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Every other Monday, we sit down with guests we admire.
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Our podcast, the Breakthrough Dialogues, takes everything we love about our events — the productive disagreement, the direct engagement with interdisciplinary experts, the thoughtful questions that move beyond tribalism and into more constructive spaces — and wraps it all up into concise conversations available for a wider audience. Each episode, our deputy director, Alex Trembath, sits down with leaders who have challenged, inspired, or otherwise influenced ecomodernism from a variety of sectors.
Our entire Season Three is now available wherever you get your podcasts: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, Overcast, and more. These episodes zoom both in and out, thinking about the nitty gritty climate trends while also discussing the big, public ways we should be talking about it.
Some of our favorite moments? Alex and his longtime Twitter co-debater, David Roberts of Vox, give voice to their ongoing conversation. Jane Flegal on why climate change is a completely different problem than other environmental issues, and how that changes the way we should treat it. Jacquelyn Gill, who created one of the very first climate podcasts (Warm Regards), explains how her theatrical background prepared her to be a great climate communicator. And an "Ask Us Anything," in which we answer questions you submitted: everything from electric scooters to whether the think tank model is effective.
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We'll be back soon with Season Four, with lots more in store for you.
Stay tuned!
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The pieces you clicked on the most in 2019
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Is Climate Change like Diabetes or an Asteroid? Ted Nordhaus and Alex Trembath say: diabetes. It's a long-term condition that requires ongoing management and adaptation, not a sudden, single event. Here.
Food Injustice. This sharp Journal piece from S. Margot Finn made huge waves (including a shoutout in New York Times Cooking!). She explores the role of power hierarchies, access, and individual choice while complicating widespread nutrition advice. Here.
Eat Meat. Not Too Much. Mostly Monogastrics. It’s pretty simple, Linus Blomqvist writes: beef is just much, much worse for the environment than all other forms of food, including pork and poultry. It isn’t animal vs. plant, it’s beef vs. everything else. Here.
Achieving Peak Pasture. Pasture expansion is among the largest conservation challenges we've faced. It’s been expanding for centuries, but there’s good news: in the last 20 years, that trend reversed. How to ensure pasture continues to decline, here.
Beyond Yucca Mountain. Our take on what to do about nuclear energy? Consent-based, decentralized storage in the short term; public investment in innovative waste management technologies for the long term. Here.
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Announcing the 2020 Paradigm Award Winner
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It is our honor to present Steve Rayner with the 2020 Paradigm Award.
It has long been a rule of thumb at the Breakthrough Institute that if something is worth saying about climate change, Steve Rayner said it 25 years ago. Rayner argued that more and better climate science would not reduce the uncertainties associated with climate mitigation, that this is centrally a technology and innovation challenge, that the impacts of natural disasters had more to do with infrastructure than intensity of the phenomena.
Rayner was one of the first Breakthrough Senior Fellows, a great champion of Breakthrough’s work and an even greater influence upon it. Read more about him, the Award, and our upcoming Dialogue here.
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📚This is what we're reading this week 📚
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