Inevitable Ep 46: Ted Nordhaus, Founder & Executive Director at the Breakthrough Institute
Today’s guest is Ted Nordhaus, Founder & Executive Director at the Breakthrough Institute.
Ted Nordhaus is a leading global thinker on energy, environment, climate, human development, and politics. He is the founder and executive director of the Breakthrough Institute and a co-author of An Ecomodernist Manifesto.
Over the last decade, he has helped lead a paradigm shift in climate, energy, and environmental policy. He was among the first to emphasize the imperative to "make clean energy cheap" in The Harvard Law and Policy Review, explained why efforts to establish legally binding international limits on greenhouse gas emissions would fail in The Washington Post and Democracy Journal, made the case for nuclear energy as a critical global warming solution in The Wall Street Journal, has written on the limits to energy efficiency and the need to prepare for climate change in The New York Times, and has argued for the importance of intensifying agricultural production in order to spare land for forests and biodiversity in Scientific American and The Guardian.
His 2007 book Break Through, co-authored with Michael Shellenberger, was called "prescient" by Time and "the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring" by Wired. (An excerpt in The New Republic can be read here.) Their 2004 essay, "The Death of Environmentalism," was featured on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, sparked a national debate, and inspired a generation of young environmentalists.
Over the years, Nordhaus been profiled in The New York Times, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, the National Review, The New Republic, and on NPR. In 2007, he received the Green Book Award and Time magazine's 2008 "Heroes of the Environment" award.
Nordhaus is executive editor of 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, and the National Review called "The most promising effort at self-criticism by our liberal cousins in a long time."
In today’s episode, we cover:
- Ted’s background and history, and what led him to care about climate change
- Ted’s views on the problems with the environmental movement, which led him to founding BTI
- BTI mission, vision, work
- Ted’s views on the nature of climate change, and the misconceptions people have about the best ways to solve.
- Ted’s views on the best path forwards, and where innovation, policy, and government fit in.
- Ted’s views on how to think about the 2020 election and the stakes. Different views here than most other guests!
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
- The Breakthrough Institute: https://thebreakthrough.org/
- Neoliberalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
- Green New Deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal
- The Empty Radicalism of the Climate Apocalypse article: https://issues.org/the-empty-radicalism-of-the-climate-apocalypse/
- Shale gas revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_gas
- Advanced nuclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_nuclear
- Carbon capture and storage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission: https://www.nrc.gov/
- Net Power: https://www.netpower.com/
- 45Q tax credit: https://www.betterenergy.org/blog/primer-section-45q-tax-credit-for-carbon-capture-projects/
- Nuclear energy leadership act: https://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/3/murkowski-booker-and-13-colleagues-reintroduce
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant