”

In the hands of the ecomodernists, optimism isn’t used as a torch to light the way forward, but rather as a cudgel with which to beat intellectual opponents into submission — because, especially in the United States, to be less than optimistic is to be, in a way, un-American. The ecomodernists have been trying to achieve a monopoly on optimism as a way of winning the debate about how to balance human interests with the needs of wild nature. In the end, it doesn’t work, as the relentless optimism in their manifesto comes across as detached and dreamy, and blind to the hard truths of political combat.

A new manifesto

Many were aghast that people claiming to be environmentalists could so misread the science of climate change as to append “good” to “Anthropocene.”  How can a happy future be conjured from the devastation that will be visited on millions of people by global warming, much of which is already locked in to the climate system?

Undeterred, and as if emboldened by the dismay, The Breakthrough Institute has now gone one better. An Ecomodernist Manifesto, signed by 18 “scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens” associated with the institute, is not satisfied with proclaiming that we can look forward to a goodAnthropocene. The manifesto declares that we are entering a greatAnthropocene.

What force can turn a gloomy prognosis into a golden future? The answer, of course, is technology. The manifesto’s authors are convinced that “knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.”

For those who believe we must embrace low-emissions technology (i.e. all of us who recognize the reality of anthropogenic climate change) the manifesto is oddly selective, dismissing many large-scale renewable energy technologies (especially wind power and biomass), and taking a skeptical view of solar energy’s potential.

And so the manifesto returns to the ecomoderns’ peculiar obsession: only nuclear power can give us climate stabilization. But, the authors concede, the nuclear industry is flat on its face in most places, so we must wait for the next generation of nuclear fission (or even fusion!) plants, before which opposition will surely melt away. In the meantime, we will need to build more hydroelectric dams and construct “fossil fuel plants with carbon capture and storage” technology.

Here the ability to set aside science is on full display. The manifesto does not say how long we will need to wait for the next generation of nuclear plants, or how much of the global carbon budget will be used up while we cool our heels. Perhaps it might take 20 years for the first plants to be built, and 40 before they are making a large dent in global emissions. By then the planet will be, in Christine Lagard’s arresting phrase, “roasted, toasted, fried and grilled,” and there will be no way to rescue the situation.

If we must wait a long time for the solution, the standby of carbon capture and storage is almost as speculative. Even “clean coal’s” boosters accept that the technology will not be cutting global emissions significantly for two or three decades.

Those who signed the manifesto must “know” all this, so their stance can only be described as a form of denial or at least evasion, one that selectively permits certain facts through the optimo-filter while blocking or downplaying others.

Politics gone missing

The ecomoderns’ techno-fetishism is possible only because they don’t think about politics. It is true that thinking about the politics of climate change is depressing. For those who “embrace an optimistic view toward human capacities and the future,” the easiest path is to ignore the messy world of politics and focus one’s gaze on humankind’s amazing technological achievements.

And so in the manifesto, which tells a story of how we got here and where we should go, there is no mention of the forces, national and international, that have given us rising carbon dioxide concentrations, acidifying oceans and all the rest. We look in vain to find reference to the proven power of corporations and lobbyists to stop environmental laws, or to the total victory of money politics in the United States, now entrenched after Citizens United. Exxon and organized denialism do not appear even between the lines.

For the ecomoderns, the story of the past and the story of the future revolve around one thing: “Meaningful climate mitigation is fundamentally a technological challenge.” It’s an entire historiography in which the human relationship to the natural world depends essentially on human ingenuity and entrepreneurship. It is not kings, presidents, proletarians or generals who make history — but rather scientists, inventors and engineers, and it is they who will save us.

It’s a Silicon Valley view of the world, one of heroic inventors like Steve Jobs, who disrupt the old and bring in the new to improve our lives. This position is a defense of the status quo and is the same one argued by those who have resisted all climate protection legislation that would disrupt the structure of power, not least in the coal lobby’s appeal to the pipe dream of “clean coal.”

If you believe that solving the climate change problem “is fundamentally a technological challenge,” then we are in this mess not because of the power of the fossil fuel lobby, not because of the influence of the campaign of denial, not because of money politics, not because persuading consumers to accept a price on carbon seems too hard, and not because getting international cooperation has been fraught. No, we are in this mess because technology has not evolved quickly enough to avoid it.

Yet no one involved in the climate change debate can be unaware that the technologies to sharply reduce global emissions have been available for a long time. Nor can they be unaware that for at least 15 years every study of the economics of transforming the energy economies of nations like the United States shows that the cost to GDP would extremely small. An exhaustive assessment in the latest IPCC report has been summarized like this:

Ambitious climate protection would cost only 0.06 percentage points of growth each year. This means that instead of a growth rate of about 2 percent per year, we would see a growth rate of 1.94 percent per year. Thus economic growth would merely continue at a slightly slower pace.

The roadblock to climate mitigation has never been technological. Nor has it been economic. It has been political. The ecomoderns’ claim that we must wait for new technologies to make serious mitigation possible is not merely untrue, it is irresponsible.

The technofix is in

An Ecomodernist Manifesto does not offer a new way out of the climate morass, but only a warmed-over version of the old-fashioned American technofix. Politics has gone AWOL in it. The only place politics intrudes is where the manifesto bewails social and institutional obstacles to the further spread of nuclear power. So it is the greens who bring politics to the climate debate! This is not an accidental slip, for The Breakthrough Institute gives the impression of being motivated less by the vision of a great future on a human-regulated Earth than by animosity towards other environmentalists.

Predictably, the manifesto has been greeted with enthusiasm by various purveyors of climate science denial, like the National Review, the Fraser Institute and, in Australia, the Murdoch media’s chief promoter of climate denial and denigrator of renewables (the Australian’s Graham Lloyd.)

We cannot be held responsible for the supporters our ideas attract. Yet in pursuit of its bold new vision, The Breakthrough Institute has allied itself with some unsavory characters, like the American Enterprise Institute which has been active in promoting climate science denial and has been partly funded by Exxon and the Koch Brothers. Is this the “post-partisan politics” foreshadowed by “The Death of Environmentalism”? If so, it’s a tarnished vision and reflects The Breakthrough Institute’s self-defeating policy of cozying up to environmentalism’s natural enemies and alienating its most stalwart friends.

Disagreement within the broad coalition that is the environment movement is not only inevitable, but desirable, and that includes disputing the pros and cons of nuclear power. But one thing we all ought to agree on is the basic science of climate change, and any reasonable reading rules out a rosy view of what the Anthropocene holds in store for us.

Clive Hamilton

Clive Hamilton is the author of Earthmasters: The dawn of the age of climate engineering(Yale University Press) and Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change (Earthscan), among other books. He is professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra.

==

2009 yale 360

comes close to blaming Gore for polatization/politicization?

invariable balance of $

http://e360.yale.edu/mobile/feature.msp?id=2210

===

The Breakthrough Institute's Inconvenient History with Al Gore

April 14, 2014

by Paul D. Thacker

While sometimes functioning as shadow universities, think tanks have been exposed as quasi lobbying organizations, with little funding transparency. Recent research has also pointed out that think tanks suffer from a lack of intellectual rigor. A case in point is the Breakthrough Institute run by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, which describes itself as a "progressive think tank."

If you’ve been following recent news on climate change, then you must have witnessed the recent meltdown happening over at the Breakthrough Institute. In a March 19 post at Nate Silver’s new FiveThirtyEight journalism site, Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow Roger Pielke wrote a piece titled “Disasters Cost More than Ever—But Not Because of Climate Change.” The article was highly criticized for cherry picking information on climate change impacts, with Slate labeling it an “Unnatural Disaster” and an embarrassment to Silver’s new venture.

Responding to the outcry, Silver commissioned a counter piece written by Kerry Emanuel “MIT Climate Scientist Responds on Disaster Costs And Climate Change,” an article that essentially debunked Pielke’s original storyline on hurricanes and climate change. Since that catastrophe, the Breakthrough Institute has ramped up their PR, doing everything they can to protect their Senior Fellow through twitter and claims that he is highly cited in the scientific literature.

The Breakthrough Institute has a clear history as a contrarian outlet for information on climate change and regularly criticizes environmental groups. One writer describes them as a “program for hippie-punching your way to fame and fortune.” So it was not shocking to see their column last Wednesday in the New York Times criticizing a new documentary on climate change that was put together by award-winning journalists. In their article, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger state that the documentary will raise public skepticism about climate change because it uses scare tactics.

To buttress their claims, the duo cite Al Gore, and his 2006 documentary on climate change “An Inconvenient Truth.” According to Nordhaus and Shellenberger, Gore’s documentary “contributed to public backlash and division” on climate change. When this op-ed was refuted by one of the documentary’s expert advisors, the duo doubled down on the claim, citing multiple lines of research, including studies by professors Aaron McCright of Michigan State University and Robert Brulle of Drexel.

“Shellenberger and Nordhaus are definitely missing what I argue in my paper,” Brulle wrote in an email. “As far as I can see, there is ZERO empirical evidence that supports [their] hypothesis.” Apparently, he says, the New York Times does not fact check op-eds.

Professor McCright was also dismissive of Nordhaus and Shellenberger. No reputable researcher would make the claim that Al Gore contributed to partisanship on climate change, he says. “We simply have insufficient data,” he adds. Instead, he points to disinformation put out by organized climate denialists as a more likely explanation.

For Nordhaus and Shellenberger, Gore and his documentary are a favorite talking point and topic for bashing. In fact, it’s hard to find anything they haven’t written that doesn’t contain some reference to this documentary and the former Vice President. This personal obsession has sent the two running in circles, and tying themselves in contradictory knots—at times claiming Gore has increased partisan divisions on climate change, at other times claiming that his documentary was irrelevant.

For instance, the two again charged Gore with inciting partisan divisiveness back in February 2011, on the Breakthrough’s website:

Gore famously claimed, "the truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives." Those apparent calls for sacrifice by Gore and other green leaders drove rising partisan polarization.[emphasis added]

However, Nordhaus and Shellenberger had a decidedly different take on Gore’s effect on Americans in 2009. Writing for Yale’s Environment 360, the two then wrote that Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” had been a pointless exercise and had no effect at changing public opinion:

Three years after it seemed that “An Inconvenient Truth” had changed everything, it turns out that it didn’t. The current Pew survey is the latest in a series of studies suggesting that Al Gore probably had a good deal more effect upon elite opinion than public opinion.

Public opinion about global warming, it turns out, has been remarkably stable for the better part of two decades, despite the recent decline in expressed public confidence in climate science. [emphasis added]

Yet a few months prior, while writing for the *New Republic*, the Breakthrough team was singing a different tune about Gore:

Recall that the inconvenient truth for which Gore named his movie was “that we have to change the way we live our lives”—and nobody could have the impression, after watching the movie, that it would be for the better. No new technology could save us—we would have to live differently. The public got the message.Of the 67 percent of voters who told the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in 2006 that it is possible to reduce the effects of global warming, nearly twice as many said it would require major sacrifices than said it could be done with technology. [emphasis added]

But while writing for the *Los Angeles Times* in 2008, the two were stuck recounting that the movie had no impact:

Democrats and greens ended up in this predicament because they believed their own press clippings—or, perhaps more accurately, Al Gore's.After the release of the documentary film and book "An Inconvenient Truth," greens convinced themselves that U.S. public opinion on climate change had shifted dramatically, despite having no empirical evidence that was the case. In fact, public concern about global warming was about the same before the movie—65% told a Gallup poll in 2007 that global warming was a somewhat or very important concern in comparison to 63% in 1989. Global warming remains a low-priority issue, hovering near the bottom of the Pew Center for People and the Press' top 20 priorities.[emphasis added]

It’s hard to understand exactly what Nordhaus and Shellenberger are trying to say about Al Gore and the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Apparently, it increased “public backlash and division” and “drove rising partisan polarization” during a time that the public opinion on climate change “has been remarkably stable for the better part of two decades” except that “the public got the message” but “greens convinced themselves that U.S. public opinion on climate change had shifted dramatically, despite having no empirical evidence that was the case.”

Got that?

A recent working paper by two Harvard Law students finds that Al Gore and his documentary remain a favorite target of climate skeptics, and that the matter is one of many themes that comprise the “contrarian corpus” of climate skepticism. But why a think tank that seeks to advance solutions to climate change engages in such shoddy scholarship and a campaign of disinformation remains unclear.

http://www.boussalis.com/docs/skepticism_bc2013.pdf  stat analysis (gore?) som of mc & dunlap et al}]

Organization Name

Number of Documents

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) 642

Cato Institute (CEI) 301

Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)

937 Fraser Institute 63

Global Warming Policy Foundation 7,892

Heartland Institute 272

Heritage Foundation 220

Hoover Institution 24

International Climate and Environmental ChangeAssessment Project (ICECAP) 1,784

George C. Marshall Institute 139

National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) 43

National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) 386

Pacific Institute 226

Reason Foundation 159

Total 13,114

Table 1: The number of documents currently in the corpus for 15 well-known conservative t

See also: Academia & Non-Profit, Paul Thacker

==

prtizker and shellen argue worryiing about nuke more dangerous to health than radiation itself;

foru , suggests diablo cyn deal timed to distract fron one of the partners legal troubles?

conspriacy AEC" WHO??

irrational, supersition, // vaxers

cpuc corrupt

===

http://ecowatch.com/2013/11/08/3-claims-pro-nuclear-film-pandoras-promise/

By Denise Robbins

CNN aired the pro-nuclear power film Pandora’s Promise last night, which propagated three common myths about nuclear power: it suggested the environmental movement’s “scare tactics” are what has inhibited nuclear power, claimed nuclear power is cheaper than renewables and downplayed complications from nuclear waste. This led to a generally one-sided story, which has led to criticism from many reviewers.

Here’s how the film Pandora’s Promise propagated nuclear power myths:

1. Claimed Nuclear Energy Is Cheaper Than Renewable Energy

The enormous cost of building nuclear power plants is a key inhibiting factor for the energy source. Despite receiving immensely greater subsidies than renewable energy from the beginning of its development, nuclear energy is still not competitive with fossil fuels in the U.S., and new wind energy is estimated to be less expensive than new nuclear generation. Yet the Breakthrough Institute’s Michael Shellenberger asserted that nuclear power is “a much more economical alternative to very expensive solar panels or very expensive wind turbines that require backup power.” He also dismissed renewable energy and energy efficiency, one of the cheapest ways to address climate change, as a “religion.”

Renewable energy prices have actually been dropping while the costs of nuclear are on the rise—as nuclear power has scaled up in France and the U.S., so have the costs of power plant construction. Meanwhile, solar prices have dropped 99 percent in the last quarter century, and solar and wind energies are predicted to be cost-competitive with fossil fuels—without the use of subsidies—by 2025.

2. Blamed Environmentalists For Preventing Nuclear Deployment

Pandora’s Promise focused on opposition to nuclear power from some in the environmental movement. In the film, author Mark Lynas even compared anti-nuclear activists to global warming deniers. However, this narrative paints a misleading picture: the lack of nuclear expansion in the U.S. comes down to a simple case of economics. Currently, nuclear power cannot compete with gas-fired power. As the libertarian Cato Institute’s Jerry Taylor explained that there’s “zero evidence” that environmental opposition is preventing new nuclear power plants, a myth that he said has been purported by nuclear advocates who “like to dodge the cost estimates.”

3. Whitewashed The Issue Of Nuclear Waste

Although nuclear power has potential to become a major power source, it comes with baggage. The U.S. has accumulated more than 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, and continues to accumulate  2,200 tons per year, yet CNN’s documentary made light of this waste—Lynas claimed that nuclear waste is “not an environmental issue.”

The Associated Press reported that the nation “has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years.” Most of this waste currently “sits in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Fukushima Dai-ichi” at the power plants themselves, some of which “contain four times the amount of spent fuel that they were designed to handle.”

The film also failed to mention leaks that currently challenge the upstate New York power plant, Indian Point. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the plant experiences consistent leaks during refueling, though the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not act on this. The scientists called the status quo of nuclear waste cleanup “untenable,” yet CNN’s documentary barely glossed over this ongoing issue.

Visit EcoWatch’s**NUCLEAR**page for more related news on this topic.

==

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2013/06/14/why-billionaire-paul-allen-backed-pro-nuclear-power-film-pandoras-promise/#709dbe5e7e35

It’s not every day that two of the richest men in the world decide to back a documentary film that takes on a topic that has long been an environmental taboo. But that’s exactly what happened withPandora’s Promise, a new film directed by Robert Stone, opening in 30 cities across the U.S. on Friday June 14. Stone’s exploration of several environmentalists who have come to support the use of nuclear power won over both MS cofounder Paul Allen and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson.

“Even before Pandora’s Promise was made, I’d become convinced that nuclear energy should be part of the climate change solution. Once I saw Pandora’s Promise, I knew the film would get people thinking about nuclear in a whole new way,” Allen said via email. “I like that the film lays out the facts and then viewers can make up their own minds about nuclear power based on the facts and information presented. Documentaries like this open people’s minds and lead to informed decision-making, which is critical if we want to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.”

Stone, who had directed several other documentary films, describes himself as an environmentalist but was disappointed with the lack of progress environmentalists were having. “The traditional approach that the environmental movement has taken has met with abject failure,” Stone told me. “Bets on wind and solar and somehow putting a price on carbon – none of that is working.” Or at least, not to the degree necessary if environmentalists want to drastically decrease the use of fossil fuels.

Stone admits that his default position before making  the film was against the use of nuclear power. In fact, the first film he made, which won him an Oscar nomination, was an anti-nuclear movie called Radio Bikini. But he became intrigued by environmentalists including Stewart Brand (founder of the Whole Earth Catalog), Michael Shellenberger (cofounder of the Breakthrough Institute), author Gwyneth Cravens and U.K. environmental activist Mark Lynas, all of whom had undergone a conversion and come around to support nuclear power.  Some of what changed their minds: A realization that what we’ve been told by anti-nuclear activists over the years just wasn’t true. Yes, there have been some horrible accidents. But no one died at Three Mile Island, the film points out. Claims that 1 million people were killed at Chernobyl –- propagated by anti-nuclear activists like Helen Caldecott — turn out, upon close examination of official documents by the filmmakers, to be just plain wrong: only 50 people were killed. It also comes to light in the film that the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl did not have a containment chamber and the plant was built to produce plutonium, not nuclear power.

The nuclear meltdown at Fukushima is of course the most recent accident, and Stone visits the plant there as well.”It was a deeply emotional experience… to go there,” he said. “Well, nobody has died and no one has gotten sick from radiation, and no one ever will.  Your rational mind kicks off and your emotional mind kicks in” when faced with a disaster like Fukushima. His film does show the stark devastation around the plant.

one of the people who watched the screening of Pandora’s Promise at Sundance this year was Bonnie Benjamin-Phariss, director of Paul Allen’s Vulcan Films division.  She thought it was so well done that she showed it to Paul Allen, who, after several months of “vetting every detail in the film,” according to Stone, decided to finance a big chunk of the cost of distribution. Allen’s sister, Jody Allen, who is president and CEO of Vulcan Inc., the investment firm she and her brother cofounded, is backing the film as well. UK billionaire Sir Richard Branson also came in as an executive producer after the film was complete. Branson’s representative did not respond to a request for a comment.

A common aim for Stone, Allen and Rothrock is to spark a dialogue.  “The goal of this movie is to start a conversation that we are not having as a nation,” explained Rothrock, adding that there has been a ton of innovation in nuclear power technology.  Bill Gates is backing a technology called a traveling wave reactor; General Electric Hitachi has come up with a design for a version of a breeder reactor, called IFR (“Integral Fast Reactor”) –which uses nuclear waste material as its fuel.

To be sure, not all issues of concern around nuclear power have been settled. But it’s worth taking a look at the innovations in nuclear power, which may change the equation.

Even before the film officially opens, a dialogue has begun. Stone talked about showing Pandora’s Promise at an environmental film festival in Telluride, Colo. a few weeks ago to a packed house of about 650 people. “After we screened the film I asked the room if President Obama, as expected, suggests backing a new generation of nuclear reactors, how many would support him; 98% of the hands went up. It’s been consistent everywhere I go.”

I, for one, highly recommend seeing the film. Click here to watch a trailer of Pandora’s Promise.

==

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/the-public-square/the-mckibben-doctrine

nisbet

in the two decades since he first wrote about global warming, Bill McKibben has become the most visible environmental activist in the United States, pioneering new methods of social protest, and redefining the way environmental groups practice politics. Today he is at the center of the US climate movement.

I recently spent four months as a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy where I studied McKibben’s writing and career, assessing his impact on American environmental debates. In doing so, I developed a deep admiration for his ability to convey the urgency of climate change and to articulate a better approach to life that includes more time for family, reflection, and nature. His work as an activist is equally impressive. From his start in 2006 working with a handful of college students to his leadership of 350.org today, McKibben has helped shift the U.S. environmental movement from an almost exclusive focus on insider lobbying, legal strategies, and think tank-style influence to focus greater resources on grassroots organizing and mobilization.

Yet as a public intellectual, McKibben has failed to offer pragmatic and achievable policy ideas. Instead, reflecting his intellectual roots in the deep ecology movement, McKibben’s goal has been to generate a mass consciousness in support of limiting economic growth and consumption, with the hope of shifting the United States towards localized economies, food systems, and “soft” energy sources.  In particular, his ability to appeal to Yankee virtues and to provoke abolitionist-style outrage over the practices of the fossil fuel industry resonates with many upper-income Baby Boomers and young people living in regions like New England or the Pacific Northwest.

But I wonder how many of the people turning out to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, working on behalf of divestment, or following along on Twitter and Facebook are aware of McKibben’s long standing vision of societal change first detailed in The End of Nature and most recently in Deep Economy and Eaarth. In this pastoral future free of consumerism or material ambition, Americans would rarely travel, experiencing the world instead via the Internet, grow much of their own food, power their communities through solar and wind, and divert their wealth to developing countries. Only under these transformational conditions, argues McKibben, would we be able to set a moral example for countries like China to change course, all in the hope that these countries will accept a “grand bargain” towards a cleaner energy path.

No Compromise: Defending a Romanticized Nature

To jump-start this hoped-for transformation of society, McKibben advocates on behalf of conventional policy approaches such as a cap and dividend bill, a carbon tax, and a binding international agreement on emissions, while insisting that there can be no compromise on the Keystone XL pipeline or fossil fuel industry divestment. Yet each of these legislative or international policy approaches has proved politically elusive, despite years of lobbying and advocacy. The response to legislative failure from McKibben and other environmentalists has been to double-down in their commitment to their policy paradigm, attributing failure to the political prowess of conservatives and industry, and to a corresponding lack of grassroots pressure and moral outrage.

Yet McKibben’s romantic vision of a New England-style utopia and pursuit of a narrow set of policy goals have blinded him to considering alternative approaches that may not only be more effective at curbing greenhouse gas emissions and providing for the material needs of large, diverse populations but also more politically probable. Moreover, McKibben’s line-in-the-sand organizing strategies may in fact be only deepening polarization and making it that much more difficult for President Obama to broker support for policy even among members of his own political party.

“If we pursue the route of seeking ever larger and grander solutions to climate change we will continue to end up frustrated and disillusioned,” warns Mike Hulme in Why We Disagree About Climate Change. “Global deals will be stymied, science and economics will remain battlegrounds for rearguard actions, global emissions will continue to rise, and vulnerabilities to climate risks will remain.":{1 :(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}:As alternatives, Hulme points to the framework put forward by the London School of Economics’ Gwyn Prins, Oxford University’s Steve Rayner, and others who argue that climate change requires a portfolio of “clumsy” policy solutions, implemented across levels of government and through the private and nonprofit sectors.:{2 }:

In this approach, by breaking down the wicked nature of climate change into smaller, interconnected problems, achieving progress on these smaller challenges becomes more likely. At the international level, examples include reducing especially powerful greenhouse gases like black carbon (or soot) from diesel cars and dirty stoves and methane from leaky gas pipes. A similar strategy focuses on slowing the rate of deforestation. In contrast to endless international summits, these goals can be pursued through bi-lateral negotiations with specific countries like Indonesia, China, India or Russia.:{3:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}:

The Keystone Fixation and the Energy Innovation Challenge

In the United States, carbon dioxide emissions from power plants dropped in 2011 from the previous year’s level, a decline driven by the revolution in natural gas drilling, which has shifted energy production away from coal and towards cleaner burning natural gas.:{4:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: A recent analysis by the Clean Air Task Force argues that Obama can meet his Administration’s goals for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions without the need for major legislation. These strategies include finalizing Environmental Protection Agency rules on emissions from new power plants, proposing limits on existing power plants, and by aggressively regulating methane leaks and environmental risks from natural gas drilling.:{5}:

In combination with these limits to emissions, analysts from the Brookings Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and Breakthrough Institute argue that the Obama Administrationshould also aggressively pursue increased research and development and procurement spending on clean energy technology, including carbon capture and storage and advanced nuclear technologies.:{6:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: Others have argued for greater investment in regionally tailored adaptation initiatives that protect, prepare, and defend people and communities from current and future climate change-related risks.:{7}:

“I think we’ve gotten stuck because we expect old solutions are going to solve our new problems. We try the same things, again and again, and they just don’t seem to work. So we try them again, hoping that this time they will,” wrote Jonathon Foley recently, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. “But we should all remember the old definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.”:{8:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}:

To be sure, pursuit of more incremental policy approaches can benefit from the grassroots pressure generated by 350.org. Yet today, McKibben and allies like Van Jones appear to have little tolerance for political pragmatism, as they voice extreme dissatisfaction with Obama’s track record on climate policy. In this case, McKibben’s work as an advocate risks distracting from progress on the problem. The controversy over the XL pipeline is a leading example, as the editors at the journal Natureand others have argued.:{9}: “I’m not a fan of the pipeline and would rather it wasn’t built, but it’s hardly the top priority for addressing climate change that many have claimed,” wrote Foley. “At best, it’s a bit of a sideshow. At worst, it’s a distraction from the bigger issues that contribute to climate change.”:{10}:

Techno-Pessimism

McKibben can also be faulted for his quasi-religious opposition to specific forms of technology. In The End of Nature and in later works, he warned strongly against pursuing technologies like genetic engineering that might allow us to better adapt to climate change impacts, a path that would result in an “artificial world, a space station.”:{11}: In doing so, he drew an analogy to the years following the Civil War, in which slavery was no longer an acceptable method for whites to exercise control over blacks. But rather than converting to “new notions of universal fellowship and equality, white Americans invented segregation.” Using technologies like genetic engineering to cope with climate change, according to McKibben, was the moral equivalent of segregation: “Just as the old methods of dominating the world have become unworkable, a new set of tools is emerging that may allow us to continue that domination by different, expanded, and even more destructive means….”:{12}:

Today, as journalist Keith Kloorhas detailed in a series of articles at Slate magazine, McKibben’s techno-skepticism is echoed by many environmentalists, local food enthusiasts, and writers like Michael Pollan, as they advocate on behalf of organic farming and against genetically-altered crops in the United States and abroad, presenting barriers to the development of the technology as a means to cope with climate change-related impacts.:{13}:

McKibben is perhaps at even greater fault for downplaying the need for “hard” technological approaches like nuclear energy or carbon capture and storage, focusing instead on “soft” technologies like solar, wind, and efficiency. These technologies, however, are unlikely to alter the dynamics of fossil-fuel energy use and dependency worldwide. Consider that globally, an estimated 1,200 coal power plants are scheduled for construction, with China and India accounting for three-quarters of this number.:{14:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: Compounding the challenge, according to University of Manitoba energy analyst Vaclav Smil, solar and wind energy sources are unlikely to be able to overcome the problems of intermittency, storage capacity, cost, and be scalable in time to compete with coal power worldwide.:{15}:

In other words, innovative technologies are needed that can not only power the mega-cities of Asia, but that can also limit emissions from the thousands of coal plants already in place and scheduled to be built around the world. In advocating for nuclear energy, NASA scientist James Hansen puts it even more bluntly: “Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”:{16:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: Both nuclear and carbon capture and storage have significant trade-offs – and face a great deal of uncertainty in their development and eventual deployment, but for McKibben and others to ignore the need for alternatives to solar, wind, and efficiency misleads both themselves and the public. As Keith Kloor writes atSlate: “Bill McKibben says we need to ‘do the math,’ … It’s a powerfully frightening equation. But we also need to do the math for the energy equation, which should be equally frightening.”:{17}:

According to Arizona State University’s Dan Sarewitz, the techno-pessimism of environmentalists like McKibben represents a “misplaced reverence for science that increasingly, and with ever-greater precision, documents the problems associated with a technology-dependent society.” Sarewitz argues that this outlook limits the ability of environmentalists and their liberal allies to achieve their political and social goals, as they become overly preoccupied with “small risks to individuals rather than the potential for very large benefits to society” from technology.:{18:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}:

In this case, useful comparisons can be made between McKibben and environmentalists like Stewart Brand and Mark Lynas who have urged their peers to adopt a new outlook on technological innovation. Sharing many of the same political aims as McKibben, over the course of his career, Lynas has developed a very different perspective about technology and humans’ relation to nature. In his most recent bookThe God Species: How the Planet Can Survive The Age of Humans, Lynas argued that “we cannot afford to foreclose powerful technological options like nuclear, synthetic biology, and [genetic engineering] because of Luddite prejudice and ideological inertia.”:{19:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: Specific to geo-engineering, Lynas warned environmentalists of repeating the mistakes of genetic engineering, “where opposing a technology a priori meant that lots of potential benefits were stopped or delayed for no good cause.” Most importantly, he wrote, “Environmentalists need to remind themselves that humans are not all bad … we can nurture and protect as well as dominate and conquer.”:{20}:

What’s clear from the analysis of McKibben’s writing and career is that multiple discourses about climate change exist, even among the most visible voices arguing on behalf of societal action. As New York University’s Jay Rosen noted in a 2011 speech to the UK Conference of Science Journalists, this is to be expected, since on wicked problems: “There is no kumbaya moment. You never get everyone on the same page,” and you never reach consensus. Yet as he argues, “What’s possible is a world where different stakeholders ‘get’ that the world looks different to people who hold different stakes.”:{21:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: Similarly, as Andrew Revkin writes, citing the work of Hulme and others: “Confusion and division over ‘global warming’ often grows out of the meaninglessness of the phrase on its own. The result is that people with very different world views, in essence, create their own definitions of the term.”:{22}:

Against Polarization

In a recent essay titled “Wicked Polarization,” Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus describe progress on climate change and similarly complex social problems as obstructed by experts and public intellectuals who have “come to frame virtually every national problem as a consequence of the irrationality, ignorance, and immorality of the political Other.” Arguments for action on climate change that evoke idealized visions of small-scale, hyper-efficient agrarian communities powered by wind and solar reflect the priorities and values of environmentalists like McKibben, rather than a pragmatic set of choices designed to both effectively manage the problem and to align a diversity of political interests in support of compromise. “The problem is not that we are in a post-truth age but rather that we have not learned to adapt to it,” write Shellenberger and Nordhaus. “Perhaps a good place to begin is by recognizing our own biases, perspectives, and agendas and attempting to hold them more lightly … bringing an end to our ideological arms race will ultimately require that we force partisans out of their comfort zone by redefining those problems in ways to which partisans do not already know the answers.”:{23}:

As a complement to journalists and public intellectuals like McKibben, there is therefore a strong need for writers and forums which serve as bridges between discourses and perspectives. On this function, “The idea here is not just to highlight points of communality and sites for compromise,” writes political scientist John Dryzek and co-author Hayley Stevenson, “but also to provide possibilities for contestation and the reflection it can induce.”:{24:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: Similarly, as the University of Michigan’s Andrew Hoffman concludes, what’s needed are initiatives that offer “broker frames,” discourses and contexts that expand, diversify, and blur perspectives on the issue, beyond the mostly left-leaning, affluent, older and white segment of Americans who are currently alarmed by climate change.:{25}:

As news organizations expand digital and social media initiatives, an ideally organized beat for covering a problem like climate change would depend on a socially diverse network of contributors, rather than relying on the expertise of a single journalist and a few sources. Since the people who have the most expertise on climate change are unevenly distributed across the planet, this form of networked journalism would be guided by a philosophy that “my readers know more than I do,” argues Jay Rosen.:{26:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: In all, a networked approach to journalism that features a plurality of perspectives is a philosophical approach that challenges directly the outlook offered by Walter Lippmann, who assumed his readers lacked the capacity to contribute substantively to expert-level discussion. The networked approach also contrasts with the traditional model of book author, essayist, and columnist employed by most contemporary knowledge journalists.

A New Challenge for the Public Intellectual: Convene and Question

Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earthblog at The New York Times is a leading example of a networked approach to knowledge journalism that expands and blends discourses about climate change. Drawing on his experience as a science reporter, Revkin is not only able to function as an explainer and informed critic of science, but he also serves as a convener, facilitating discussions among a diversity of experts, advocates, and various publics, while contextualizing the uncertainty relative to specific claims, technologies, and policy approaches.

He also brings a different perspective to the wicked nature of climate change, arguing for a broader definition of the societal challenge and to a broader menu of political and technological approaches than most environmentalists might prefer. At Dot Earth, Revkin writes, “If I had to choose one of two bumper stickers for our car — CLIMATE CRISIS or ENERGY QUEST — I’d choose the latter.” As he continues: “This doesn’t mean I reject the idea that we face a climate crisis. I just don’t think that phrase is a productive way to frame this challenge.”:{27:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}:

Revkin has described his views on climate change as a sub-set of the bigger sustainability challenge, defined as “how we manage our infinite aspirations on a finite planet.”:{28:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: For his students at Pace University, he explains this challenge by referencing the expected population in the year 2050: 9 Billion People + 1 Planet = ? According to Revkin, sustainability is about managing the key questions we face “on a trajectory towards 9 billion people: how many people are too many, how much nature is not enough, how much poverty is too much?”:{29}: Similarly, in a 2012 profile of McKibben at Outside magazine, Revkin said he considered McKibben “an incredible organizer and motivator, particularly for young people. But we’ve drawn different conclusions about several important aspects of the science and approaches to getting traction on related energy issues. I prefer 350’s days of action to its focus on a number, which I think doesn’t have sufficient meaning unless it’s accompanied by ‘350 when’ and ‘350 how.’”

