Breakthrough Dialogues

We often think of progress and failure as mutually exclusive. Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data (OWID) says otherwise: there can be single catastrophic events within larger narratives of human progress. At OWID, Hannah couches rigorous, data-driven analyses into big picture trends; the online publication has become the go-to reference for anyone looking to gain a basic understanding of what’s going on in the world. They cover topics from poverty to energy, food prices to technology adoption. Hannah’s focus is on food, environment, and energy; most recently, she put together a report on plastic pollution: where it comes from, how it’s managed, and why to fix it.

Hannah’s journey began with a traditional environmental degree, where the overarching message she heard again and again was one of human’s destructive influence on the planet. Encountering the work of Hans Rosling of the Gapminder Foundation made her realize she had a huge blind spot: what about the stories of progress and human wellbeing? Today, you can find her looking for compatibility between the two narratives, motivated by the thought that the world could be a really good place. Tune in to hear why the public has come to distrust micro-level environmental action, how to bring data to life, and why Hannah is so passionate about open-access education.

“Most technologies require a social license to operate. Public opinion matters.”   So says Suzy Baker, the Communications Director of the Clean Energy Program at Third Way. She and Alex – the Communications Director at Breakthrough – often talk shop, and this episode reveals their secrets: how do they communicate climate change in an inclusive way, without falling back onto tired tropes? It isn’t just about creating better taglines; it’s about economic and political restructuring.   While Suzy now works primarily on nuclear energy and carbon capture, her story is an unusual one. She studied fine arts, and spent her school years making sculptures of ocean bacteria to visually advocate for the importance of ocean health. After graduation, her resume grew increasingly diverse: art teacher at a pediatric oncology hospital, NGO founder working on nuclear digital campaigns in the Southeast, artist focused on lead poisoning awareness, policy analyst at the US Department of Energy… The list goes on and on. Her unique background made her an expert in collaborative, cooperative, audience-aware science communications, as well as an incredible podcast guest. Find Suzy on Twitter at @SuzyHobbsBaker.

What is nature, and what isn’t? Is it helpful to make that distinction?

If you had asked Alan Levinovitz a few years ago, he would have been skeptical. Today, however, he’ll defend the concept fiercely. As he argues, “largely unexamined and incredibly powerful beliefs [like nature] are dangerous, and they make dialogue difficult.” In this episode, Alex and Alan try to have that difficult dialogue. How do we preserve nature without knowing what it is, exactly, we want to conserve? Why do we tend to equate naturalness with a kind of morality? As a Religious Studies professor at James Madison University and a well-known food journalist and book author, Alan is uniquely positioned to take on these questions.

The issue of natural-unnatural line-drawing is not limited to environmental stewardship – it cuts across so many different areas of our lives. Ever touched a plant to check whether it was “real” or not? Is clean meat “natural”? Does nuclear energy count as part of the primal order? Tune in to better understand our innate drive to categorize, and why that might actually be a useful instinct. For more, check out Alan’s essay in the Breakthrough Journal: “On Naturalness: Nature as Metaphor, Not Fact.”

How can environmental philanthropy have the greatest impact? Rachel Pritzker has spent a lot of time thinking about this question. As founder and president of the Pritzker Innovation Fund, and an ecomodernist thought leader in her own right, Rachel has focused on US innovation policy, advanced nuclear power, and energy for human development in emerging economies. She challenges conventional wisdom to get complete clarity: what, exactly, is the problem, and what are the underlying drivers? What solutions are being overlooked? Instead of staying gridlocked in old battles, Rachel seeks new ideas that are less politically rigid and offer space for bipartisan action.

While Rachel Pritzker is a signatory of the Ecomodernist Manifesto and chair of the Breakthrough Institute’s board, she wasn’t always an ecomodernist. In fact, she tells us that one of her earliest memories is of protesting nuclear energy; she grew up on a goat farm, with parents devoted to the back-to-the-land movement and a general skepticism of technology. Listen to this episode to hear the story of how her thinking has changed, and read her insights on climate philanthropy here.

Varun Sivaram is really excited about the potential of solar energy. Every hour, more sunlight hits the Earth in the form of energy than the world uses in a whole year, so the abundance alone is hugely significant. And yet, like others within the energy sector, the solar industry has been slow to invest in innovation: “My dad is in the semiconductor industry,” Varun tells us, “and I've seen how fast they innovate and how much money companies plow back into R&D as a proportion of their revenues. It's over 10%, in comparison to less than 1% for the solar industry.” To increase solar’s share of the energy mix, then, the industry must re-double its enthusiasm for innovation, which will ultimately help its long-term success.

Varun is one of the world's foremost advocates for solar innovation. He’s a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the new book Taming the Sun. Varun is also a pleasure to chat with – he’s an informed, charismatic communicator who can explain minute technicalities while keeping the larger context in plain view. If you’re curious about the future of solar or just want to listen to a pragmatic thinker, you’ll love this episode. You can also read his thoughts on what solar can learn from nuclear in his Breakthrough Journal essay, here. Follow Varun on Twitter @vsiv.

Julio Friedmann is a carbon wrangler. Wrangling entails three things: keeping carbon emissions from the air and oceans, taking them out of the air and oceans, and creating a circular economy where the carbon is used and restored. This sounds like a futuristic system, but carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are actually quite mature. Ever drank beer or soda pop? You’re almost certainly drinking CO2 that came from a capture device in a power plant. We’ve known how to wrangle carbon for decades; what isn’t mature is the financing mechanisms and the policy. But as Julio argues, “we’re all on the clock and winning slowly is the same as losing,” so it’s time to double down on CCS efforts.

Julio is probably the world’s leading thinker on CCS technologies. He is distinguished associate at the Energy Futures Initiative and senior advisor at the Global CCS Institute. Previously, he served as principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy at the US DOE, chief energy technologist for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, senior research scientist at ExxonMobil, and faculty at the University of Maryland. He has a PhD from the University of Southern California, and is a Breakthrough Senior Fellow. @CarbonWrangler

Many ecofeminists contend that women have a "mystical" connectedness with the earth. But as Jennifer Bernstein argues, this idea conflates women with the biophysical environment, taking women's agency away from their own bodies. 

In this episode, Jennifer, lecturer at the University of Southern California, tells us about the ways in which environmental discourse is still highly gendered. We talk about the “white guy problem,” naturalizing ideals of the farm, and how cloth-diapering signals a particular kind of environmentalism. These issues are structural, but “proximate possible” solutions point a way forward: what can we do, given what we have right now?

For more on this topic, here is Jennifer’s essay in the Breakthrough Journal: “On Mother Earth and Earth Mothers.”

Tisha Schuller is an energy and environmental consultant; she used to be the president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. This week she joins us to talk about what it’s like to straddle that divide. In her career, Tisha has learned to move past the tribalism that often dominates environmental politics, and she shares some of her most transformative lessons with us. One of our favorites: “Our job is not to change minds,” she says. “Our job is to create rapport and be out in the world looking for common ground, forward progress, and solutions.” We also ask Tisha about working as a woman in a heavily male dominated field, and her thoughts on the future of gender equality in STEM.

Read her essay in the Breakthrough Journal here.

Jon Symons joins us to talk about the politics of inequality in climate change innovation. We discuss geoengineering (large-scale climate interventions, like thinning clouds or reflecting sun rays back into space) and the risks and benefits those projects present. We talk about who should be in charge of these initiatives, and why the developing world should be allowed to develop to the extent the rich world did. We end with our favorite question: where do you see progress in the world today? Jon’s answer includes snippets from his extensive research in the world of LGBTQ (in)equality.

Jon Symons is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Australia. He’s an expert on international environmental policies and norms. In the latest edition of the Breakthrough Journal, Jon asks whether the policy conversation over geoengineering is fundamentally unjust. You can read his thoughtful essay here.

Jenny Splitter joins Alex and Emma to talk about her personal experience visiting a feedlot. She was surprised to find that the conditions at Tiffany Cattle in Herington, Kansas were very different from what she was expecting. In our conversation, we talk about animal welfare, environmental efficiencies, and trends in meat consumption. Jenny also tells us about a values-driven exchange she had with her rabbi on organic farming. It left us thinking about how to have productive discussions with people you care about but disagree with.

Jenny Splitter is a science journalist whose work has focused on the intersection of food, technology, and consumer health. She’s also one of the “Science Moms,” a group of moms with a blog, a podcast, and a lot of expertise on the health and nutrition impacts of consumer products. She’s been published in Slate, The Washington Post, Salon, The Outline, and, very recently, the Breakthrough Journal.