The Breakthrough Institute: Home

Top 10 Green Ideas of 2009: #9. China's Green Stimulus
TIME
12.08.09
In Energy Innovation, Everything New Is Old Again
WSJ
12.10.09
Copenhagen's Real Challenge: Technology to Meet the Targets
TIME
12.09.09
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Green Book Award, 2008

“Prescient” –Time

“Could be the most important thing to happen to environ- mentalism since Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring.'” –Wired

Read the Overview

Newsweek:
Copenhagen R.I.P
Declaring "Good Riddance to Copenhagen," Newsweek's Sharon Begley writes: "The best chance of reining in emissions of greenhouse gases and avoiding dangerous climate change is to stamp a big green R.I.P. over the sprawling United Nations process that the Copenhagen talks were part of." Is this another cogent call for a new Climate Realpolitik?

The Breakthrough Institute's collected Copenhagen coverage

Copenhagen:
Obama Announces Climate Deal, UNFCCC Crumbles?
In a late night press conference at the close of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, President Obama declared that a "meaningful deal" had been reached with major emitting nations moments before boarding Air Force One and returning to the United States. While the final structure of "the Copenhagen Accord" is still in question, the content and reverberations of President Obama's speech today leave little doubt that the UNFCCC process, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Whether it continues to shamble on like a zombie through sheer force of inertia is yet to be determined.

The Copenhagen Spin from Around the Climatesphere

Open Letter to Bill McKibben: Blaming Obama for Copenhagen Is Wrong

Part II
Climate Realpolitik and the End of Postcolonialism
How could tiny Tuvalu monkey-wrench global climate talks? By operating in a highly undemocratic institution, one that has re-created the most dysfunctional aspects of the United Nations General Assembly. When climate change emerged as an issue in the late 1980s, greens looked for an institution disconnected from national political economies, which was viewed as part of the problem. But lacking any ability to alter energy trajectories, the UNFCC became an agency with the effectiveness of UNESCO. The rise of Climate Realpolitik -- confronting global warming in more appropriate institutions under a more appropriate framework -- gives hope that, one day soon, climate policy will be treated as a question of technology and economics, not religious mania and postcolonial nostalgia.

Tuvalu vs. China: The End of the Developing World

Empty Targets: Do Copenhagen Emissions Commitments Have Any Integrity?

China's Carbon Intensity Pledge

Climate Conundrum Continues in Run-up to Copenhagen

A CLEAR Look at the Cantwell-Collins Climate Bill, Part 1
A new climate bill, introduced Friday by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME), would invest only a tiny fraction of the bill's revenues to catalyze clean energy technology innovation and would not require deep cuts in U.S. emissions. Falling far short of expert recommendations, the bill would direct just $2.5-8 billion annually to support U.S. clean technologies and industries. And while the bill targets a 20% cut in U.S. emissions by 2020, relative to 2005 levels, the bill's actual carbon cap will only require emissions to fall roughly 5% below 2012 levels.

Breakthrough Analysis of Kerry-Boxer CEJAPA Climate Bill

Science Can't Tell Us What to Do
The myth that "Science is Pure" lies at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal and forms the crux of an ongoing scientific quandary around the role of climate science in policy, says Breakthrough Senior Fellow Dan Sarewitz and co-author Samuel Thernstrom in an LA Times op-ed today. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have taken the easy out in justifying their policy proposals by deferring to science, when an explanation of their values, beliefs, and interests is needed. Sarewitz and Thernstrom conclude that policy must be informed by science, not dependent upon its absolute truth, and climate policy action must be taken, especially in the face of scientific uncertainty.

China's Crash Program for Clean Energy
In next week's New Yorker magazine, journalist Evan Osnos describes the critical role that the Chinese government has played in energy research and innovation. The government's "crash program for clean energy," in part modeled on earlier U.S. government research programs, has helped it catch up in record time to the rest of the world in clean energy technology, and has even enabled it to exert technological leadership in some clean tech industries.

"Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," a new report on clean energy competitiveness in U.S. & Asia

Breakthrough Institute Featured on NPR's Morning Edition	Time Magazine names Ted and Michael "Heroes of the Environment 2008	Shellenberger says "time to make clean energy cheap"on Planet Forward TV
Shellenberger Appears on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes"	Former Sen. John Warner and Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins Talk Climate Bill on KPFA Radio	BTI, Brookings and ITIF advocate for innovation in DC

Proposals to Make Clean Energy Cheap

Copenhagen Coverage

Analysis of Kerry-Boxer CEJAPA Climate Bill (Senate)

Analysis of Waxman-Markey ACES Climate Bill (House)

Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant: Report on USA vs Asia in Clean Energy Race

Joe Romm and Climate McCarthyism

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BBC World Service: Who is to Blame at Copenhagen?
12.21.09 | 1:49 PM

Roger Pielke Jr: Post-Copenhagen, More Questions Than Answers
12.21.09 | 10:27 AM

Newsweek: Copenhagen R.I.P
12.21.09 | 8:59 AM

"Invest in New American Energy: Pathway to a Clean and Prosperous American Energy Economy" (PDF) - clean energy policy recommendations brief

"Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant: Asian Nations Set to Dominate Clean Energy Race By Out-Investing the United States" (Full report, PDF), (Summary version, PDF)

"Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy" (PDF) - Breakthrough Institute and Third Way policy report on clean energy R&D

National Energy Education Act Proposal (PDF)

"Scrap Kyoto," Democracy Journal (PDF)

Global Warming Policy in a Nutshell (PDF)

"Fast, Clean, & Cheap," Harvard Law and Policy Review (PDF)

"Introduction" to Break Through (PDF)

Focus Groups on New Social Contract (PDF)

None scheduled...but check back soon...

Also, don't forget to order your copy of Break Through, now in paperback.

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