The Breakthrough Institute: About

The Breakthrough Institute was founded in 2003 on the premise that the complaint-based, interest group liberalism born in the 1960s and 1970s was failing to achieve the broad social and ecological transformations America and the world need. Its founders, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, argued that if America is to realize its potential for greatness we must create a new vision and agenda relevant to the new challenges we face. Breakthrough's tagline, "The Era of Small Thinking is Over," represents our aspiration to break from the ever-narrowing logic of complaint-based issue organizing, which puts thinkers and advocates into thought silos.

In 2003, Shellenberger and Nordhaus co-founded the Apollo Alliance, which the New Yorker called "an influential umbrella coalition of Greens and trade unionists," and shaped the strategy for a new Apollo project aimed at achieving energy independence, increasing economic competitiveness, and overcoming global warming. One year later they wrote "The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World," which triggered a national debate in the pages of the New York Times, Grist.org, the American Prospect, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy about the future of environmentalism and interest group liberalism. Beyond the controversy, the essay triggered a dialogue about the decline of issue group liberalism. Similar debates have since occurred in reproductive rights, health care, foreign policy, labor, and other progressive movements.

The essay also inspired the involvement of academic intellectuals. In 2009, professor Jim Proctor, chair of environmental studies at Lewis and Clark, and Bill Chaloupka, chair of political science at Colorado State University, will publish a collection of international academic responses to the death of environmentalism thesis called, Post-Environmentalism, which will include contributions from top scholars from Jane Bennett, chair of political science at Johns Hopkins, to one of Europe's leading philosophers, Bruno Latour to top science policy expert, Roger Pielke.

In 2005, Breakthrough co-created "Health Care for Hybrids," a policy initiative to both achieve energy independence and revitalize the American auto industry. Funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and jointly crafted with the Center for American Progress, Health Care for Hybrids was introduced into the Senate by Senator Barack Obama and into the House by Congressman Jay Inslee. It was endorsed by the NRDC and praised by the UAW and was singled out in June 2006 by the American Prospect as one of 12 big ideas of 2006. Created by Breakthrough, but picked up by others, Health Care for Hybrids is a model for how a small think tank can have a big impact.

After hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August, 2005, the Breakthrough Institute created a proposal for "Global Warming Preparedness" with the Center for American Progress, and published articles about the initiative in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and American Prospect. This proposal has the potential to create a breakthrough in preparing vulnerable communities worldwide to deal with our changing planet. A preliminary evaluation of social science research indicates that global warming preparedness has the potential to be a way for those who remain skeptical about environmentalist and scientific claims about global warming to participate in the creation of solutions.

In January, 2006, Breakthrough played an important role in championing and protecting Cape Wind, one of the largest wind development projects in the world. In December 2005, shortly after legislation to kill Cape Wind was introduced in Congress, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. attacked Cape Wind in an op-ed in the New York Times. Breakthrough helped organized a sign-on letter to Kennedy with the country's leading global warming writers and activists and hundreds of grassroots activists nationwide. In response to the pressure from Breakthrough and others, Bobby Kennedy reversed his position and lobbied against Don Young's amendment — introduced by the lobbyist for the anti-wind Alliance for Nantucket Sound — that would have killed Cape Wind. "The high-profile exposure you brought to bear on the contradictions of a leader in the environmental movement," Cape Wind wrote in a letter to Breakthrough, "was extremely effective."

In Summer 2007, the Breakthrough Institute proposed a $300 billion clean energy investment platform to Barack Obama's presidential campaign team. Breakthrough made the case that it would serve as a bold, inspiring, and comprehensive policy agenda for Obama that would create jobs, achieve energy independence, confront global warming, and spark the public imagination. On October 8th, 2007, Barack Obama gave a major speech in Portsmouth, NH announcing that as president he would invest $150 billion over ten years to develop and deploy clean energy technology and create millions of new jobs -- the largest public investment for clean energy proposed by a presidential candidate in U.S. history.

In October 2007, Houghton Mifflin published Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger's Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. The book sparked an international debate around its claim that no strategy aimed at significantly raising energy prices could succeed politically, and that any successful effort to deal with climate change must focus instead on making large public investments to make clean energy cheap.

In 2007, many reviewers and greens dismissed Break Through, claiming that Al Gore had changed public consciousness and that climate legislation would soon pass in Congress. But by the fall of 2008, political events and public opinion overtook the older pollution paradigm. In June, Senate climate legislation had failed by an even wider margin than in 2003 and 2005, and by August, Republicans had reversed Democratic opposition to expanded off-shore oil drilling. In light of these new events, Time Magazine called Break Through "prescient" and named Nordhaus and Shellenberger "Environmental Heroes, 2008." Wired magazine said "the book could be the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Silent Spring."

Meanwhile, the Breakthrough Institute spent much of 2008 fleshing out the economic, political and technological case for an investment-centered energy agenda. In the spring 2008 issue of the Harvard Law and Policy Review, Shellenberger, Nordhaus, Jeff Navin, Teryn Norris, and Aden Van Noppen published "Fast, Clean & Cheap," an extended argument for viewing climate within the framework of energy modernization. Policymakers seeking to deal with climate face a Gordian Knot: if they increase the cost of dirty energy enough so that clean energy becomes relatively cheap, they will face a political backlash from voters. If they don't increase the cost of dirty energy enough then clean energy will not become cost-competitive. The only way to cut the Gordian Knot is to lower the absolute rather than relative cost of clean energy. And for that to occur, the governments of the world must make large, long-term investments in technology innovation.

In the cover story of the June 2008 issue of Democracy Journal, "Scrap Kyoto," Nordhaus and Shellenberger made the case for abandoning the Kyoto focus on pollution limits. The approach has failed to reduce emissions in Europe, and has been rejected repeatedly by China, India, Brazil, and other developing countries. A new global framework should focus on the large emitters--roughly 80 percent of the world's emissions are produced by just 20 countries--and should begin with large, global investments in technology.

As part of its commitment to a generational paradigm shift, in the spring of 2008 the Breakthrough Institute named 15 Breakthrough Generation Fellows who came and worked from Breakthrough's offices during the summer. What emerged from the summer was a proposal for a National Energy Education Act to invest $5 billion in the new energy sciences, which was published in two major newspapers and featured in Mother Jones.

Today the debate on energy and climate change is rapidly shifting. In the wake of the financial crisis and economic recession, carbon pricing and cap and trade schemes have become increasingly unfavorable, with both Europe and Canada backtracking on their emission reduction commitments. In the United States, cap and trade legislation has been delayed indefinitely. In line with Breakthrough's recommendations and predictions, President-elect Barack Obama has indicated his support for an investment-centric agenda, stating to Time Magazine in October 2008 that an "Apollo project" to build a new energy economy will be his top priority as president. Since then, he has repeatedly announced that major investments in clean energy technology will be part of his historically large economic stimulus package.

Strategy

The Opportunity

History

The Organization