The Breakthrough Institute is a small think tank with big ideas. Breakthrough 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.

A new politics is today being born, but its shape has not yet been determined. It could define itself as small, cautious, deficit-oriented, and isolationist. Or it could become large, bold, asset-based, and internationalist. Over the next two years the Breakthrough Institute will grow its capacity to engage in specific national and global campaigns, and trigger new "thought movements" aimed at defining the next progressive politics. These campaigns will aim to do three things:

The Breakthrough Institute was founded in the 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 2008, 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 has been 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 took an important role in championing and protecting Cape Wind, the most important wind development 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: Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat is On and Boiling Point, Prof. Jon Isham, Middlebury College, 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 all of us, "was extremely effective."

Progressives are better positioned today to advance an inspiring new vision for American than they have been at any point since the Watergate scandal and resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. The post-baby boom generation of progressives and environmentalists are particularly hungry for a positive, inspirational politics that transcends older issue categories and identities. Between 2008 and 2010 the Breakthrough Institute will grow its capacity to become a key intellectual innovator for the progressive movement in the United States.
 
The Breakthrough Institute is committed to creating a new politics that recognizes the central importance of prosperity and security to our ability to become creative, unique, and caring individuals. Toward that end, America needs a new social contract, one that provides greater security around issues like health care, retirement, employment and education. These social issues cannot be seen as separate from environmental issues since they, and economic prosperity generally, are the ground upon which ecological concern depends.
 
Breakthrough also recognizes that humans are not essentially rational beings, coldly calculating their self-interest. Breakthrough seeks to understand the ways different people reason in different circumstances. There has been more than 50 years of social psychological, cognitive science, behavioral economics, and other kinds of research into why we believe what we believe. Breakthrough intends not only to create a new politics in light of these insights but also to help other progressive leaders do so as well.
 

The Breakthrough Institute is a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c)(3)corporation. As part of its mission and services, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors facilitates the charitable purposes of The Breakthrough Institute, serving as the fiscal sponsor for the initiative. For more information about Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, please visit www.rockpa.org.

Tax-deductible donations to the Breakthrough Institute should be made out to "Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers -- Breakthrough Institute Fund."

The Breakthrough Institute
c/o Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors
437 Madison Avenue, 37th Floor
New York, NY 10022