Revkin explains that his ultimate focus at Dot Earth is the “broader exploration of new ways to make information work – to give ideas the best chance of getting where they are needed to help advance our relationships to the environment and each other.” Rather than frequently advocating for a position, he prefers posing questions, describing answers from experts and others, an approach that McKibben has criticized as “relentlessly middle-seeking.”:{30:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: But as Revkin writes, he views his role mainly as “interrogatory – exploring questions, not giving you my answer … I think anyone who tells you they know the answer on some of these complex issues is not being particularly honest.”31

As Revkin described his goals in a 2011 interview: “The blog is very different than most in that most blogs are built to provide a comfort zone for a particular ideological camp … I’m not here to provide you with a soft couch and free drinks if you’re an enviro or if you are a conservative. It’s a place to challenge yourself.”  In doing so, Revkin recognizes his departure from peers like McKibben who have combined their journalism with advocacy, or those in the tradition of Walter Lippmann like Tom Friedman who speak to their readers from the position of enlightened authority. Instead, Revkin views himself as providing a “service akin to that of a mountain guide after an avalanche. Follow me and I can guarantee an honest search for a safe path. This is a big contrast from the dominant journalism paradigm of the last century, crystallized in Walter Cronkite’s "That’s the way it is’ signoff.":{32:(style="position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}:

Further Reading

Matthew Nisbet, "Nature's Prophet: Bill McKibben as Journalist, Public Intellectual and Activist," Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. Discussion Paper Series, D-78 March. Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2013.

Matthew Nisbet, "The Opponent: How Bill McKibben Changed Environmental Politics and Took on the Oil Patch," *Policy Options*(Canada), 2013.

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, "It's Not About the Climate," *The Breakthrough*, April 29, 2013

Jim Proctor, "We Have Never Been Natural," *The Breakthrough*, April 5, 2013

Photo Credit: 350.org

1. Hulme, M. Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 395.

2. See G. Prins and S. Rayner, “Time to Ditch Kyoto,” Nature 449, no. 7165 (2007).  Also G. Prins et al., “The Hartwell Paper: A New Direction for Climate Policy after the Crash of 2009.” London: London School of Economics and Political Science and University of Oxford, 2010. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27939/1/HartwellPaper_English_version.pdf.  For an overview on clumsy approaches to complex policy problems, see Verweij, M. and Thompson, M.(Eds.) Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World. Palgrave McMillian, 2006/2011.

3. G. Prins and S. Rayner, “Time to Ditch Kyoto,” Nature 449, no. 7165 (2007).

4. Drajem, M. “Oil, Gas Production Among Top Greenhouse Gas Sources.” Reuters, 2013 Feb. 8. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-05/greenhouse-gas-emissions-fall-in-u-s-power-plants-on-coal-cuts.html.

5. Plumer, B. "Can Obama Tackle Climate Change in His Second Term?" Wonkblog,The Washington Post.com, 2013 Jan. 13.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/21/can-obama-tackle-climate-change-in-his-second-term/.

6. Marc Muro Steven F. Hayward, Ted Nordhaus, and Michael Shellenberger, “Post-Partisan Power: How a Limited and Direct Approach to Energy Innovation Can Deliver Clean, Cheap Energy, Economic Productivity, and National Prosperity,” (Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, and The Breakthrough Institute). http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/Post-Partisan%20Power.pdf.

7. On policy, the need to focus on adaptation was proposed as early as 1998; see R.A. Pielke, "Rethinking the Role of Adaptation in Climate Policy," Global Environmental Change 8, no. 2 (1998).  Also see R. Pielke et al., "Lifting the Taboo on Adaptation,"Nature 445, no. 8 (2007).

8. Foley, J. “New Problems Call for New Solutions.” Ensia.com, 2013 Jan. 28. http://ensia.com/voices/new-problems-call-for-new-solutions/.

9. Anon. “Change for Good: The US Must Boost Its Spending on Clean Energy to Make its Mark on the Climate Debate.” Nature, 2013 Jan. 29.

10. “Obama: Stealth Climate Warrior?” Ensia.com, 2013 Jan. 30.http://ensia.com/voices/obama-stealth-climate-warrior/.

11. McKibben, B. The End of Nature. Random House, 1989/2006, pg. 129.

12. Ibid., pg. 144

13. Kloor, K. “Delusions of Danger.” Slate, 2012 Nov. 5; Kloor, K. “GMO Opponents are the Climate Skeptics of the Left.” Slate, 2012 Sept. 26; Kloor, K. “The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement.” Slate, 2012 Dec. 12.

14. Plumer, B. “The Big Climate Question: Will the World Build 1,200 Power Plants?”Wonkblog, The Washington Post, 2012 Nov. 20.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/20/1200-coal-are-plants-being-planned-worldwide-what-happens-if-they-all-get-built/.

15. Smil, V. Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate. AEI Press, 2010.

16. Hansen, J. “Baby Lauren and the Cool Aid.” Personal web site.http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110729_BabyLauren.pdf.

17. Kloor, K. "The Pro-Nukes Environmental Movement."  Slate, 2013 Jan. 14. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/nuclear_power/2013/01/nuclear_energy_and_climate_change_environmentalists_debate_how_to_stop_global.html

18. Sarewitz, D. (2012). "Liberalism’s Modest Proposals." Breakthrough Journal, Winter 2012. http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-2/liberalisms-modest-proposals/

19. Lynas, M. The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans. National Geographic, 2011, pg. 11.

20. Ibid. pg. 12-13.

21. Rosen, J. "Covering Wicked Problems: Keynote address to the 2nd UK Conference of Science Journalists." PressThink Blog, June 25, 2012.http://pressthink.org/2012/06/covering-wicked-problems/.

22. Revkin, A. "The Enduring Cloudiness of in Climate and Coastal Forecasts." The Dot Earth Blog, The New York Times, 2012 Nov. 29.http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/the-enduring-uncertainty-beyond-the-climate-basics/.

23. Shellenberger, M. and T. Nordhaus. “Wicked Polarization: How Prosperity, Democracy and Experts Divided America.” Breakthrough Journal, Winter 2013.http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/issue-3/wicked-polarization/.

24. Stevenson, H. and J. Dryzek.  “The Discourse Democratization of Global Climate Governance.” Environmental Politics, 1, 12, 189-210.

25. Hoffman, A. “Climate Science as Culture War.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2012 Fall.http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/climate_science_as_culture_war.

26. Rosen, J. "Covering Wicked Problems: Keynote address to the 2nd UK Conference of Science Journalists." PressThink Blog, June 25, 2012.http://pressthink.org/2012/06/covering-wicked-problems/.

27. Revkin, A. "On the Energy Gap and Climate Crisis." The Dot Earth blog. The New York Times, 2010, April 7. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/on-the-energy-gap-and-climate-crisis/.

28. Brainard, C. "Q&A: Andrew Revkin: NYT Reporter Discusses Climate, Sustainability, and Long-Haul Reporting." Columbia Journalism Review Online, 2008, Dec. 16.

29. Brainard, C. "Dot Earth Moves to NYT Opinion Page." Columbia Journalism Review Online, 2010, April 1.

30. Revkin, A. “Can Obama Escape the Alberta Tar Pit?” The Dot Earth blog, The New York Times, 2011 Sept. 5. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/can-obama-escape-the-alberta-tar-pit/http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/more-on-tar-oil-pipelines-and-presidents/.

31. Brainard, C. “Dot Earth Moves to Opinion Section.”

32. Revkin, A. "My Second Half." The Dot Earth blog, The New York Times, 2009 Dec. 21. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/my-second-half/.

==

omg kqed forum 6/23 shellenberger

Episode airs June 23, 2016 at 9:00 AM

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced Tuesday it will close Diablo Canyon, California’s last nuclear plant, in 2025, putting an end to the state’s nuclear era. As part of an agreement with several environmental groups, PG&E plans to replace Diablo Canyon with clean energy rather than fossil fuels. This plan has support from a variety of environmental groups — including Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defense Council — but some have criticized shutting down such a large source of carbon-free power, questioning the feasibility of PG&E’s plan to replace Diablo with renewables. In this hour of Forum, we’ll discuss the plans for shutting down Diablo Canyon and how it might impact the state’s future energy needs.

:{Guests:

Damon Moglen, senior strategic advisor, Friends of the Earth

Michael Shellenberger, president, Environmental Progress

Lauren Sommer, science and environment reporter, KQED Public Radio}:

http://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2016/06/22/pge-agrees-to-close-diablo-canyon-californias-last-nuclear-plant/

http://ww2.kqed.org/forum/

pro nuke, COI greens, sierra club; CPUC fraud corruption

vs foe Diablo, cd run another 50 yrs

foe, nrdc, gp, = vaxxers

damon moglin sp

pritzker pro nuke rachel and roland

france single model

flak for nuke ind "that's a lie, a lie on air"

san bruno explosion

===

attack hansen  http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/step_aside_james_hansen

by

Teryn Norris is a nationally recognized social entrepreneur and policy analyst and now serves as Special Assistant in the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy.  He is a recipient of the Truman Scholarship, the highest award in the United States for young public service leaders, and he graduated from Stanford University in 2011 with a B.A. in Public Policy.

Over the past five years, Teryn has served as a leading young voice for federal policies to strengthen U.S. energy innovation and competitiveness.  In 2009, he founded a nonprofit organization, Americans for Energy Leadership (AEL), which worked to advance federal support for energy technology innovation and train young energy policy leaders..  He served as the organization’s President until 2012, when it merged with the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Teryn previously served as Senior Advisor and Project Director at the Breakthrough Institute, a public policy think tank, where he co-authored several acclaimed reports on innovation policy, and founded the Breakthrough Fellowship Program. In 2007, the Obama Campaign adopted a proposal he co-authored to invest $150 billion in clean energy technology, which eventually shaped the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.  In 2008 he co-authored the National Energy Education Act proposal, leading to the Department of Energy’s Re-ENERGYSE initiative.

Teryn has co-founded and advised several other nonprofit projects.  He has served on the Johns Hopkins President’s Task Force on Climate Change and the Advisory Board to Focus the Nation, among other organizations.  In 2011 he led OurTime’s national campaign, “Stop The Brain Drain,” to encourage more young people into entrepreneurship and public service.

Teryn has appeared on national television and radio and published in the Harvard Law & Policy Review, National Journal, Issues in Science & Technology, Forbes, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Yale E360, The Plain Dealer, Baltimore Sun and other publications.  He currently lives in Washington, DC.

Publications

The Power to Compete: Benchmarking the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act on Clean Energy Innovation

A new policy brief by the Breakthrough Institute and Americans for Energy Leadership, "The Power to Compete?", provides the first independent analysis of how the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act would impact U.S. competitiveness in the global clean energy industry.

Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant: Asian Nations Set to Dominate Clean Energy Race by Out-Investing US

Fast, Clean, and Cheap

Cutting Global Warming's Gordian Knot

==

originally published in Slate on Nov. 29, and is reprinted with permission.

This past weekend, exhausted diplomats from around the world climbed into fossil fuel–powered airplanes and bade good riddance to Warsaw, Poland. They had spent two weeks holed up in the frigid capital engaging in what has become an annual Kabuki dance over what to do about climate change. Almost exactly as has happened in prior international climate change conferences—gatherings that, like the falling leaves, have become autumnal rites—intonations about a global warming threat were offered, hope for selfless environmental cooperation was expressed, and battles over who should foot the bill were fought. By the time everyone headed for the airport, little of substance had gotten done.

This diplomatic sclerosis isn’t surprising, and it doesn’t mean the world is ignoring climate change. But what happened in Warsaw shows that the action has shifted in two ways that diplomats didn’t envision two decades ago, when they began negotiations toward a grand fight against global warming. First, the important moves are happening in developing countries such as China, not in developed ones such as the United States. Second, they’re happening for economic reasons that aren’t about global warming but that sometimes coincide with it.

These two shifts are likely to define the world’s response to climate change for years to come. Together, they mean the world is likely to address climate change only to the extent that developing countries believe doing so will serve goals they see as more immediate and important: providing new jobs, for instance, or cleaning up sooty air. Moves that happen to curb carbon emissions as a side benefit of accomplishing other goals may not be enough to avert dangerous effects from climate change. But the traditional alternative—shouting from the rooftops that the rich world should act in the name of melting glaciers—may amount to little more than hot air.

This wasn’t what diplomats expected in 1997, when they inked what many hailed as a landmark agreement to combat climate change. The Kyoto Protocol, named for the Japanese city in which it was drafted, obligated industrialized countries that ratified it to cut their greenhouse gas emissions a collective 5 percent by 2012. It didn’t require developing countries to trim their emissions. The rationale was that rich countries, which for decades had been responsible for the bulk of carbon emissions, should take the first step. The United States didn’t ratify the Kyoto accord, arguing in large part that taking on an emissions-reduction burden would hurt its ability to compete in global markets against China, which under Kyoto didn’t have to cut its carbon output.

Today, the Kyoto Protocol seems a quaint relic of a bygone era. The industrialized countries at the center of the Kyoto agreement—the United States, nations in the European Union, and Japan—are fading in importance as global carbon emitters. The developing countries that escaped any obligation to reduce emissions under Kyoto—notably China, but also India, Brazil, and much of Latin America and Africa—are the source of essentially all the projected growth in global greenhouse gas output. Over the next two decades, greenhouse gas emissions are expected to decline in the industrialized world and nearly double in the developing world, according to the International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook, an annual status report on worldwide energy that was issued this month.

Despite the lofty rhetoric in Kyoto, Warsaw, and other cities that have hosted climate talks, the slowdown in rich-world emissions isn’t largely the result of any intentional effort to combat climate change. It’s due, rather, to other economic trends. The United States, Europe, and Japan have mature economies; thanks simply to time, their industrial growth, and thus their greatest increases in energy consumption and emissions, are behind them. What’s more, the steady reduction in the carbon intensity of their economies—the amount of carbon these countries cough out per unit of gross domestic product—is the result of technological development intended to save money, not to save the planet.

One of the biggest contributors to slowing emissions in the United States, for example, is the meteoric rise of shale gas as an electricity source. For every bit of electricity it produces, natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as does coal, the fuel that U.S. shale gas is largely supplanting. Yet the rise of shale gas isn’t due to some anti–global warming Manhattan Project. It’s the culmination of two forces: innovative and dogged oil companies out to make a fortune, and federal research spending designed to boost domestic fossil fuel supplies and reduce imports from the Middle East.

Further evidence that climate concerns aren’t driving energy decisions came earlier this month. Australia’s new conservative government floated bills to repeal the country’s tax on carbon emissions; it introduced an alternative carbon-reduction program, but many observers say that alternative won’t achieve the same degree of emission cuts. Days later, Japan, the home of Kyoto, announced it was abandoning one of its key carbon commitments. Japanese leaders said the country no longer would adhere to an earlier promise to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Instead, the government announced a less aggressive commitment that amounts to a 3 percent decrease in emissions over the same time period. The political switch infuriated environmentalists but is a concession to economic reality. In the wake of the :{2011 }::{Fukushima}::{ nuclear accident}:, Japan has idled the nuclear plants that were a carbon-free source of roughly one-third of the country’s electricity. Even as Japan races to ramp up power from solar and wind, it’s firing up coal-fired power plants, boosting the country’s emissions. The Japanese government’s top spokesman told reporters in Tokyo earlier this month that, particularly given his country’s post-Fukushima move away from nuclear power, its earlier pledge to slash emissions 25 percent “was totally unfounded and wasn’t feasible.”

Japan’s announcement elicited righteous indignation from China. China, which as a developing country was exempted from the Kyoto climate accord’s requirements, recently overtook the United States as the world’s top carbon emitter. As result, it has come under increasing international pressure to take on a carbon-reduction pledge. But Chinese climate negotiators at the Warsaw conference made clear their government has no intention of doing so, particularly when industrialized countries such as Japan are backpedaling.

China’s own emissions are soaring—not just because China has a population of 1.4 billion people but also because China manufactures for the world. And yet there are signs that China—yes, China!—may end up curbing its emissions more than any other country. It has pledged to ramp up the proportion of electricity it generates from nuclear and renewable energy. It has imposed relatively stringent fuel-efficiency requirements for cars. It’s rolling out a bevy of policies designed to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Why? Not primarily to curb carbon dioxide emissions. China is beginning to move toward a cleaner energy mix for reasons far more palpable than a colorless, odorless gas. The air in China’s major cities is often so dirty that it stings the eyes and sickens the lungs; that’s a public-health problem that could become a political threat to Beijing’s rulers. In addition, the push toward cleaner energy sources is creating new jobs and new export industries for China—another tangible political benefit.

China isn’t the only developing country that may end up curbing its greenhouse gas emissions for reasons other than climate concern. Brazil in recent years has markedly slowed deforestation in the Amazon—a major contributor to overall greenhouse gas concentrations, since trees consume carbon dioxide as they grow. In large part, that success is due to cash payments made to farmers who refrain from cutting down trees. Some of that cash comes from European governments and investors looking for cheap ways to satisfy requirements that they fight climate change. Yet studies in Brazil suggest that slowing deforestation brings economic benefits of its own. By focusing farmers’ attention on land that’s already cleared, rather than on clearing additional land, slowing deforestation tends to increase agricultural output, and thus income, from land already being farmed, according to some researchers.

In the industrialized world, economic self-interest has gotten a bad environmental name: It’s the reason, critics say, for the rise in energy consumption that’s contributing to climate change. But in the developing world, where the fight against global warming will be won or lost, economic self-interest may prove the solution.

Jeffrey Ball (@Jeff_Ball) is scholar-in-residence at Stanford’s **:{Steyer-}::{Taylor}:**:{ Center for Energy Policy and Finance}:. He was environment editor at the Wall Street Journal. 

==

wikifluff

Michael Shellenberger is an American author, environmental policy expert, and the president of Breakthrough Institute. He was named a *Time* magazine Heroes of the Environment (2008),^[1] winner of the 2008 Green Book Award,^[2] co-editor of Love Your Monsters (2011) and co-author of Break Through (Houghton Mifflin 2007) and The Death of Environmentalism (2004).^[3] He and his co-author Ted Nordhaus have been described as "ecological modernists"^[4] and "eco-pragmatists."^[5]

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Breakthrough Institute
• 2 Writings
  • 2.1 An Ecomodernist Manifesto
• 3 Early career
• 4 Criticism
• 5 Personal life
• 6 See also
• 7 References
• 8 External links

Breakthrough Institute:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Shellenberger is president of the Breakthrough Institute, which he co-founded with Ted Nordhaus in 2003.^[3] Today, Breakthrough Institute consists of a policy staff, an annual conference, a policy journal, and a network of affiliated fellows.^[6][7][8]

Breakthrough Institute analyses of energy, climate and innovation policy have been cited by National Public Radio^[9] the Wall Street Journal^[10] and C-SPAN.^[11]

Shellenberger has co-authored analyses of cap and trade climate legislation,^[12] of the "planetary boundaries" hypothesis,^[13][14] energy rebound from energy efficiency measures,^[15] carbon pricing,^[16] renewable energy subsidies,^[17][18]nuclear energy,^[19] and shale gas^[18][20][21]

The Institute argues that climate policy should be focused on higher levels of public funding on technology innovation to "make clean energy cheap," and has been critical of climate policies like cap and trade and carbon pricing that are focused primarily on raising energy prices.^{[22][23][24][25]}

The Institute has conducted research showing that shale gas and other major technological innovations were created by American government institutions and public financing. The Institute advocates higher levels of public spending on technology innovation, which they argue will lead to higher environmental quality, economic growth, and quality of life.^[18][20][21]

Writings:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

In 2004, Nordhaus and Shellenberger, both long-time strategists for environmental groups, co-authored a controversial essay, "The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World." The paper argues that environmentalism is conceptually and institutionally incapable of dealing with climate change and should "die" so that a new politics can be born. The essay was debated,^[3][26] and continues to be widely discussed^[27] and taught^[28]

In, 2007, Houghton Mifflin published Nordhaus and Shellenberger's Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Wired Magazine called Break Through "the most important thing to happen to environmentalism since Silent Spring."^[29] The book is an argument for what its authors describe as a positive, "post-environmental" politics that abandons the environmentalist focus on nature protection for a new focus on technological innovation to create a new economy. Time Magazine named Nordhaus and Shellenberger two of its 32 Heroes of the Environment (2008) calling Break Through "prescient" for its prediction that climate policy should focus not on making fossil fuels expensive through regulation but rather on making clean energy cheap.^[1] Break Through was awarded the Green Book Award, 2009, whose other recipients include E.O. Wilson and James Hansen.^[2]

Their writings have focused on the intersection of climate change, energy innovation, and politics. The two predicted the failure of cap and trade for its focus on making fossil fuels expensive rather than on technology innovation to make clean energy cheap.^[30][31] They faulted the Kyoto climate treaty for being focused on what they called "shared sacrifice" rather than shared technological innovation.^[32] They have criticized green cultural life as a consequence of status anxieties among Western consumers.^[33] And they have argued for a "theology" of ecological modernization that embraces technological innovation and human development.^[34]

Nordhaus and Shellenberger have argued for a "climate pragmatism" and an embrace of modernization and human development. They are co-authors of an alternative framework to the United Nations process focused on energy innovation, pollution control and adaptation.^[35][36][37]

In 2011, Nordhaus and Shellenberger started The Breakthrough Journal, which The New Republic called "among the most complete efforts to provide a fresh answer" to the question of how to modernize liberal thought,^[7] and The National Reviewcalled "...the most promising effort at self-criticism by our liberal cousins in a long time."^[38]

An Ecomodernist Manifesto:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

In April 2015, Shellenberger joined with a group of scholars in issuing An Ecomodernist Manifesto.^[39][40] The other authors were: 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, Robert Stone, and Peter Teague^[41]

Early career:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Shellenberger's early writing and activism focused on Latin America. That work included thefounding of an Amnesty International chapter in high school in Greeley Colorado, and debating Latin American policy, for which he attended the National Forensic League Championships. He traveled and worked in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s.^[42] In 1993 he moved to the San Francisco to work with progressive organization, Global Exchange, authoring articles on Haiti,^[43] Brazil^[44][45]Mexico,^[46] Gulf War syndrome,^[47] and affirmative action.^[48] At UC-Santa Cruz he helped organize a graduate students union and defend affirmative action.^[49] Later he co-founded Communication Works, an allied progressive public relations organization.^[50] which worked on a wide range of campaigns, from challenging Nike over its labor practices in Asia, to saving the Headwaters Redwood forest. In 2002 Shellenberger co-founded the consulting firm Lumina Strategies.^[51] Its clients included Global Exchange, Americans United for Affirmative Action, the Ford Foundation, the Sierra Club, and the Venezuelan Information Center.^[52][53] In 2005 Shellenberger and Nordhaus co-founded American Environics,^[54] whose clients include AARP, Earthjustice, the Ford Foundation, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.^{[citation needed]}

Criticism:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

The writings of Shellenberger have been praised and criticized. Wired magazine wrote that Break Through "could turn out to be the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring."^[55] The Wall Street Journal wrote, "If heeded, Nordhaus and Shellenberger's call for an optimistic outlook -- embracing economic dynamism and creative potential -- will surely do more for the environment than any U.N. report or Nobel Prize.".^[56] Former Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, wrote, "I am deeply disappointed and angered by" "The Death of Environmentalism," which he called "shoddy"^[57] and "unclear, unfair and divisive.”^[58] Former Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando said, referring to both Shellenberger and his coauthor Ted Nordhaus, "These guys laid out some fascinating data, but they put it in this over-the-top language and did it in this in-your-face way."^[59]

Personal life:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Shellenberger was raised in a Mennonite household in Colorado and attended college at Earlham College, a Quaker school in Richmond, Indiana.^[60][61] He went on to receive a Masters Degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Shellenberger has two children and resides in the San Francisco Bay area.^[60][61]

See also:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

• Break Through (book) Published 2007
• Bright Green Environmentalism
• Neo-environmentalism

References:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

1. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger#cite_ref-time_1-1) Bryan Walsh, *Time Magazine*, September 24, 2008
2. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger#cite_ref-eurekalert_2-1) Stevens' Center for Science Writing, January 8, 2008
3. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger#cite_ref-nytimes_3-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger#cite_ref-nytimes_3-2) Felicity Barringer, "Paper Sets Off A Debate On Environmentalism's Future," *New York Times* February 6, 2005
4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^http://e360.yale.edu/feature/new_green_vision_technology_as_our_planets_last_best_hope/2671/
5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Keith Kloor, "The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement," December 12, 2012
6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Joe Garofoli, "Thinkers Take Apart Liberalism in Order to Save It," *San Francisco Chronicle,* June 16, 2011
7. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger#cite_ref-tnr_7-1) Mark Schmitt, *The New Republic,* "Has Liberalism Entered a Post-Obama Era?, June 30, 2011
8. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ The Breakthrough Institute
9. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Christopher Joyce, "Nuclear Woes Push Japan into a New Energy Future," *NPR News*, March 11, 2012
10. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Joseph White, Obama's Energy Shift: It's Not About Climate, *Wall Street Journal*, January 27, 2011
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12. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Bryan Walsh, "What the Energy Bill Really Means for CO2 Emissions," *Time Magazine*, June 27, 2009
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External links:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

• *Breakthrough Institute* web site for Breakthrough Institute
• "Colbert Report: Michael Shellenberger" video interview with Michael Shellenberger
• Interview at Grist.org
• "Two Heretics Anger Their Bretheran," *Wired* magazine

==

http://www.ecomodernism.org/

An Ecomodernist Manifesto

From the Death of Environmentalism to the Birth of Ecomodernism

Ten years after the "death of environmentalism," a new paradigm – called ecomodernism – has assumed its place. This week, 18 environmental scientists, activists, and scholars coauthored An Ecomodernist Manifesto, a 25-page essay offers an affirmative and optimistic vision for a future in which human prosperity and nature protection are achieved simultaneously.

April 15, 2015 | Michael Shellenberger & Ted Nordhaus

Ten years ago the two of us wrote a controversial essay arguing that inaction on climate change required rethinking everything we thought we knew. Our assumptions had us defining the problem and solutions too narrowly. Too much negativism was turning people off. We needed the death of environmentalism so that a new and more expansive ecological politics could be born.

In the decade that followed, we discovered a whole world of researchers, scholars, and writers who were leveling similar critiques as ours. Constructing a new ecological politics required first that we deconstruct the old politics. Together with our Senior Fellows and other friends and allies, we have done a lot of critical analysis of the old environmental paradigm over the past 10 years.

From that, a new and relatively coherent way of thinking about energy and the environment has gradually emerged. This week, a group of 18 environmental scientists, activists, and scholars, including the two of us, coauthored An Ecomodernist Manifesto, a 25-page essay that can be downloaded or read online. The manifesto offers an affirmative and optimistic vision for a future in which we can have universal human development, freedom, and more nature through continued technological and social modernization.

The manifesto affirms the traditional environmentalist view that we should endeavor to shrink the human footprint to leave more Earth for nature. But it breaks from the idea that our goal should be harmonizing society with nature. Instead, the authors argue, our goal should be to increasingly "de-couple" human development from natural resource use.

Intensifying many human activities — particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry, and settlement — so that they use less land and interfere less with the natural world is the key to decoupling human development from environmental impacts. These socioeconomic and technological processes are central to economic modernization and environmental protection. Together they allow people to mitigate climate change, to spare nature, and to alleviate global poverty.

As Eduardo Porter notes in today's New York Times, the ecomodernist vision speaks to the aspirations of poor and developing countries and offers a realistic way of saving more nature in tropical countries:

If billions of impoverished humans are not offered a shot at genuine development, the environment will not be saved. And that requires not just help in financing low-carbon energy sources, but also a lot of new energy, period. Offering a solar panel for every thatched roof is not going to cut it.

“We shouldn’t be talking about 10 villages that got power for a light bulb,” said Joyashree Roy, a professor of economics at Jadavpur University in India who was among the leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

“What we should be talking about,” she said, “is how the village got a power connection for a cold storage facility or an industrial park.”

The eminent Australian conservationist William Laurance, who is not involved with the eco-modernists, put it this way, “We need to intensify agriculture in places that we have already developed rather than develop new places,” he said. “What is happening today is much more chaotic.”

Development would allow people in the world’s poorest countries to move into cities — as they did decades ago in rich nations — and get better educations and jobs. Urban living would accelerate demographic transitions, lowering infant mortality rates and allowing fertility rates to decline, taking further pressure off the planet.

An Ecomodernist Manifesto suggests a new way of thinking and acting for nature and the environment in pragmatic ways that are consistent with the long process of human development and modernization. But it is also offered as a pluralistic and provisional framework for achieving better outcomes for humans and nature.

Toward achieving that goal, the manifesto authors are encouraging thoughtful and substantive responses, which will be posted or linked to from the website ecomodernism.org. Few issues have become as polarized and as polarizing as the environment, and so the Manifesto ends with a call for civility and dialogue.

It is our hope that this document might contribute to an improvement in the quality and tenor of the dialogue about how to protect the environment in the 21st century. Too often discussions about the environment have been dominated by the extremes, and plagued by dogmatism, which in turn fuels intolerance. We value the liberal principles of democracy, tolerance, and pluralism in themselves, even as we affirm them as keys to achieving a great Anthropocene. We hope that this statement advances the dialogue about how best to achieve universal human dignity on a biodiverse and thriving planet.

===

The Death of Environmentalism, Global warming politics in a post-environmental world [92], Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Reprinted in Grist Magazine, January 13, 2005

"Conservative foundations and think tanks have spent 40 years getting clear about what they want (their vision) and what they stand for (their values). The values of smaller government, fewer taxes, a large military, traditional families, and more power for big business are only today, after 40 years of being stitched together by conservative intellectuals and strategists, coherent enough to be listed in a "contract with America." After they got clearer about their vision and values, conservatives started crafting proposals that would activate conservative values among their base and swing voters.

Once in power, conservatives govern on all of their issues -- no matter whether their solutions have majority support. Liberals tend to approach politics with an eye toward winning one issue campaign at a time -- a Sisyphean task that has contributed to today's neoconservative hegemony.

[. . .] If environmentalists hope to become more than a special interest we must start framing our proposals around core American values and start seeing our own values as central to what motivates and guides our politics. Doing so is crucial if we are to build the political momentum -- a sustaining movement -- to pass and implement the legislation that will achieve action on global warming and other issues."

===

John Asafu-Adjaye, University of Queensland                       

Linus Blomqvist, Breakthrough Institute

Stewart Brand, Long Now Foundation                   

Barry Brook, University of Tasmania

Ruth DeFries, Columbia Univeristy          

Erle Ellis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Christopher Foreman, University of Maryland School of Public Policy           

David Keith, Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Martin Lewis, Stanford University             

Mark Lynas, Cornell University                         

Ted Nordhaus, Breakthrough Institute                   

Roger Pielke, Jr., University of Colorado, Boulder

Rachel Pritzker, Pritzker Innovation Fund               

Joyashree Roy, Jadavpur University

Mark Sagoff, George Mason University                         

Michael Shellenberger, Breakthrough Institute

Robert Stone, Filmmaker                             

Peter Teague, Breakthrough Institute

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 ...

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    It's been a little more than a year since two of [van?] Jones' fellow travelers dropped a bomb on the environmental movement in the form of a paper provocatively titled "The Death of Environmentalism." The paper played an important role in the debate that followed the re-election of President Bush. Shaken progressives had to admit that their best electoral efforts had failed, and began to cast about for the reason. There was "The Death of Environmentalism" with its bold declarations: Environmentalism had defined itself as a special interest, its message was too negative, and it presented narrow technical solutions instead of an inspiring vision tied to values voters hold dear.

Commentators quickly pointed out that all these criticisms could just as easily be leveled at other segments of the left. What was the movement besides a collection of special-interest campaigns? Just like that, the paper became a mirror reflecting back the fears of a disenfranchised movement.

    Predictably, there was an angry backlash, which the authors chalk up to the movement's reluctance to admit its failures. "There's a lot of fear," said Michael Shellenberger, one of the paper's authors, in an interview. "We have to come to grips with the fact that our current strategies not only aren't helping, but might even be counterproductive." While Shellenberger said he and coauthor Ted Nordhaus didn't set out to write a generational statement, they may have done so inadvertently. "The responses have been disproportionately positive from young people," he said, "and disproportionately negative from the older generation that's more invested in older ways of doing things."

Although the paper was primarily an assault upon the strategies of the left, Shellenberger and Nordhaus praised a few people and projects. One was Van Jones, whom the authors called an "up-and-coming civil-rights leader," extolling his vision of a broad alliance between environmentalists, labor unions, civil-rights groups, and businesses. His focus on investment, they said, pointed the way to the environmental movement's future.

The glowing words were no coincidence. Jones and the authors met in 2005 and became close allies who brainstormed ideas for the new shape of the environmental movement. Although Jones says the Ella Baker Center's environmental program isn't based on the ideas in "The Death of Environmentalism," it benefited from conversations he had with Shellenberger. The two worked together on the Apollo Alliance, a national environmental organization that promotes many of the ideas associated with environmentalism's third wave. It was Shellenberger who convinced alliance leaders to include Jones on the national board.

Yet last spring, Jones spoke out against "The Death of Environmentalism" at a panel discussion about the progressive movement's future, where he shared the stage with luminaries of the activist left. "I love the authors, I love the analysis," he said. "It breaks my heart the way that it was brought forward." He thereafter repeated his criticisms in stronger terms, and now calls the paper an "immoral attack."

Jones said his quarrel lay not with the authors' ideas but their tactics. Their critique of the status quo was an assault on national environmental organizations, which leaders such as Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope greeted with anger. "It was a smart document, but it was not wise," Jones said. "You don't ambush allies. You don't shame elders."

Although he concedes the need for discussion and argument within any movement, Jones said the authors of "The Death of Environmentalism" conducted the debate with insufficient respect. "I'm interested in managing conflict with an eye toward maximizing unity," he said. "There's a tradition of very nasty polemics on the left. I've seen it split coalitions, movements, parties. This is my concern: it's easy to start a fight, it's hard to finish a fight."

But from the perspective of Shellenberger and Nordhaus, Jones has merely adopted the same tack as most of the progressive left. He has embraced their paper's feel-good ideas, but renounced the dialogue and arguments that helped get to that point. "There's this culture within the progressive community that everybody has to hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' before you can introduce a new idea or piece of legislation," Shellenberger said. "People say, 'Oh, you can't criticize your friends.' It's strange that liberals who believe in being small-D democrats think ideas should be talked about behind closed doors and then get so angry about a paper that calls for open debate. It's a symptom of how uncomfortable people are with asking the hard questions about what kind of future they want.... A whole series of fights need to happen on the left before we can become unified."

    The authors complain that Jones didn't begin critiquing their paper until he was surrounded by its detractors at the Apollo Alliance, a group whose strong ties to the Sierra Club guaranteed that it would take a stance against the two upstarts. Shellenberger said he saw Jones twice in the immediate aftermath of the shakeup. The first time, shortly after the paper was distributed, he said, "Van congratulated us; he praised the essay. He was very positive to us, privately." The next time, at a meeting of the California Apollo Alliance, Shellenberger remembers Jones saying, "Wow, a lot of people are really angry about this," before repeating his praise of the paper. But in the months after Jones joined the board, Shellenberger said, he began to criticize the paper and its authors. "I think he was worried about politics," the author said.

The Ella Baker Center distanced itself from the rabble-rousers, both figuratively and literally. The controversy erupted just as the center was moving across the bay to bigger digs in Oakland. Shellenberger and Nordhaus were left behind. "There was just too much fire around those guys, and we didn't want to get burned," explained Joshua Abraham, director of the center's environmental program.

Jones' emphasis on solidarity only increased his cachet among environmental leaders. But Nordhaus believes Jones is taking the easy route by avoiding confrontations with the progressive movement's old guard. It may allow him to be a more popular leader in the short term, Nordhaus said, but ultimately prevent the movement from undergoing the self-scrutiny it needs to regain a place in the national debate.

"Van will have a very successful and prominent career as a spokesman of the left," Nordhaus said. "He's a handsome, charismatic, intelligent man who can speak with passion. But Van will have to decide at the end of the day whether he's willing to put all that at risk to take the leap to 21st-century politics that can really go somewhere. In that, he's a fascinating, transitional, and ambiguous figure. Is he going to be part of the vanguard or part of the reaction?"....

http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/58534:eliza-strickland--the-new-face-of-environmentalism

===

omg: date? no bee decline!

The Environmental Case for Industrial Agriculture

Small-scale Food System Enlarges Human Footprint

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/food-and-farming/the-environmental-case-for-industrial-agriculture

nordhuas

...

he subsequent development of agriculture represented not a break, but rather an intensification of this process. Gradually, humans began to domesticate the grasses and mammals that pre-agricultural hunting and foraging were already selecting. With domestication, these processes simply accelerated. Humans systematically raised yields and intensified agricultural systems by selecting seeds and irrigating, developing ploughs to turn the soil, and domesticating livestock to work and fertilize the land. As a result, agricultural yields rose dramatically over centuries and millennia.

Broadly speaking, the long-term intensification of agriculture was driven by two heavily intertwined processes: first, increasing inputs of labor, capitol, and resources to increase the productivity of the land; and second, improving routines and technologies to direct that productivity toward outputs that humans desire –– in other words, excluding unwanted plants, animals, and insects from the sites of agricultural production.

This is not ancient history. These trends and processes continue today. On a planet of seven-going-on-nine billion people, agricultural systems that do not both increase the productivity of land under cultivation and capture as much of that productivity for human consumption as possible will be neither practical nor sustainable. As such, arguments about agriculture and food that ignore these two imperatives are at best incoherent and at worst pernicious.

Let me use two contemporary controversies to illustrate this: the butterfly and the bee.

Monarch butterfly populations have declined significantly in recent years and many people have pointed the finger at two culprits, GMO corn and the herbicide glyphosate, otherwise known as Roundup. The former association is simply specious, but the latter is not. There is a correlation between glyphosate use and butterfly decline. But it’s not that glyphosate is killing the butterfly. It is an herbicide that targets plants, not insects.Rather, glyphosate is killing milkweed, a weed in which monarchs lay their eggs. While the decline of monarch butterflies is an unintended consequence of glyphosate use, the elimination of milkweed is not. It is one of the weeds that the herbicide is supposed to get rid of.

The trade-off here is straightforward and zero sum. You can either have more milkweed in cornfields or higher yields, but you can’t have both. If you choose more milkweed, then you are choosing lower yields, and, all else being equal, that means putting more land under cultivation to achieve the same level of agricultural output. With that comes attendant losses of habitat and biodiversity elsewhere.

Ultimately, the only way to have more monarch butterflies without reducing agricultural output or saving monarchs at the expense of other species is to create more monarch habitat outside of cornfields. This is an effort that a lot of people more concerned about monarch preservation as opposed to scoring ideological points about the food system have begun to focus on.

Like monarch butterflies, honeybees have also become a cause célèbre in the ongoing food debates. In recent years, beekeepers have been losing significantly higher percentages of their bees and hives to various ailments, with many advocates pointing the finger at a particular class of insecticide know as neonicotinoids. In the name of honeybees, the European Union has banned neonicotinoids, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, under pressure from environmental groups, is considering following suit.

In reality, there is scant evidence that these pesticides are a major contributor to bee deaths. The studies that do purport to show a direct link have been poorly designed and widely rejected by entomologists. And while Europe, which has banned neonicotinoids, continues to experience heavy bee losses, Australia, which hasn’t banned them, has not.

Notwithstanding the cause of rising bee mortality, perhaps what is most interesting is that, despite rising losses, bee populations have not declined at all. The vast majority of bees live neither in the wild nor in backyard hives but are kept by industrial beekeepers, many of whom keep tens of thousands of hives that they ship around the country on semi-trucks to provide pollination services year-round.

Die-offs have always been a fact of life for beekeepers and are likely to remain so. But bee populations have remained stable because we have become expert at breeding queens and splitting hives. With or without neonicotinoids, that basic system of pollinating crops will almost certainly continue, as relying upon wild pollination and small-scale beekeeping could not possibly meet the pollination demands of American agriculture.

As I noted at the b...

By many accounts, the finest beef in the world is raised in Japan, a land-scarce country where kobe beef is raised on beer mash, bathed in sake, massaged daily, and highly confined to prevent the meat from becoming tough. It is not so far from here to laboratory meat, which perhaps someday we might engineer to have similar characteristics. The harvesting of fine caviar has decimated wild sturgeon populations in the Caspian Sea and elsewhere. But thanks to aquaculture technologies developed here at UC Davis, virtually all sturgeon caviar consumed in the United States and Europe is now farmed right here in the Sacramento Delta, and is by all accounts every bit the equal of Russian caviar, if not superior.

eat bugs

but ~ by guest blog ucb: http://ensia.com/voices/agroecology-can-help-fix-our-broken-food-system-heres-how/

==

summer camp/incubator

output? legit? http://ensia.com/voices/if-we-quit-oil-then-what/

===

fracking

http://ensia.com/voices/the-bridge-to-zero-carbon/

sub sah africa needs gasoline, frack and nukes:

http://ensia.com/features/how-do-you-bring-electricity-to-620-million-people/

===

attack rockstrom UN 9 boundary study  http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/planetary_boundaries_a_mislead

http://thebreakthrough.org/about/people/  see below GMU

===

http://www.**sourcewatch**.org/index.php/The_Breakthrough_Institute

Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus coauthored the controversial 2007 book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, following a 2004 essay with a similar "Death of Environmentalism" name.

"In 2003 Michael co-founded the Apollo Alliance, referred to by the New Yorker as “an influential umbrella organization of Greens and trade unionists” that is advocating a New Apollo Project to create three million clean energy jobs, free America from foreign oil, and re-establish America's global economic leadership (www.ApolloAlliance.org).

"Michael has written articles on issues ranging from the New Apollo Project to ethical trade for the L.A. Times, the American Prospect, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Glamour Magazine, and other publications. He is the author of Race to the Top, a report on NGO ethical business campaigns (www.businessethicsnetwork.org). [1]

--

"Ted holds aBA in history from the University of California, Berkeley.“^{[2]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ted_Nordhaus#cite_note-doe-1)

"Over the last twenty years, Ted has run major campaigns and initiatives for a large assortment of environmental and progressive political causes including the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, and Clean Water Action. Nordhaus also served as the Campaign Director for Share the Water, a coalition of environmentalists, fishermen, farmers, and urban water agencies advocating reform of federal water policies in California, Executive Director of the Headwaters Sanctuary Project, and as a partner and political strategist with Next Generation, a political consulting firm serving environmental organizations and campaigns."^{[3]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ted_Nordhaus#cite_note-2)

More recently, He was a pollster and Vice President at Evans McDonough Company, an opinion research firm based in Oakland.^{[4]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ted_Nordhaus#cite_note-3)

---

in pandora's promise doc

 srcwatch:

The Breakthrough Institute, which describes itself as a "a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors", is a think tank established by Michael Shellenberger  SLUG and Ted Nordhaus. On its website it states that it is "committed to creating a new progressive politics, one that is large, aspirational, and asset-based. We believe that any effective politics must speak to core needs and values, not issues and interests, and we thus situate ourselves at the intersection of politics, policy, philosophy, and the social sciences."^{[1]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/The_Breakthrough_Institute#cite_note-0)

Fellows

• Bill Chaloupka
• Dalton Conley
• David Douglas

David Douglas worked for Philip Morris' Research and Development located at Box 26583, Richmond, VA, 23261 in 1975. [Source: Butler 2021648905-13, (P.O.)]

• Barbara Hill
• Marty Hoffert
• Frank Laird
• Roger Pielke Jr.

Controversial Positions

Dr. Pielke has published hundreds of articles in a variety of publications, and some of his statements and arguments have attracted significant controversy.

Testimony about Bush Administration Political Interference in Science

During 110th Congress, Democratic leaders investigated claims by numerous scientists that their research and findings were subject to political interference by members of the Bush Administration, and Dr. Pielke was selected by the Republican minority to testify during that investigation.^{[9]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-8) In the face of voluminous documentation of political interference by the Bush Administration,Dr. Pielke asserted that President Bush's actions were similar to those observed in the Clinton Administration, that science in policy was unavoidably political, and scientists had politicized science.^{[10]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-9)

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), along with many others in the scientific community, strongly disagreed that the Bush Administration's pattern of interference in scientific integrity was simply business as usual in Washington.^{[11]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-10) For example, UCS provided a thorough compilation of the manipulation, suppression, and distortion of critical scientific information in its "A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science."^[12]

To take just one of many examples, Dr. Pieter Tans, a chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s Global Monitoring Division in Boulder, Colorado--in the same city as Dr. Pielke--"was asked by lab director Dr. David Hofmann to cancel a conference session on energy use and the carbon cycle due to its 'policy implications' and was told that the words 'climate change' could not appear in the titles of any presentations. Hoffman had previously told Tans and other NOAA scientists not to use the word 'Kyoto' in presentations or papers."^{[13]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-12) At the time of this political interference and censorship, Dr. Tans was chair of the Scientific Program Committee for the Seventh International Carbon Dioxide Conference and was preparing to talk about "the dominant role that carbon dioxide plays as a forcing agent in climate change."^{[14]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-13) Dr. Tans was later told that any material dealing with climate change, including his laboratory’s website content, had to be pre-approved at the White House level.^[15]

(Dr. Pielke has testified before other House and Senate Committees on climate issues, as listed in detail below.)^{[16]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-15)

Scientific Integrity

In 2006, Dr. Pielke drew parallels between the integrity of a non-scientist government contractor, Ms. Susan Hassol, who was serving as one of the editors of a climate report and who had previously written about climate changes underway, and the highly controversial Bush White House political operative Philip Cooney who edited government reports to downplay the science of climate change.^{[17]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-16) Ms. Hassol is a writer whose work documents climate changes; among other things, she wrote HBO's global warming documentary, Too Hot Not To Handle, which premiered in April 2006.^{[18]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-17)Before joining the Bush White House, Philip Cooney who had spent years on the payroll of the American Petroleum Institute where he worked as a leading lobbyist against regulation of the oil and gas industry and served as the former "climate team leader" of API. After the scandal described below documented that Cooney had extensively revised government scientific conclusions, which Dr. Pielke was referencing, Cooney resigned and took a job with ExxonMobil.)

Specifically, Dr. Pielke stated that "A prominent non-scientist responsible for editing official government reports on climate change is at the exact same time being paid to engage in advocacy work related that that issue. To quote the media question to Scott McClellen regarding the Phil Cooney affair, 'are there not indications of at least the appearance of impropriety?'" Dr. Benjamin Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who served as the Convening Lead Author of Chapter 5 of the U.S. CCSP Synthesis and Assessment Report 1.1 ("Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere"), argued that this was "a cheap shot," adding that the suggestion that associate editor referenced by Dr. Pielke, Susan Hassol, "is responsible for introducing some form of bias in the Report" could not be "further from the truth."^{[19]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-18) He explained that "Susan Hassol's expertise has been invaluable in helping the authors of the first CCSP Report explain complex scientific issues in terms readily understandable by a lay audience. She has made our Report a better and clearer Report. She has not modified the scientific conclusions of the Report," in contrast to the work of Bush political operative Philip Cooney.

(The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report documenting the numerous ways in which Philip Cooney modified the scientific conclusions of materials produced by government scientists. This report includes original documents showing how Cooney added and deleted text to advance a political agenda of undermining confidence in climate change issues and introduce greater doubt that climate change was underway. Links to documentary evidence of this interference is provided in this congressional report noted in the footnote below.^{[20]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-19))

Dr. Pielke responded to Dr. Santer by stating, "Let me reiterate that this post is not to disparage either Mr. Cooney or Ms. Hassol, but to compare and contrast their very similar professional roles and how it seems that each has been treated very differently by the media and commentators, and certainly by scientists."^{[21]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-20) Dr. Pielke noted that he also commented in his original note: "I am sure that Ms. Hassol must be good at what she does, given her resume ..."^{[22]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-21)

Answering a review by Michael Tobis of his book "The Honest Broker" Pielke writes "My concern about climate science is that too many science arbiters and honest brokers have decided to engage in advocacy. The choice to become an advocate is of course a personal one, but I would argue that some place needs to be reserved for honest brokering of policy options, a role best served by authoritative institutions. However, this role that has gone wanting in the context of climate as the IPCC, national academies and professional organizations have all jumped on the advocacy bandwagon to some degree."^{[23]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-22) Pielke goes on to argue that scope for action has been narrowed by the "advocacy" he complains of. In this interesting exchange he also says climate change is like "abortion politics."

Critique of the Predictions of NASA Scientist James Hansen

Dr. Pielke has argued that NASA Scientist James Hansen's 1988 prediction of global warming was inaccurate.^{[24]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-23) Of the two lower projections Pielke wrote that "neither is particularly accurate or realistic. Any conclusion that Hansen's 1988 prediction got things right, necessarily must conclude that it got things right for the wrong reason (italics in original)."^{[25]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-24)

Tim Lambert has argued that "Pielke's criticism of Hansen's scenarios is badly misconceived. The important input to Hansen's model was the total forcing from greenhouse gasses, but Pielke ignores this to focus on the growth rate of emissions of each gas. For instance, he claims that scenario B was off by a factor of 2 on CO2. This sounds like a lot until you discover that means that emissions grew by 0.5% per year instead of 1% a year. And that works out to scenario B having the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere within 1% of what has actually happened. Pielke is being much more than a little unfair by calling a prediction that got within 1% of the correct answer as not being "particularly accurate or realistic"."^{[26]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.#cite_note-25)

• Cara Pike
• Jim Proctor
• Siddhartha Shome

Contact Details

The Breakthrough Institute, 436 14th Street, Suite 820 Oakland, California 94612

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• think tanks

References

1. ↑ "Our Mission", The Breakthrough Institute website, accessed May 2009.

---

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Breakthrough-Institute/308596713439

srcwtch: (vs wiki bs?]

Michael Shellenberger

Jump to: navigation, search

Michael Shellenberger "is co-director of the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank, and co-founder of American Environics, a research and strategy firm, Michael works on and writes about everything from politics to energy to changing social values.

"The Death of Environmentalism" Written in 2004

Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus coauthored the controversial and widely-read critique title The death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World in 2004. ^[1]

In writing it they consulted with and interviewed dozens of environmentalists whom they thank:

• Dan Becker
• Phil Clapp
• Tim Carmichael
• Ralph Cavanaugh
• Susan Clark
• Bernadette Del Chiaro
• Shelly Fiddler
• Ross Gelbspan
• Hal Harvey
• David Hawkins
• Bracken Hendricks
• Roland Hwang
• Eric Heitz
• Wendy James
• Van Jones
• Fred Keeley
• Lance Lindblom
• Elisa Lynch
• Jason Mark
• Bob Nordhaus
• Carl Pope
• Josh Reichert
• Jeremy Rifkin
• Adam Werbach
• Greg Wetstone
• V. John White
• Carl Zichella

The also write: We are especially grateful to George Lakoff ... and to Peter Teague

Background

Shellenberger graduated from Earlham College in 1993.^[2] He has a Master's degree in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.^[3]

Achievements

Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus coauthored the controversial 2007 book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, following a 2004 essay with a similar "Death of Environmentalism" name.

"In 2003 Michael co-founded the Apollo Alliance, referred to by the New Yorker as “an influential umbrella organization of Greens and trade unionists” that is advocating a New Apollo Project to create three million clean energy jobs, free America from foreign oil, and re-establish America's global economic leadership (www.ApolloAlliance.org).

"Michael has written articles on issues ranging from the New Apollo Project to ethical trade for the L.A. Times, the American Prospect, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Glamour Magazine, and other publications. He is the author of Race to the Top, a report on NGO ethical business campaigns (www.businessethicsnetwork.org). [1]  404?

Articles and Resources

References

1. ↑ [http://grist.org/article/doe-reprint/ The Death of Environmentalism, reprinted in GRIST, 2004.
2. ↑ News from Public Affairs (2006-0819). Future of Islam and "Death of Environmentalism" Among Fall Convocation Topics. Earlham College. Retrieved on 2009-11-11. “...Earlham Class of '93 alumnus Michael Shellenberger sparked a furor...”
3. ↑ Staff. Breakthrough Institute. Retrieved on 2009-11-11.

Related SourceWatch Articles

• Ted Nordhaus

External resources

External articles

• ”Biography”, Accessed January 2007.
• Breaking the technology breakthrough myth — Debunking Shellenberger & Nordhaus again

Category:

• People

===

Rachel Pritzker, Roland Pritzker, Pritzker Innovation Fund;

William Budinger; Marilu Hastings, Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation; Middle Row: Maurine Knighton, David Chapman, Ruth Cummings, Adam Cummings, The Nathan Cummings Foundation; Bottom Row: Barrett Walker, Alex C. Walker Foundation; Ray Rothrock; Ross Koningstein; Jim Swartz

http://philanthropy.com/article/A-Grant-Maker-Shifts-Its-Focus/142995/

==

 Houghton Mifflin

book: Environmental insiders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus triggered a firestorm of controversy with their self-published essay, "The Death of Environmentalism." In it, they argued that global warming is far more complex than past pollution problems. American values have changed dramatically since the environmental movement's greatest victories in the 1960s, yet environmentalists keep fighting the same battles without realizing that the battlefield has changed. Noting a connection between the failures of environmentalism and the failures of the entire left-leaning political agenda, the authors point the way toward an aspirational politics that will resonate with modern American values and be capable of tackling our most pressing challenges.

==

The death of environmentalism: Global warming politics in a 

post-environmental world

By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

Released at an October 2004 meeting of the Environmental Grantmakers Association

The impending threat of a dramatically changing climate arguably represents the most fundamental challenge to human systems ever encountered. Despite the scale of the impacts that may occur, however, very little effective action has occurred since climate change first entered the public consciousness in the late 1980s. Globally, Europe has emerged as a leader on the issue of greenhouse gas emissions reductions, with legislated long-term targets that could reasonably be expected to stabilize climate. To learn from the European experience, however, we erroneously scrutinize the content of their policies rather than examining the nature of their politics. Politics, and the core values and beliefs that ultimately shape it, is a critical determinant of successful collective action on climate change.

In the United States, an outmoded environmental movement has claimed ownership of the climate change issue, using inadequate tactics to stimulate policy responses at the national level. These tactics are characterized by narrow definitions of self-interest and the ‘environment,’ leading us to focus on technical policy proposals rather than core values and a compelling vision for the future. As such, a three-part strategic framework is followed in order to protect that ‘thing’ that we call the environment: a) define a problem as ‘environmental;’ b) craft a technical remedy in response to the problem; and c) sell this policy proposal using tactics such as lobbying and advertising. This approach utilizes key constituencies (such as labour unions and minorities) as simply a means to an end rather than as real allies whose own self-interests are not inconsistent with a vision of the future that includes a stable climate

A new, more effective approach to facilitating action on climate change entails the following:

• Re-define what is ‘environmental’ to include human systems, thereby aligning the interests of the traditional environmental movement with those held by constituencies focused on labour, public health, trade etc.
• Question common ‘environmentalist’ assumptions that promulgate reductive logic about the root causes of global warming – namely that too much carbon is entering the atmosphere (rather than poverty, trade policies, overpopulation, and other fundamentally unsustainable characteristics of the current global system);
• Articulate a coherent morality, set of core values, and compelling vision for the future that is not is not issue-identified but vision- and value-identified;
• Utilize this vision to build true alliances with labour unions, civil rights groups, and businesses in order to stimulate public-private investment in clean energy technologies;
• Strategically activate core values to propose and implement dramatic, visionary policies that would meaningfully contribute to transforming the public debate on climate change.

==

http://grist.org/article/doe-reprint/ 

vs

:{http://:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{grist.}::{org/article/doe-intro/}:

Is environmentalism ready for interment?

That’s the none-too-subtle conclusion of “The Death of Environmentalism,” an essay by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, a pair of strategists and organizers who’ve worked with a number of environmental groups over the last decade. As if the title were not provocative enough, the authors added injury to insult by releasing the paper at an October 2004 meeting of the Environmental Grantmakers Association, a group with lots of hands on lots of purse strings.

The paper — based on interviews with 25 leaders in the mainstream environmental movement (nearly all of them, like S&N, white men) — argues that environmentalism is ill-equipped to face the massive global challenges of our day, particularly climate change. The movement has become a relic and a failure, the authors say, coasting on decades-old successes, bereft of new ideas, made fat and complacent by easy funding, narrowly defining “environmental” problems, and relying almost exclusively on short-sighted technical solutions.

Mainstream green organizations’ varied legislative and legal victories — and their cumulative membership rolls of some 10 million-plus — don’t cut it for S&N. These achievements, they claim, take place against the backdrop of a broader failure to offer the American people an expansive, inspiring, values-based vision.

They conclude that the environmental movement should meet its re-maker, as it were, and give way to a more cohesive, coordinated, and ambitious progressive movement.

Naturally, the paper kicked up some dust.

Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope wrote a long and scathing reply, pointedly addressed, “Dear environmental grant-maker.” The kerfuffle got covered in The Nation and The San Diego Union-Tribune. Several blogs have weighed in, and debate over the issue continues to spread around the web faster than that Paris Hilton home movie.

Fanning the flames, enviro wunderkind Adam Werbach gave an impassioned speech in early December to San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club entitled “Is Environmentalism Dead?” making a similar argument with even more emotional fervor — or histrionics, depending on whom you ask.

Of all the points made by S&N, perhaps the most telling is in a follow-up post on the Breakthrough Institute blog: “Nearly every profession, from public health to business to law, has research studies, conferences, and peer-review journals dedicated to evaluating what’s working and what’s not. … The environmental community has nothing like this.”

Indeed. Here at Grist, we hope to create a space where these kinds of evaluations, debates, and dialogues can take place. We plan for this to be an ongoing discussion, with more voices chiming in over the coming weeks and months. Dig in:

• Aninterview with Shellenberger and Nordhaus about their controversial essay
• Rebuttals to the essay from four mainstream environmental leaders: Carl Pope, Phil Clapp, Frances Beinecke, and Dan Carol
• A *Grist* editorial on the whole melee and the big issues underlying it
• Dispatches from Bill McKibben, who ponders whether environmentalism really is kaput [added 25 Jan 2005]
• An email chat between four emerging environmental leaders on the future of their field [added 22 Feb 2005]
• A dispatch from enviro-justice advocates attending a panel with the reapers [added 04 Mar 2005]
• An argument that dramatizing “death” doesn’t help urban people of color, from Adrienne Maree Brown [added 15 Mar 2005]
• A plea to foundations to revitalize the environmental movement with smart giving, from Ken Ward [added 17 Mar 2005]
• An email discussion between four green funders on where environmentalism should go from here [added 28 Mar 2005]
• A speech contending that the reapers are giving up way too soon, by Martin S. Kaplan [added 01 Apr 2005]
• A call for race and class to be given their due in discussions of life and death, by Michel Gelobter, et al. [added 27 May 2005]
• A critique of the reapers’ essay by environmental-justice advocate Ludovic Blain [added 31 May 2005]
• An entreaty for the environmental movement to address economic development in low-income communities, by Orson Aguilar [added 31 May 2005]

Romm debunks:

...

Then we have the Breakthrough Institute (B.I.), which, as its name suggests, also thinks we need breakthroughs, but seems to be quite genuinely concerned about global warming. The Breakthrough Institute was founded by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, authors of the famous “The Death of Environmentalism” essay and the recent book Breakthrough. Roger Pielke, Jr., among others, is a Fellow.

In this post, I’ll explain why the answer to the question posed is “no” and why that’s a good thing! The short answer is

• Energy technology breakthroughs (defined below) hardly ever happen.
• Even when they do happen, they rarely have a transformative impact on energy markets, even over a span of decades.

‘BREAKTHROUGH’ DEFINED

So what does the word ‘breakthrough’ mean? A classic definition might be “a strikingly important advance or discovery.” Merriam-Webster says it’s “a sudden advance especially in knowledge or technique.” Wikipedia, in its long entry on innovation, says

“Breakthrough, disruptive or radical innovation …involves launching an entirely novel product or service rather than providing improved products & services along the same lines as currently…. Involves larger leaps of understanding… There is often considerable uncertainty about future outcomes. … Radical innovation involves considerable change in basic technologies and methods.

These seem reasonable to me. Slow, incremental improvement is not a breakthrough. The windpower industry has dropped its costs steadily by a factor of 10 over the past quarter century, while slowly improving performance. These are the steady gains we expect as a technology moves along the manufacturing learning curve and achieves economies of scale. Heck many technologies like wind even have a predictable link between product cost and installed capacity (see here) — that is a key reason deployment policies are much more important than spending huge sums looking for breakthroughs. [If there has been anything anybody in the wind industry would call a technology breakthrough as defined here, I'd be interested in hearing about it.]

Now B.I. recently accused me (here) of using “an extremely narrow definition of the word ‘breakthrough’ because it’s much easier for him to refute. But if he had read Breakthrough’s policy whitepaper, “Fast, Clean, Cheap,” [JR: I have. It's not something I can recommend to anyone else.] he would know that we call for breakthroughs in performance, price, and brand-new technologies“:

Technological breakthroughs are needed to boost the performance of current clean energy technologies and to decrease the cost of deploying them. Without these breakthroughs, the costs of these technologies are too high, and their performance and return on investment too low, to justify private sector investment in their widespread deployment….

Finally, in order to be deployed at levels that might allow them to displace conventional energy sources on a large scale, clean energy alternatives like solar and wind will require significant improvement in the cost and performance of battery and other energy storage technologies.

Well, you can call a dog a cat, but it’s still a dog. You don’t need breakthroughs to do any of that. One way to see that is to look at the wind or PV industry over the past decade — lots of private sector investment and widespread deployment in states or countries where there are public policies to encourage deployment, not so much where there isn’t. Yet its the same technology around the country and the world. Hmmm. In any case, those sentences don’t define what the word means. They just assert some outcomes that B.I. claims breakthroughs are needed for. But, as we’ve seen, those outcomes don’t require breakthroughs. So this isn’t a definition.

I will be blogging at length about concentrated solar power in a couple of days, and none of the industry executives I spoke to believe they need breakthroughs or massive government R&D support of the kind B.I. wants — what they want is the solar investment tax credit renewed this year for eight years and a serious price for carbon dioxide as soon as possible. They also wouldn’t kick a national renewable portfolio standard out of bed for eating crackers.

Still, B.I. claims, “We need breakthroughs in all of these areas because, as the Nature piece showed, the technology gap is that big. Romm misinterprets what others say in very narrow terms to create conflict where there is none.” [So you see where the Nature piece fits in and why it must be wrong -- since it shows something that isn't true.]

We don’t need breakthroughs in any of those areas, as I’ll explain in a few days when I lay out the “solution” to global warming in a few days.

But I don’t think I misinterpreted anyone. The definition I used for breakthrough in my previous debunking of Shellenberger and Nordhaus on this matter comes from their September 24, 2007 article in The New Republic (see here, first page), which the magazine says was adapted from their book Breakthrough:

Over the last ten years, a consensus has emerged among energy policy experts–one no less important than the consensus among climate scientists that carbon emissions are warming the earth.

**What’s needed, they say, are** **disruptive clean-energy technologies that achieve nonincremental breakthroughs in both price and performance**.

When I use the word breakthroughs I mean “disruptive clean-energy technologies that achieve nonincremental breakthroughs in both price and performance.” S&N seem to have the same definition here that pretty much everyone else uses, very similar to the Wikipedia definition above for “Breakthrough, disruptive or radical innovation.”

So I haven’t defined breakthroughs in “very narrow terms.” I used their own definition, which is close to the standard one. Using that definition, they are wrong. [As an aside, I know a great many of the energy policy experts in this country, certainly more of them than S&N do, and I can assure you no such consensus exists. I would call it a fringe view.]

The rest of the post explains why they (and the Nature article) are wrong — and why it’s a good thing they are wrong

*This is a reprint of my earlier debunking of S&N ([here), so skip it if you've already read the post.*]

WHY ENERGY TECHNOLOGY BREAKTHROUGHS ARE OVERSOLD

1. Such breakthroughs hardly ever happen.
2. Even when they do happen, they rarely have a transformative impact on energy markets, even over a span of decades.

Consider that solar photovoltaic cells — a major breakthrough — were invented over 50 years ago, and still comprise only about 0.1% of U.S. electricity (and that amount thanks to major subsidies).

Consider that hydrogen fuel cells — a favorite technology of the breakthrough bunch — were invented more than 165 years ago, and deliver very little electricity (and what little they do deliver comes only because of major subsidies) and no consumer transportation. *If you want to see why we still don't have commercial hydrogen fuel cell cars and won't for a long time -- because they require seveal genuine breakthroughs to be practical, [read this 2004 analysis from the American Physical Society. It will also give you a good feel for what a real breakthrough is.*]

Consider fusion — ’nuff said!

I know this seems counterintuitive, when we see such remarkable technology advances almost every month in telecommunications and computers. But it’s true — and I will explain why in this post.

Let me start with a question I often pose to audiences of energy and environmental exports: What technology breakthroughs in the past three decades have transformed how we use energy today?The answer may surprise you:

There really haven’t been any — certainly none has ever been suggested to me after years of giving talks.

We use energy today roughly the same way we did 30 years ago. Our cars still run on internal combustion engines that burn gasoline. Alternatives to gasoline like corn ethanol make up but a few percent of all U.S. transportation fuels–and corn ethanol is hardly a breakthrough fuel and required a massive subsidy and a mandate to achieve its recent growth. (In every country that has succeeded with alternative fuels — and there aren’t many — mandates have played a central role).

Fuel economy from the mid-1970s did double by the mid-1980s, as required by government regulations, but in the last quarter-century, the average fuel economy of American consumer vehicles has remained flat or even declined slightly.

The single biggest source of electricity generation, by far, is still coal power, just as it was 30 years ago. The vast majority of all power plants still generate heat to make steam turn a turbine-and the average efficiency of our electric power plants is about what it was 30 years ago. We did see the introduction of the highly efficient natural gas combined cycle turbine, but that was not based on a breakthrough from the past three decades and constrained natural gas supply in North America severely limited growth in gas-fired power, so the share of U.S. electricity generated by natural gas has grown only modestly in 30 years. Nuclear power was about 10 percent of total U.S. electric power 30 years ago and now it’s about 20 percent. But the nuclear energy “breakthrough” occurred long before the 1970s, and we haven’t built a new nuclear power plant in two decades, in large part because that power has been so expensive (and the growth in nuclear power required massive government regulatory support).

We do have a lot more home appliances, but they still haven’t fundamentally changed how we use energy. Interestingly, home energy use per square foot has not changed that much even with all those new electronic gadgets for two reasons. First, my old office at DOE developed major advances in key consumer technologies, including refrigeration and lighting. Second, efficiency standards for appliances have made the use of those efficient technologies widespread. From the mid-1970s until today, refrigerator electricity used has dropped a whopping three quarters. Perhaps that should be called a breakthrough, especially because some of the savings came from remarkable improvements in the guts of the refrigerator from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. But we still use refrigerators pretty much as we did, so in that sense, these breakthroughs didn’t change how we use energy — and they still required mandates to deeply penetrate the market.

One of the most widely publicized energy technology breakthroughs occurred in 1986when researchers in IBM’s Research Laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland discovered a material that conducted electricity with no resistance at considerably higher temperatures than previous conductors. Over the next few years a series of breakthroughs in these high-temperature superconductors were announced. This technology generated great excitement because it held the promise of super-efficient electric motors and loss-free long-distance electric transmission lines. My old office at DOE poured millions into applying the breakthrough. Yet all these years later, you may ask, where are all the high-temperature superconductors?They have had very little impact on either electric motors or power transmission.

**“Typically it has taken 25 years after commercial introduction for a primary energy form to obtain a 1 percent share of the global market.”**

So noted Royal Dutch/Shell, one of the world’s largest oil companies, in its 2001 scenarios for how energy use is likely to evolve over the next five decades. Note that this tiny toe-hold comes 25 years after commercialintroduction. The first transition from scientific breakthrough to commercial introduction may itself take decades. We still haven’t seen commercial introduction of a hydrogen fuel cell car.

I tend to think that Shell’s statement is basically true, although I believe we could in some instances speed things up–but only with the kind of aggressive technology deploymentprograms and government standards that conservatives do not like and S&N think are not central. Given that we must dramatically reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends over the next 25 years, we must focus on technologies that are either commercial today or nearly commercial today. That’s why S&N’s whole analysis is wrong. They argue:

1. Setting a :{price on carbon dioxide :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:… cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions anywhere close to what is needed….

2. Technically, there simply do not yet exist the low-cost, low-carbon technologies that could be quickly brought to scale to replace carbon intensive energy sources….. 

**3. Dramatic and rapid technological breakthroughs will not be primarily driven by the private sector.**

4. … to deal with global warming, we will need an almost entirely new energy infrastructure.

1. Straw man. 2. Very wrong. 3. Quite irrelevant. 4. Precisely why we need regulations!

1. We need a price for carbon and a bunch of intelligent regulations to achieve the necessary emissions reductions. No one I know is only arguing for a carbon price.
2. This is the Bush Administration’s central argument. If the fate of the planet rests on non-existent technology, we are in big, big trouble — because the thing about nonexistent technology, like fusion, is that it tends to stay non-existent, or like hydrogen cars, just has too many technical and infrastructure barriers to overcome (a point I will return to in the next part) — even after you spend hundreds of millions of dollars pursuing the technology. Fortunately, the technology to combat warming does exist, as I argue in my book at length see also this recent post, "[The technologies that will save the planet"].
3. Again, we can’t rely on historically super-rare “dramatic and rapid technological breakthroughs” and don’t need to. So this whole argument is moot. We need to drive capital into the privatesector to deploy existing technology far more than we need to ramp up publicsector money to develop breakthroughs.
4. We willneed a new energy infrastructure — primarily for vehicles and electricity. Such infrastructure changes historically have required government action — because the infrastructure barriers to entry in those two sectors are so enormous that new technology (and even smart old technology, like combined heat and power) can’t compete effectively. This is the central reason that technology breakthroughs don’t transform the energy market the way they seem to in other sectors, a point I will elaborate on in Part III.

The bottom line though is that if you want to transform the infrastructure for vehicles and electricity, if you want to solve the global warming problem, you need intelligent government regulations infinitely more than you need a massive effort to find breakthough technologies. Indeed, I can certainly solve the the global warming problem with smart regulations and no publically-funded breakthroughs, but I almost certainly cannot solve global warming with publically-funded breakthroughs but no smart regulations to get them into the marketplace quickly and at the necessary scale.

joe romm

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/04/09/202521/breaking-the-technology-breakthrough-myth-debunking-shellenberger-nordhaus-again/

Professor of Philosophy and Senior Fellow of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, GMU

Email 

Mark Sagoff is one of the country's foremost environmental philosophers, and senior fellow at George Mason University's Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy.Over the last several years, Sagoff has been a trenchant critic of the "scientization" of ecological issues, arguing that environmentalism must speak directly to social values. Sagoff has also been a critic of failed efforts by environmentalists to "price" natural systems in order to protect them. His books *The Economy of the Earth*, (2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2008) and *Price, Principle, and the Environment*(Cambridge University Press, 2004) are considered landmarks in the field. Sagoff has been a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment, a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Watch Sagoff discuss "The Twin Failures of Ecological and Environmental Economics"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71hrN4ce5Qw

Uploaded on Sep 28, 2011

In this fascinating video, Professor Mark Sagoff of George Mason University discusses everything from the problems of playing, "Science says," to the theological basis of ecological economics to the failures of environmental economics to the problems with ecosystems services.

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Uploaded on Mar 14, 2011

Mark Sagoff, professor at the University of Maryland, argues that although invasive species are often blamed for causing damages, what humans perceive to be harmful, might just be beneficial.

2 cambr u bks

"The Rise and Fall of Ecological Economics," Breakthrough Journal, Issue 2 (Winter 2012).

"The Quantification and Valuation of Ecosystem Services," Ecological Economics, 70(3):497-502 (2011).

"The Economic Value of Ecosystem Services," BioScience, 59(5):461 (2009).

"Do Non-Native Species Threaten The Natural Environment?" Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics,18: 215-236 (2005).

"On the Value of Natural Ecosystems: The Catskills Parable,"Politics and the Life Sciences 21(1): 16-21 (2002).

"Do We Consume Too Much?" The Atlantic Monthly (June 1997).

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Bill Weihl manages sustainability and energy efficiency initiatives at Facebook.  Prior to joining Facebook in early 2012, he spent 6 years as Green Energy Czar at Google, where he led efforts in energy efficiency and renewable energy, spearheading Google's drive to become carbon neutral, founding the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, and leading the RETime Magazine's Heroes of the Environment.

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Google likes equations. The Internet giant has made billions off its search algorithms, formulas that are as complex as they are top secret. But Google is making no effort to cover up its newest formula, one that is bracingly simple: REC. That means renewable energy that costs less than coal — and it's the guiding principle behind Google's surprising move into clean power. Perhaps stung by criticism that its servers are energy hogs, the company is investing hundreds of millions into renewable energy, seeding small solar and wind start-ups and supporting a lab of its own researchers. The idea is simple: use the same brainpower that conquered the Internet to solve the biggest challenge facing the planet. "We see a chance to make a difference in the field of renewable energy and energy information that can help bring the world to a lower carbon and more efficient economy," says Google's Bill Weihl.

Weihl, a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is Google's green-energy czar, the guy charged with leading the company into the renewable-energy economy. The task begins by greening Google itself. The data centers that run 300 million web searches a day are ravenous for electricity, but through more efficient design Google has managed to cut its server energy use by more than 50%. That saving, along with the renewable energy it draws from a gleaming 1.6 MW solar installation at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters and carefully selected carbon offsets, has helped the company become carbon-neutral. "In the process we're saving ourselves a lot of money by making ourselves more efficient," says Weihl.

But Google is an enterprise incapable of thinking small. The real goal of its green program is to help clean energy to break out of its tiny niche, just as Google went from start-up to Silicon Valley superstar in a few short years. While many environmentalists want to focus on raising the price of fossil fuels through a carbon cap, Weihl thinks the real work needs to be done in the lab, searching for the breakthroughs that will enable solar and other renewables to beat coal in the marketplace. To that end, Google is spreading its spare millions to startups like eSolar and BrightSource Energy, as well as sponsoring its own research. Right now Weihl's engineers are focusing on solar thermal power— which uses the heat of the sun to generate electricity by boiling water to turn a turbine — and developing new mirrors that could cut the cost of such plants by a quarter or more.

That might work — or it might not. The important thing is that the company's brand of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship is exactly what the fight against climate change needs. "We want to help make the world better," says Weihl. Which recalls that other famous Google formula: "Don't be evil."

GREEN TIP 

'Use your computer's built-in power-management features to set your system to go to sleep, including blanking the screen and turning off the hard disk after 15 minutes of idle time.' — Bill Weihl

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Chris Green

Professor, McGill University

Email | Download Hi-Resolution Picture

Chris Green is Professor of Economics at McGill University in Montreal. Green received his PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1966. He taught three years at North Carolina State University before moving to McGill in 1969, where he has been ever since. Over his more than 43 years as University teacher and researcher his interests have ranged widely. His PhD dissertation and first book (published by the Brookings Institution in 1967) was on negative income taxes and the poverty problem. After researching and teaching several years in the public finance and labor fields, Green's interests moved to industrial organization and public policies toward business, in particular antitrust (or competition) policies and economic regulation. In the late 1980s, Chris Green became interested in the climate change problem. Gradually his research and some of his teaching moved in this direction. Beginning in 1994, Green began teaching a course on the "Economics of Climate Change"--a course he now teaches regularly. Green has authored or co-authored papers on climate change-related topics, beginning with two papers that appeared in Climatic Change in 1992. Most of his work has centered on the relation between stabilizing climate and energy technology change. His most recent work, with Isabel Galiana, prepared for the Copenhagen Consensus on Climate project, sets out and analyzes a proposed technology-led climate policy. Download his CV here.

Green, Chris & Galiana, Isabel, "An Analysis of a Technology-led Climate Policy as a Response to Climate Change, Copenhagen Consensus Center (2009)

Green, Chris & Galiana, Isabel, "Let the Global technology Race Begin,"Nature,462(3):570-571 (2009).

Green, Chris, Roger Pielke Jr., & TML Wigley, "Dangerous Assumptions," Nature,452(3): 531-532 (2008).

Green, Chris, S Baksi & M Dilmaghani, "Challenges to a climate stabilizing energy future,"Energy Policy,35: 616-626 (2007)

Hoffert, M ... & Chris Green, "Advanced technology paths to global climate stability: energy for a greenhouse planet,"Science,298(1): 981-987 (2002)

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Harry Saunders

Managing Director, Decision Processes Incorporated

The Managing Director of Decision Processes Incorporated, Harry Saunders has consulted at numerous Fortune 100 companies including Chevron, General Motors, and Hewlett Packard, helping executive teams make higher quality decisions in the face of risk.

The 'Godfather of rebound,' Harry Saunders is widely known as an international expert on energy efficiency and consumption and has also published articles in the fields of evolutionary biology and legal theory. Following Daniel Khazzoom and Leonard Brookes' work on energy consumption and behavior, Saunders coined the"Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate" which broadly states that increased energy efficiency leads to increased energy consumption.Most recently, Saunders surveyed and analyzed thirty sectors of the United States economy for historical evidence of rebound. Based on his analyses and historical records, Saunders argues that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's estimates for carbon emissions reduction are based on improper estimations of the rebound effect. A former Manager of Strategy at Tosco Corporation, Saunders has also worked at the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Energy Agency.

Saunders, Harry, "Historical Evidence for Energy Consumption Rebound in 30 US Sectors and a Toolkit for Rebound Analysts,"Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 80(7): 1317-1330 (2013).

Saunders, Harry. "Is what we think of as ‘‘rebound’’ really just income effects in disguise?" Energy Policy, 57(3): 308-317 (2013).

Saunders, Harry. "Recent Evidence for Large Rebound: Elucidating the Drivers and their Implications for Climate Change Models," The Energy Journal (in press) (2013).

Saunders, Harry and Jeffrey Y. Tsao, "Rebound effects for lighting" Energy Policy, 49: 477-478 (2012) 

Saunders, Harry & Shellenberger, Michael, "Why Energy Efficiency May not Decrease Energy Consumption, The Breakthrough (2010).

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Alex Trembathis a senior analyst at Breakthrough. He is the lead or coauthor of several Breakthrough publications, including :{Coal Killer: How Natural Gas Fuels the Clean Energy Revolution}::{,}: Beyond Boom and Bust: Putting Clean Tech on a Path to Subsidy Independence and Where the Shale Gas Revolution Came From. He is also co-director of Breakthrough Generation, the Breakthrough Institute's annual summer policy fellowship, which brings together some of the brightest young thinkers in the world to work together researching policy, politics, and technology. Alex came to the Energy and Climate Program by way of Breakthrough Generation 2011, where he contributed research on the collapse of federal funding for clean tech research, deployment, and innovation.

At Breakthrough, Alex has focused on renewable energy technologies, American federal energy policy, and the history of public investments in technological innovation. His writing on energy technology and policy has been published by the *Boston Globe*, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, *Forbes*, Politico,andBloomberg. He also writes regularly for the *National Journal* and the Energy Collective. His research and analysis have been featured in the*New York Times*, the *Washington Post*, the *Wall Street Journal*,*Time Magazine*, the *Los Angeles Times*, *Bloomberg*, *Forbes*,E&E News, CNN, and other major media outlets.

Alex is a graduate of University of California at Berkeley where he received his Bachelor's in Environmental Economics and Policy. While at Cal, Alex was active in the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative and California Lightweight Crew. In 2009, he worked at San Francisco City Hall on local cleantech and community development in the Mayor's Office of Climate Protection Initiatives. In college he worked on several political campaigns, including Gavin Newsom's gubernatorial run in 2009 and Organizing for America. In 2011 Alex completed a policy fellowship with Americans for Energy Leadership, where he wrote on U.S. energy policy and politics. He has lived in the Bay Area for the last decade, and is a proud son of South Bend, Indiana. He enjoys rowing and exploring the Bay Area. Follow Alex on Twitter @atrembath.

Publications

Our High-Energy Planet

A Climate Pragmatism Project

Coal Killer

How Natural Gas Fuels the Clean Energy Revolution

Beyond Boom and Bust: Report Overview

Putting Clean Tech on a Path to Subsidy Independence

US Government Role in Shale Gas Fracking History: An Overview and Response to Our Critics

An Overview and Response to Our Critics

Blog Posts

Is Coal Really “Peaking” in China?

Better Technologies Needed for Emissions to Start Falling

US Coal Exports Do Not Offset Massive Emissions Reductions from Natural Gas

A Response to CO2 Scorecard

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’s the elegant solution climate hawks have been looking for since the death of cap-and-trade. But as Dr. Rob Gross, the Director of the U.K. Imperial College Centre for Energy Policy and Technology stated, this idea is, “so simplistic it is absurd.” Carbon taxes are doomed to fail because they do little to drive what is needed most: innovation that generates affordable clean energy that all 7 billion humans will want to adopt, not out of altruism or coercion, but out of self-interest.

Economists’ attraction to a carbon tax was on full display recently when economist Greg Mankiw wrote in the New York Times, calling a carbon tax a climate policy “America could live with,” compared to the grab bag of regulations and fuel standards targeted by the Obama administration.

Carbon tax supporters believe it will lead consumers to use less dirty energy. Mankiw writes, “When making everyday decisions, people would naturally look at the prices they face and, in effect, take into account the global impact of their choices.”

If greenhouse gasses were a pollutant like sulphur dioxide that largely stays within national borders such a policy might make sense. But they are not.  It’s a global pollutant. That’s why we talk about addressing global warming, not American warming. 

Mankiw’s preferred climate solution aims at getting U.S. consumers to buy slightly more fuel efficient cars or turn off light bulbs more regularly because energy prices are modestly higher. This will have little impact on global emissions because virtually all their growth will be in rapidly growing developing nations like China and India. Moreover, greenhouse gases are not like traditional pollutants in another sense: they are cumulative, essentially filling the atmospheric “bath tub.” We therefore can’t afford to simply slow their growth; we need to dramatically cut emissions.

This gets to the second major problem with the carbon tax. The only way to get to dramatic cuts in global emissions is by developing significantly cheaper and better clean energy technologies. Current clean energy alternatives cost significantly more than conventional energy. Expecting consumers and businesses, especially in poor developing nations, to pay a large price premium for clean energy is wishful thinking.

The only path to cheap and reliable clean energy is innovation: better batteries, better solar cells, better biofuels, better nuclear reactors, etc. Unfortunately, few economists focus on innovation and to the extent they do they see it as “manna from heaven,” something that just happens. To the extent a carbon tax induces innovation it is through the magic of the market: higher prices provide an incentive for entrepreneurs to develop a better energy mousetrap. 

Economists have built a cottage industry out of comparing carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, and conventional pollution regulations. But an innovation strategy to develop cheaper, better clean energy technologies doesn’t make the cut. Frankly, this shouldn’t be a surprise as innovation is not part of neoclassical economists’ lexicon. In Mankiw’s seminal textbook Principles of Economics, the word “innovation” is barely mentioned in almost 900 pages of text.

But breakthrough technologies like jet aircraft, gas engines, computers and cell phones have never emerged because their competitors’ price increased. Steve Jobs didn’t develop the PC because the price of a typewriter went up. We have to only look to Europe for a natural experiment. Their gas prices are more than twice as high as in the United States and serve as a defacto carbon tax. While Europeans buy smaller cars and take more mass transit, they don’t buy more electric vehicles because they are expensive and provide limited range. While a higher gas price can spur carmakers to make smaller, more fuel efficient internal combustion engine cars, it has not and will not spur them to develop cheap batteries that let you drive 500 miles without a charge.

So where do breakthroughs like cheap clean energy come from if not from marginally higher prices?  As innovation economist Mariana Mazzucato recently opined, “A quick look at the pioneering technologies of the past century points to the state, not the private sector, as the most decisive player in the game.” In other words, smart government innovation policy that works with industry is how the world will get cheap clean energy.

For policymakers, this means fully funding clean energy research budgets and strategically supporting proof-of-concept technology demonstrations and early commercialization. To be clear, a carbon tax can make this easier, especially if some of the revenues are devoted to a smart and effective clean energy innovation system.  But to believe that modest price signals in the United States alone will transform the world’s energy system is an illusion. As such it’s time to overcome climate policy group-think and embrace a robust clean energy innovation policy.

Stepp is senior policy analyst at the Information Technology and innovation Foundation (ITIF) and Trembath is a policy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute.

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sort of echoes Dreissen eco slaughter:

It has become fashionable in some circles to come out against economic growth. Bill McKibben, the author and climate change activist, asserts that “growth may be the one big habit we finally must break.” He adds that this is “a dark thing to say, and un-American.” Such calls for an end to growth are typically advanced in environmental debates and those about economic globalization. But what does it actually mean to be against economic growth? I argue that to be anti-growth actually implies keeping poor people poor.

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Economic growth is simply a metric that reflects the accumulation of wealth over time, usually based on universalized US dollars. Economists define economic growth in three parts: (a) growth in labor, which refers to an increase in the number of people working; (b) growth in capital, which refers to increases in the availability of things that can be used by labor in the process of producing goods (like food) and services (like surgery); and (c) increasing productivity, which can be thought of as improvements in the efficiency with which we turn labor and capital into goods and services.

We can use the three components of economic growth to better understand what it means to be “anti-growth.”

Anti-Labor Growth, The Neo-Malthusians

One sort of objection to growth sits squarely in the tradition of Thomas Malthus and is focused on global population. Neo-Malthusians most recently rose to prominence and influence in the 1960s and 1970s, with Paul Ehrlich the most famous US advocate for population control. Today the neo-Malthusian moment seems to have waned, likely due in part to the fact that UN population projections now foresee the end of population growth later this century, followed by a decline in some scenarios. Even so, the Neo-Malthusian movement has its adherents. As Alan Weisman wrote in a book released last year (see In Review): “From the instant we’re born, even the humblest among us compounds the world’s mounting problems.” Neo-Malthusians see anti-growth as limits on population.

Anti-Capital Growth, The Peak Earthers

Another branch of anti-growth thinking focuses not on the number of people, but rather their consumption of resources. The Peak Earthers, as I call them, present their views through a suite of concepts, such as ecological footprints, planetary boundaries, and natural capital. Such concepts reflect valid concerns, but it turns out that, with respect to limits on continued economic growth, humans have had a tendency to break through physical limits through gains in efficiency and substitution. A good example is “peak oil,” which seems ever on the horizon yet keeps retreating as we tap new petroleum sources. Peak Earthers see anti-growth, rather than efficiency gains and substitution, as a solution to resource constraints.

Anti-Productivity Growth, The Luddites

The term “Luddite” refers to an industrial protest movement of the early 1800s, and derives from Ned Ludd, one of the lead protestors. “Luddite” is commonly used to mean anti-technology, a reference to the fact that the original Luddites destroyed industrial machines – but that’s a misreading of history. What the Luddites were protesting was the effect of productivity gains resulting from the introduction of machines into factories as a consequence of the industrial revolution. Today, we see Luddite concerns in other sectors. For instance, in December 2013, The Washington Post ran an article with the headline, “Eight Ways Robots Stole Our Jobs in 2013.” Luddites see anti-growth as a way to stop the effects of technology on the economy.

When we break down the idea of anti-growth into its component parts, we very quickly see that “anti-growth” is not a particularly coherent concept. For instance, those favoring what is often called “sustainable growth” – such as using renewable energy technologies, rather than using fossil fuels, to power growing material wealth – would not fit any of the three categories presented above. Sustainable growth clearly is not anti-growth.

In the near future, economic growth and its consequences for the planet will be dominated by today’s poor countries. The OECD estimates that between 2013 and 2030 82 percent of economic growth will occur in what are today considered to be the “poor” parts of the world, with just 18 percent of growth occurring in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and a few other wealthy countries. Similarly, in January BP released its 2014 “Energy Outlook to 2035,” which projects that 95 percent of growth in energy consumption worldwide to 2035 will occur in poorer countries.

Some try to sugar-coat their anti-growth arguments by focusing their attention on the rich world. But with most of the world’s expected growth to occur in the poor parts of the world, such arguments are simply mathematical non sequiturs. The reality is that to be anti-growth today is actually to be anti-growth with respect to poor countries. The fact that very few, if any, anti-growth activists are openly demanding that poor countries remain poor tells us how powerful a force growth is in today’s global politics.

Ultimately, debates over growth tend to mask more fundamental debates about ideologies, values, and what kind of world we wish to see in the future. Breaking concerns about growth into its component parts helps to focus such debates on questions that can be addressed empirically, and those which cannot. So when you encounter an anti-growth advocate, ask him or her, which kind are you, Neo-Malthusian, Peak Earther, or Luddite?

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2014 edition of Earth Island Journal,www.earthislandjournal.org. 

==

wikifluff

Barry William Brook (born 28 February 1974 in Melbourne, Australia) is anAustralian scientist. He is a professor and Chair of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania in the Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology. He was formerly an ARC Future Fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide, Australia, where he held the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change from 2007 to 2014. He was also Director of Climate Science at the Environment Institute.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Early life and education
• 2 Career
• 3 Memberships
• 4 Personal
• 5 Awards and prizes
• 6 Nuclear Power book
• 7 Selected bibliography
• 8 References
• 9 External links

Early life and education:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Brook attended high school in Coonabarabran, before studying at Macquarie University, Sydney, where he earned a B.Sc.(First Class Honours) in biology and computer science, and a Ph.D. in population viability analysis.

Career:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Brook in an ecologist who has published three books and over 280 peer-reviewed scientific papers, is an ISI highly cited researcher, and regularly writes opinion pieces and popular articles for the media. He is known for his work in ecological systems models, conservation biology, paleoecology, sustainable energy and climate change impacts.

Brook established the popular blog Brave New Climate in 2008 and posts regularly. Guest bloggers also feature and BNC occasionally republishes articles by authors who share Brook's interests. Brook describes the website as catering "for people concerned about mitigating climate change, protecting biodiversity, whilst also enhancing human well being and growing our civilisation."^[1]

He is a strong proponent for nuclear power as a viable carbon-free energy source for wholesale replacement of fossil fuels, especially using generation IV technology that recycles used nuclear fuel, like the Integral Fast Reactor.^[2] His most recent book is Why vs Why: Nuclear Power, which is co-authored by Ian Lowe. The two authors present opposing viewpoints.

In 2011, Brook co-authored a "Nuclear Series" of articles for the South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy with Ben Heard,^[3] and Australia's nuclear options, a policy perspective document for CEDA (Committee for Economic Development of Australia). Brook contributed the first of five chapters to the latter, entitled The role of nuclear fission energy in mitigating future carbon emissions. The other chapters were written by fellow advocates Anthony Owen (UCL), Tony Wood (Grattan Institute),Tony Irwin (Engineers Australia) and Tom Quirk (a nuclear physicist).^[4]

In an open letter of December 2014 that he led, 75 leading scientists urged environmentalists to set aside their preconceptions about nuclear power.^[5] They express their support for an article titled Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation.,^[6] written by Brook, stating that it provided "strong evidence for the need to accept a substantial role for advance nuclear power systems" as part of a range of sustainable energy technologies. "Much as leading climate scientists have recently advocated the development of safe, next-generation nuclear energy systems to combat global climate change ... we entreat the conservation and environmental community to weigh up the pros and cons of different energy sources using objective evidence and pragmatic trade-offs, rather than simply relying on idealistic perceptions of what is 'green'."^[7]

Brook's advocacy for nuclear power has been challenged by opponents of nuclear industries, including environmentalist Jim Green of Friends of the Earth.^[8] Brook has been similarly critical of anti-nuclear activists and in 2015 described the Australian Greens political party (SA Branch) and Australian Youth Climate Coalition as "sad" and "increasingly irrelevant" after they expressed their opposition to nuclear industrial development.^[9]

In February 2015, the South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill announced the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission to investigate the potential for an expanded role for the state in all aspects of the nuclear industry (mining, enrichment, reprocessing, waste management and nuclear electricity generation). Brook described the announcement as "real progress."^[9]In April 2015, Brook was one of five members appointed to the Expert Advisory Committee of the Royal Commission, along with Ian Lowe, SA Chief Scientist Dr Leanna Read, Timothy Stone CBE and John Carlsson, to provide high-level advice. Commissioner Kevin Scarce said "The members of this Committee have been chosen to ensure that the Commission receives a broad range of advice and reflects the diversity of views that the community holds," ^[10]

Brook, along with 17 other environmental scholars,^[11] released An Ecomodernist Manifesto^[12] in April 2015, which represented a declaration of principles for new environmentalism.^[13] The summary of the manifesto says: "We offer this statement in the belief that both human prosperity and an ecologically vibrant planet are not only possible, but also inseparable. By committing to the real processes, already underway, that have begun to decouple human well-being from environmental destruction, we believe that such a future might be achieved. As such, we embrace an optimistic view toward human capacities and the future." It was described by Eduardo Porter of The New York Times as a "...new strategy [that], of course, presents big challenges".^[14]...

==

wiki

David W. Keith (born 1963) is a Canadian environmental scientist. He is Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Professor of Public Policy, HarvardKennedy School, Harvard University.^[1]He is president of Carbon Engineering, based in Calgary, which works on ways to capture carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.^[2] Keith has worked in carbon dioxide air capture.^[3] In 2006, Keith was selected by Canadian Geographic as Environmental Scientist of the Year.^[3][4]

In 2013, Keith released a book,A Case for Climate Engineering, detailing a controversial strategy for slowing climate change.^[5] In it, Keith argued that spraying alumina particles in the upper atmosphere would create a reflective shield that would slow down the rate of climate change and buy humans time to curb emissions and instill more sustainable behavior.^[2]He estimates the cost at $1 billion per year; he predicted that, without action, climate change would cost at least $1 trillion a year by 2050.^[2]

Keith has been featured on the Discovery Channel,^{[6][non-primary} ^source ^needed], did an interview on BBC News HARDTalk in November 2011,^[7][8][9] has participated in TED talks in September 2007 ,^[10][11][12] and appeared in a documentary ongeoengineering currently under production.^{[13][non-primary} ^source ^needed] He also promoted his geoengineering idea to slow climate change by spraying reflective particles into the upper atmosphere on The Colbert Report.^[14]

An Ecomodernist Manifesto:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

In April 2015, Keith joined with a group of scholars in issuing An Ecomodernist Manifesto.^[15][16] The other authors were: John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist, Stewart Brand, Barry Brook. Ruth DeFries, Erle Ellis, Christopher Foreman, Martin Lewis, Mark Lynas, Ted Nordhaus, Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Rachel Pritzker, Joyashree Roy, Mark Sagoff, Michael Shellenberger, Robert Stone, and Peter Teague^[17]

References:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Contactpage David Keith, Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School". Belfer Center. Retrieved 2012-05-12.
2. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Keith%28scientist%29#cite_ref-Grolle_2-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Keith%28scientist%29#cite_ref-Grolle_2-2) Grolle, Johann (20 November 2013). "Cheap But Imperfect: Can Geoengineering Slow Climate Change?". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
3. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Keith_%28scientist%29#cite_ref-CG_3-1) Brian, Bergman. "Climate Contrarian" (PDF). Canadian Geographic (May/June 2006): 74–82. Retrieved June 10, 2009.
4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ NPR/TED Staff (9 August 2013). "Can Hacking The Stratosphere Solve Climate Change?". NPR. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Keith, David (2013). A Case for Climate Engineering. MIT Press. ISBN 0262019825.
6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "David Keith: Fixing Carbon". Project Earth. Discovery Channel online. Retrieved 2011-11-01.
7. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "HARDtalk with David Keith". BBC News Channel. Retrieved 2012-05-17.
8. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "David Keith on the BBC HARDtalk Show". Global Oneness. Retrieved 2012-05-17.
9. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "David Keith: Solar Geoengineering Publications". Harvard University. Retrieved 2012-05-17.
10. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "David Keith´s unusual climate change ideas". TED Talks. September 2007. Retrieved 2012-05-17.
11. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "David Keith speaks on TED". The Climate Post. 2008-04-16. Retrieved 2012-05-17.
12. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "The great experiment with planet Earth (german)". Sauberer Himmel. 2012-05-09. Retrieved 2012-05-17.
13. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Documentary *Who owns the Weather*". Retrieved 2012-05-12.
14. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Revkin, Andrew C. (13 December 2013). "Engineering the Climate – Colbert’s ‘All-Chocolate Dinner’". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
15. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "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.
16. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ 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.”
17. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "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.

External links:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

• David Keith's website (University of Calgary)
• David Keith at TED

===

hmm. macA genous, then got awardlast yr, then manifesto this yr?

wiki

Ruth DeFries (born 1957) is an environmental geographer who specializes in the use of remote sensing to study Earth's habitability under the influence of human activities, such as deforestation,^[1][2][3] that influence regulating biophysical andbiogeochemical processes.^[4] She was one of 24 recipients of the 2007 MacArthur Fellowship,^[5][6] and was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2006.^[7]

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Life
• 2 An Ecomodernist Manifesto
• 3 Awards
• 4 References
• 5 External links

Life:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

DeFries received her Ph.D. in 1980 from the Department of Geography andEnvironmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and her B.A. in Earth Science in 1976 from Washington University. DeFries currently holds the Denning Family Chair in Sustainable Development in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, at Columbia University as well as a professorship at the University of Maryland, College Park where she has joint appointments in the Department of Geography and the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center.^[4]

An Ecomodernist Manifesto:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

In April 2015, DeFries joined with a group of scholars in issuing An Ecomodernist Manifesto.^[8][9] The other authors were: John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist, Stewart Brand, Barry Brook, 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^[10]

Also see Portal:Sustainable development

Awards:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

• 2007 MacArthur Fellows Program
• 2015 Breakthrough Paradigm Award

References

:{

References[edit]

Jump up ^ "Maryland-Led Research Revises Estimates of Tropical Deforestation.". Ascribe Higher Education News Service. 2002-10-14. Retrieved 2008-09-16.

Jump up ^ "An Improved Method For Monitoring National And Global Deforestation". ScienceDaily. 2001-06-05. Retrieved 2008-09-16.

Jump up ^ "Growth In Amazon Cropland May Impact Climate And Deforestation Patterns". ScienceDaily. 2006-09-22. Retrieved 2008-09-16.

^ Jump up to: a b "Ruth DeFries biography". The Earth Institute, Columbia University. Retrieved 2008-09-16.

Jump up ^ "MacArthur Fellows 2007". The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved 2008-09-16.

Jump up ^ Roylance, Frank D.; Emery, Chris (2007-09-25). "'Genius' rewarded: Hopkins physician, UM geographer are among 24 awarded $500,000 MacArthur grants for research.". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2008-09-16.

Jump up ^ "A Conversation with UM's Ruth DeFries, Newly Elected to the National Academy of Sciences". University of Maryland. Retrieved 2008-09-16.

Jump up ^ "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.

Jump up ^ 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.”

Jump up ^ "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.

External links[edit]

Homepage at University of Maryland

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/dialogue/paradigm-award-winners/ruth-defries-announced-as-2015-paradigm-award-winner

}:

1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Maryland-Led Research Revises Estimates of Tropical Deforestation.". Ascribe Higher Education News Service. 2002-10-14. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
2. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "An Improved Method For Monitoring National And Global Deforestation". ScienceDaily. 2001-06-05. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
3. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Growth In Amazon Cropland May Impact Climate And Deforestation Patterns". ScienceDaily. 2006-09-22. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
4. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_DeFries#cite_ref-BIO_4-1) "Ruth DeFries biography". The Earth Institute, Columbia University. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "MacArthur Fellows 2007". The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Roylance, Frank D.; Emery, Chris (2007-09-25). ":{'}:Genius' rewarded: Hopkins physician, UM geographer are among 24 awarded $500,000 MacArthur grants for research.". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
7. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "A Conversation with UM's Ruth DeFries, Newly Elected to the National Academy of Sciences". University of Maryland. Retrieved2008-09-16.
8. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "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.
9. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ 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.”
10. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "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.

External links:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

• Homepage at University of Maryland

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/dialogue/paradigm-award-winners/ruth-defries-announced-as-2015-paradigm-award-winner

===

Robert Stone is a British-American documentary filmmaker. His work has been screened at dozens of film festivals and televised around the world, notably several times on PBS's American Experience series. One of his most recent works is Earth Days (2009), about the beginnings of the environmental movement in the USA.^[1] Earth Days was nominated for the Sheffield Green Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2009.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Biography
• 2 Filmography
• 3 An Ecomodernist Manifesto
• 4 References
• 5 External links

Biography:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Stone was born in England and educated in the United States. His father Lawrence Stone was a noted historian^[2] and chair of the History Department at Princeton University, where Robert grew up. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, did a brief stint at Sorbonne University in Paris and at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. His debut work was the Academy Award-nominated Radio Bikini (1988), about nuclear tests performed around Bikini Atoll in 1946.

Known in large part for his innovative use of archival material in historical documentaries, Stone has directed several well received documentaries that he has shot himself, including American Babylon (2000) and, most recently, Pandora's Promise(2013), which makes the environmental case for nuclear energy as a solution to climate change.

Entertainment Weekly film critic Owen Gleiberman stated that Stone "may be the most under-celebrated great documentary filmmaker in America."^[3] His films Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004) and Oswald's Ghost (2008) both received Emmy nominations for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking; Gleiberman hailed them as "two of the most explosively insightful documentaries of the last decade".^[4]

His only foray into fiction filmmaking was a counter-factual fake historical documentary for German television called World War Three in 1998. In addition to his work making feature-documentaries, in the early 1990s he was commissioned to create a 24-part semi-interactive permanent installation at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston.

His work with environmental issues, particularly the worldwide acclaim surrounding his film Pandora's Promise, led him to co-found the non-profit clean energy advocacy group Energy for Humanity ^[2] with environmental campaigner Kirsty Gogan and philanthropist Daniel Aegerter. Stone is also one of 18 co-authors of the Ecomodernist Manifesto which challenges conventional thinking about the meaning of sustainable development.^[5]

Stone has had four world premiers at the Sundance Film Festival (including Closing Night Film in 2009). His work has been screened and honored at dozens other festivals worldwide.

Stone lives and works in New York's Hudson Valley with his wife and two sons.

Filmography:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

• Radio Bikini (1988)
• The Satellite Sky (1990)
• Farewell, Good Brothers (1992)
• World War Three (1998) aka "Der Dritte Weltkrieg"
• American Babylon (2000)
• Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004) aka "Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army
• Hollywood Vietnam (2005)
• Oswald's Ghost (2008)
• The Civilian Conservation Corps (2009; broadcast by PBS's American Experience)
• Earth Days (2010)
• Pandora's Promise (2013)
• The Men Who Sold the Moon (in production, 2015)^[6]

Stone has published an official filmography.^[7]

An Ecomodernist Manifesto:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

In April 2015, Stone joined with a group of scholars in issuing An Ecomodernist Manifesto.^[8][9] The other authors were: 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, and Peter Teague^[10]

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I am retired and live in Crestone, Colorado. I am the founder of Wikinfo, a fork of Wikipedia. I began editing Wikipedia as Fredbauder (talk · contribs · logs · edit filter log ·block log) in February, 2002 and remain involved, do some editing, and served as one of the Wikipedia:Arbitrators until January 1, 2008. If you are interested in water resources and related issues, please see WaterWiki on Wikia. If you are interested in MUDS, please see MUD Wiki.  http://water.wikia.com/wiki/Advocacy_organizations

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