Ted Nordhaus
@TedNordhaus
Founder and Executive Director, The Breakthrough Institute. Co-author An Ecomodernist Manifesto
⚙️ NEW MICROSITE JUST DROPPED ⚙️ Today @TheBTI launched navigatingnepa.com, featuring our analysis and open-source database of over 2000 District-level judicial NEPA opinions.
Guy who got rich trying to scare Americans straight about climate change for the last 35 years admits what a colossal failure he has been.
Nonsense. Most Americans can’t tell you what causes climate change. Only 11% see anything about it on social media. 66% say they “rarely or never” hear about it. And we should be scared.
This is, in fact, the problem. 35 years of effort to scare the American public straight have failed and will continue to fail.
What if the problem is not that Americans are uninformed about climate alarmism but actually know quite well what it means and have simply said "No, thanks"?
When we released our original analysis, Eric's criticism was that it only looked at appellate cases without looking at the full universe of litigation in district courts. Now that we've done that and found that most of the findings we identified at the appellate level also hold…
Breakthrough Institute @TheBTI has issued another report on NEPA litigation. Like BTI’s prior report in 2024, this report has some important flaws, flaws that undermine the policy recommendations in the report. More details in the thread 1/n
"According to a recent high-profile Nature paper, climate change will make us go hungry. At least that’s what media reports on the study would have you believe." via @TheBTI realclearscience.com/2025/07/24/wil…
Palisades continues to make progress towards a resumption of operation. The @NRCgov has efficiently approved several actions, enabling the plant to transfer ownership and load fuel.
New report by me and @BTI: The Procedural Hangover: How NEPA Litigation Obstructs Critical Projects NEPA litigation reshapes the process. Agencies pad the record, reports get longer, timelines slip, and projects are not built. Hence, the procedural hangover.
Great explainer thread from my colleague @3lizabethMcC, who did much of the heavy analytical work on @TheBTI's new report on litigation of federal permitting cases. That's right, the second of two major reports from @TheBTI in the same week! (1/4)
Our report shows how litigation risk has become a barrier to abundance—and offers ideas for fixing it. 🔗 thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/… Thanks to @nicholas_bagley @ProfSchleich @CSElmendorf @EnergyLawProf @ArnabDatta321 @ceqalaw for expert review.
Here's another matching set. <--- media take underlying research --> c.c.: @PatrickTBrown31 @TedNordhaus
Alongside the report, we built a public site sharing the full NEPA litigation dataset—because sharing is caring. Explore the cases, rulings, and remedies here:
NEPA is widely understood as an impediment to timely, orderly, and cost-effective infrastructure investment and deployment. Explore how NEPA litigation is impacting clean energy, forest management, and much more with our new interactive website: navigatingnepa.com
The decentralized wisdom of markets > a handful of academics with strong incentives to make the most catastrophic claims possible
The dynamic where media reporting on research is misleading and the research itself seems deliberately obscurantist is precisely the situation where prediction markets can be useful in clarifying our collective best understanding of where we actually stand and where we are…
The Groups represent neither the average American nor a voice for sound environmental policymaking. One group was involved in more than 1 in 4 NEPA cases!
The dynamic where media reporting on research is misleading and the research itself seems deliberately obscurantist is precisely the situation where prediction markets can be useful in clarifying our collective best understanding of where we actually stand and where we are…
Left: What the media said about a big new Nature study on yields. Right: What the authors' analysis actually predicts. Climate impacts researchers are, once again, seemingly deliberately misleading readers and journalists to create a false impression. @lrntex
Adaptation Insight from a corn seed industry insider on the 'stack.....
In which me and @atrembath LARP as @PatrickTBrown31 to explain that the big new Nature study doesn't say what the authors or media say it does. What does it actually say?🧵 breakthroughjournal.org/p/will-climate…
“This sounds not great until you remember that background yield trends are very great.” Also great is this entire analysis by @lrntex and @atrembath.
In which me and @atrembath LARP as @PatrickTBrown31 to explain that the big new Nature study doesn't say what the authors or media say it does. What does it actually say?🧵 breakthroughjournal.org/p/will-climate…
Most important - and the casual reader would be forgiven for missing this - the projected yield declines are relative to a future no-AGW counterfactual, NOT the yields of today. Here is what those declines look like against the background yield growth trend:
ICYMI: Sentient's @jennysplitter will be moderating a panel presented by @TheBTI, featuring @MikeGrunwald and @p_lehner, as they discuss their visions for the future of food. Sign up below ⬇️
On July 30, join award-winning journalist and author @MikeGrunwald and @Earthjustice's @p_lehner in conversation about the future of food in this virtual webinar moderated by Sentient's Editor-in-Chief @jennysplitter and presented by @TheBTI. RSVP: buff.ly/C324NNS
This is a lesson in misleading science communication, amplified by bad media reporting: “A Recent High-Profile Nature Paper Doesn’t Say What Its Authors Say it Does … It is harder to understand, however, why [the authors] portrayed the losses as … substack.com/home/post/p-16…
There are natural monopolies where there is a good, although far from ironclad, case for public ownership or regulated utilities. Grocery stores are not among them.
.@ZephyrTeachout insists that America’s food system “is rigged in favor of big retailers and suppliers in several ways” that drive up prices for consumers. @judgeglock explains why her argument is incoherent:
Should a US national critical minerals reserve program act more like the National Defense Stockpile or more like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? A major new report by my team does a deep dive into this question, looking at 15 minerals relevant to energy. My thoughts🧵: