The Breakthrough Institute

The clean energy spending in the recently unveiled Inflation Reduction Act marks a victory for the sort of bottom-up, incrementalist, behind-the-scenes climate policy that progressive climate advocates have decried as inadequate for over a decade. It is a credit to the climate left’s pragmatism that the... Read More

According to the latest United Nations IPCC report on mitigating climate change, improvements in agriculture and forestry could deliver up to 30% of the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions needed to meet global climate targets. This represents a huge opportunity to meet our climate goals, but... Read More

A rebuttal to a Washington Post op-ed on wartime nuclear power plant safety. On March 18, the day after I rebutted hyped media coverage of impending atomic catastrophe in Ukraine, yet another alarmist article surfaced in The Washington Post. Kate Brown, a professor of history in... Read More

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is bad. It’s bad for a multiplicity of reasons. Not least among them, as Western media has recently caught on, are the global impacts that a Russian war in Ukraine has on wheat, corn, and global food prices.  As I wrote... Read More

With Democrats’ hopes of passing the Build Back Better bill fading, environmental activists’ dreams of immediate climate action are dwindling as well. Many are lamenting this missed opportunity to tackle the climate crisis — and rightfully so. But it’s important that we not lose sight of... Read More

One of the biggest challenges facing agriculture in the U.S. and around the world is how to make farming more efficient and limit greenhouse gas emissions in the process. Among the most promising tools for doing so are CRISPR and GMOs. Scientists are now using CRISPR... Read More

The agricultural portion of Biden’s methane reduction plan, announced alongside the COP26 global methane pledge, proposes a reduction in U.S. cattle emissions by facilitating the development and adoption of climate-friendly livestock innovations. It’s a notable inclusion, since, despite being overshadowed by the oil and gas industries... Read More

The most recent Build Back Better (BBB) proposal contains $27 billion in funding for agricultural conservation projects — that would be in addition to existing program spending — spread out over the next five years. To put this number into perspective, the Natural Resources Conservation Service,... Read More

Let me set the stage: There’s a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress and a Democrat in the White House. Climate advocates have spent the last few years in the exile of a Republican Administration, one quarter drawing more and more attention to hurricanes and... Read More