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Nov 13, 2024 | 
open.substack.com | Patrick Brown |Ted Nordhaus |Adam Stein
By Patrick BrownIn Part 1, I outlined the recent rise of the Degrowth Movement, where its supporters argue that the immense and urgent challenge of climate change necessitates the dismantling of capitalism and the deliberate reduction and redistribution of global wealth. I critiqued the Degrowth perspective for missing the critical role that economic productivity and technological progress plays in facilitating general climate adaptation.
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Nov 11, 2024 | 
breakthroughjournal.org | Ted Nordhaus
By Ted NordhausOn the day that Donald Trump announced his Muslim ban, a week into his presidency in 2017, I was flying from San Francisco to Washington, DC as the news broke over the patchy WiFi. Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and other prominent Democrats were rallying protesters at airports around the country. Thousands had gathered at the White House. The fight for American democracy, it seemed, had begun. I was scheduled to give a speech to a World Bank group the following morning.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
breakthroughjournal.org | Ted Nordhaus |Adam Stein
By Ted Nordhaus and Adam SteinEarlier this month, Alex Trembath and I wrote about why the Three Mile Island restart tells us a lot about the significant role that nuclear energy will likely need to play in a fully decarbonized electricity system.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
geneticliteracyproject.org | Ted Nordhaus
One of the long-standing tropes of climate politics in the United States is that as every presidential election comes into view, the future of the planet hangs in the balance. It does not matter what the climate movement has said about the Democratic candidate in the past. Bill McKibben at various times branded both Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton as climate deniers and the Sunrise Movement gave Joe Biden an F on his climate agenda during the 2020 primaries.
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Oct 14, 2024 | 
breakthroughjournal.org | Ted Nordhaus
By Ted NordhausWhen former President Donald Trump promised at a rally late last year to root out his political enemies, “the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” reaction was swift. The New York Times described his language as “incendiary and dehumanizing.” The Washington Post’s headline noted that Trump’s words had “echoed Hitler and Mussolini.” It wasn’t the first time Trump had used this sort of language.
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Oct 10, 2024 | 
breakthroughjournal.org | Ted Nordhaus
By Ted NordhausEvery now and again, a series of events unfolds in such serendipitously perfect succession as to prove a point beyond any reasonable doubt. Yesterday, I gave a keynote at the first Abundance Conference in Washington, where I made the case that the climate movement is foundationally neo-Malthusian and, hence, the enemy of the Abundance movement.
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Oct 7, 2024 | 
breakthroughjournal.org | Ted Nordhaus |Alex Trembath
By Ted Nordhaus and Alex TrembathIt is hard to overstate the symbolism of Constellation Energy’s announcement last month that it planned to restart the recently shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The partial meltdown of Unit 2 in 1979 marked the beginning of America’s turn away from nuclear energy. Dozens of orders for nuclear reactors were canceled.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
breakthroughjournal.org | Ted Nordhaus
By Ted NordhausOne of the long-standing tropes of climate politics in the United States is that as every presidential election comes into view, the future of the planet hangs in the balance. It does not matter what the climate movement has said about the Democratic candidate in the past. Bill McKibben at various times branded both Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton as climate deniers and the Sunrise Movement gave Joe Biden an F on his climate agenda during the 2020 primaries.
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Sep 13, 2024 | 
thebreakthroughjournal.substack.com | Ted Nordhaus
By Ted NordhausAfter my last post, criticizing the Democrats nominee for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Matthew Marzano, a lot of folks in the nuclear tribe insisted that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Marzano’s five year gig as a reactor operator, they said, made him uniquely qualified to join the commission: it would be a boon to have a commissioner with deep knowledge of reactor operations and the regulatory rules that governed them.
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Sep 4, 2024 | 
thebreakthroughjournal.substack.com | Ted Nordhaus
By Ted NordhausCognitive dissonance within the Democratic Party about nuclear energy continues to undermine the Party’s climate and clean energy commitments. The Biden Administration continues to say all the right things about nuclear energy. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has celebrated the two new AP1000 reactors at the Vogtle plant in Georgia and said that we need 198 more like them by 2050 to hit the Administration’s net zero target.
