The Breakthrough Institute is a paradigm-shifting think tank committed to rejuvenating liberal thought for the 21st Century. Our core values are integrity, imagination and audacity. Our goal is to accelerate the transition to a world where all 6.5 to 9 billion of us can enjoy secure, free, prosperous, and fulfilling lives on an ecologically vibrant planet.
Breakthrough Institute was founded in 2003 to modernize liberal-progressive-green politics. Intellectual renewal must precede political renewal and so our focus is on overarching conceptual paradigms and not just specific policies. Thus our day-to-day work includes policy, technological, and economic analyses as well as long-form essays placing these analyses in the larger context of modernization. Breakthrough is best known for its work on energy and climate, though in 2009 it expanded its reach to include national security and counter-terrorism policy.
We believe that rigorous, cutting-edge, and paradigm-shifting thought happens in small intellectual communities. Breakthrough has developed such a community of public intellectuals and academics as Senior Fellows. And because paradigms often take generations to shift, Breakthrough has a summer Fellowship program for undergraduate and graduate students to engage with complex ideas and carry out original research.
The Breakthrough Institute was founded by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus 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. Breakthrough's tagline, "The Era of Small Thinking is Over," represents the 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," a vision of energy technology policy for national economic renewal. In October 2004 they self-published,
"The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World," triggering a national debate in the pages of the
New York Times and
other publications about the future of environmentalism. The essay, concluded the
American Prospect, "may well be the most powerful and lasting of the very many 'What's wrong with the left?' documents of George W. Bush era."
Breakthrough has created a series of bold policy initiatives. In 2005, Breakthrough co-created
"Health Care for Hybrids," a policy initiative to both achieve energy independence and revitalize the American auto industry, which was eventually introduced in the Senate by then-Senator Barack Obama. After hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Breakthrough Institute created a proposal for
"Global Warming Preparedness," published as an op-ed in the
New York Times.
In January 2006, Breakthrough played a critical role in championing and protecting Cape Wind, one of the largest wind development projects in the world, which was finally approved in May 2010. And in Summer 2007, the Breakthrough Institute proposed a $300 billion clean energy investment platform to Barack Obama's presidential campaign team, and a few months later Obama announced he would invest $150 billion over ten years to develop and deploy clean energy technology and create millions of new jobs.
Breakthrough is committed to re-imagining liberalism and environmentalism. 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."
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."
Breakthrough conducts neutral point-of-view (NPOV) evaluations of what climate and energy legislation would and would not do. Breakthrough has conducted more than two-dozen
quantitative analyses of cap and trade legislation in the U.S. Congress, providing the most thorough independent analysis of climate legislation outside of government agencies The analyses have been picked up by think tanks, green activists, reporters, and policymakers, alike. National Public Radio
profiled Breakthrough's analyses and proposals in 2009.
Breakthrough staff have written essays on energy and climate for various publications, including
Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy Review, Democracy Journal, American Prospect, and
The New Republic. Breakthrough also published a series of articles prior to the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen that proved prescient.
As part of its commitment to a generational paradigm shift, Breakthrough Institute hosts a cohort of undergraduate and post-graduate
Breakthrough Generation fellows every summer to take a deep dive into questions of public policy and political philosophy before engaging in in-depth research projects. Previous Breakthrough Generation fellows have produced full lengths reports that have advanced Breakthrough's policy agendas. In 2008, fellows published
"Case Studies in American Innovation," which was later cited by
Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, as well as a proposal for a
National Energy Education Act to invest $5 billion in the new energy sciences.
In 2009, Obama announced a similar energy education initiative called Re-ENERGYSE that called for public investment in K-12, undergraduate, and graduate level energy education. One of the products of the 2009 summer fellowship was
"Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant", a major report assessing the state of the clean energy race between the China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. "Rising Tigers" was
written about in the
New York Times, the
Wall St. Journal, and the
Financial Times, and was cited in
Time Magazine's "Top 10 Green Ideas of 2009."
Breakthrough Institute is supported by the following foundations:
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."
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