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The Nobel laureate and intellectual giant in economic growth theory calls for increased investment in clean energy innovation.
 By Matthew Stepp. This post was originally published at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Blog.
Robert Solow, Nobel laureate and father of neoclassical economic growth theory, says that policymakers' current economic solutions are nothing more than "drivel" and that spurring innovation - especially energy innovation - must be a central goal of public policy moving forward.
As ITIF and the Breakthrough Institute recently reported in "Taking on the Three Deficits," policymakers of all stripes largely ignore the role innovation must play to break America out of its current economic rut and restore budget balance in Washington. The top-line message - only targeted public investments in programs that boost innovation, productivity, and next-generation industries combined with targeted cuts in consumptive spending will put the United States on a long-term path to sound fiscal footing.
Continue reading "Let's Shelve the Drivel: Boosting Energy Innovation to Reduce America's Three Deficits" »
The sense that I got from the lecture was that of a profoundly misapplied metaphor. Like a 19th century physicist describing the universe as a perfect clockwork mechanism, Dr. West describes the universe in terms of the dominant network technology.
 By Michael Burnam-Fink, Breakthrough Fellow
There's an old adage that if you can describe a problem
mathematically, it's 80% solved, and if you can't describe it mathematically,
you're never going to get it right. The second modern risks that the world faces
today, climate change, political paralysis, financial collapse, obesity, and
anomie all are closely tied together by industrialization and urbanization. At the same time, the creative and innovative
solutions that might help solve these problems also originate in cities and
corporations. In an increasingly urban
world, cities and corporations are the keys to the future, and Geoffrey
West believes that he has the mathematical tools to understand them.
Continue reading "Why Cities Keep Growing, Corporations Die, and Life Gets Faster." »
Projects that attempt to expand access to clean, affordable energy to the world's poor are best suited when they embrace local institutions and local knowledge.
By Alex Trembath, Breakthrough Generation Fellow. Cross-posted at Energetics.
 I just attended a presentation by Marlene Grundstrom, who works with the Stockholm Environment Institute on energy access and energy poverty.
Often left out of both discussions of climate change and global poverty, lack of access to clean, affordable energy turns out to be a key driver of both, and a considerable source of suffering and mortality in less-developed countries. To illustrate this, Ms. Grundstrom noted that indoor smoke inhalation kills more people every year (around 1.4 million people) than malaria does. Also, while the mortality incidence from AIDS and malaria are projected to decrease in coming years, deaths from indoor smoke inhalation are expected to rise.
One of her main points was that projects to expand energy access are more successful when they rely on local institutions and local knowledge. When a community has ownership over a project and can continue implementing it even after the donor or aid organization departs, the project has a higher chance of achieving its goals. Ms. Grundstrom noted a case where women in Ethiopia rejected clean cookstoves in favor of traditional coal-burning stoves, because food cooked with clean cookstoves tasted differently. Here we see local knowledge as the dominant force in dealing with energy poverty, as opposed to thermodynamic or epidemiological concerns.
Continue reading "Local Knowledge and Energy Poverty" »
The German feed-in-tariff policy creates too much market demand at high prices to drive down the cost of PV technology
By Jeff Kessler, Breakthrough Fellow
 While the German Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) has been a great piece of policy for deploying renewable energy, it has not been effective at driving down the costs of photovoltaic (PV) systems. In fact, based on learning rate analysis, it may actually be detracting from PV innovation and cost reductions.
Continue reading "Germany's feed-in-tariff has failed at reducing Photovoltaic costs" »
In the long run, our future energy system is solar. We should begin planting the seeds of that transition today.
 By Michael Burnam-Fink, Breakthrough Fellow. Today, I was catching up on my news, reading about the
Clock of the Long Now, when I heard a little story about roof beams at Oxford's
New College (really, you
should just watch Stewart Brand's clip).
Five hundred years ago, at the same time as the college was built, the
founders planted oak trees, because they knew that long after they were all
dead, the beams would become beetley and eventually need replacing. Their foresight floored me; to plan that far
ahead, to ensure a legacy for their successors deep in the future. And it got me thinking about our energy
system, which underpins every other part of the economy, and about the seeds we
should be planting now.
Continue reading "Planting the Seeds" »
My fear is that decades or centuries from now, the weary, broken survivors of whatever ended our technological civilization will look back and say, "But why didn't they change?" How then, can we as individuals and as a collective, come to grips with both kinds of second modern risks?
By Michael Burnam-Fink, Breakthrough Fellow
The Breakthrough Dialog began with a very interesting idea, that of second modern risk, which was not fully fleshed out. At the heart of second modernity is the idea that humanity has become responsible for its own fate. Thanks to the power of science and technology, we have banished the ancient gods and forces of nature. Food, shelter, and physical security are all assured in the first world, and so humanity has directed its efforts to fulfilling post-material needs for status, power, and a moral society. In many ways, this is a zero-sum game; unlike material goods, status and power cannot be increased, only redistributed. Different cultures have profoundly different concepts of morality. For all our efforts to improve the second modern condition, it seems that the best we can do is run to stay in place. Post-material failure is one kind of second modern risk.
But while people worry about their job security, and their child's chances of getting into Harvard, and what their neighbors are up too, second modernity has its own apocalyptic horsemen. Flood, famine, fire and plague are primitive problems. In their place, we have substituted the business cycle, anthropogenic climate change, and total war. Second modern risks are more worrying, not just because they are bigger, mankind finally has the power to wipe itself out, but because they are human in origin, and therefore, in some sense, are our responsibility. My fear is that decades or centuries from now, the weary, broken survivors of whatever ended our technological civilization will look back and say, "But why didn't they change?" How then, can we as individuals and as a collective, come to grips with both kinds of second modern risks?
Continue reading "It's Dangerous Being Modern" »
The fisheries problem calls out for fresh solutions. First annual Breakthrough Dialogue contributions may help get us there.
by Nicholas Murray, Breakthrough Fellow
At the first annual Breakthrough Dialogue a conservative political commentator and policy scholar suggested that environmentalists are too focused on climate change. Instead, he argued, we would be better served by addressing more immediate environmental threats, namely fishery collapse. While we shouldn't see this as an argument against the need for climate change mitigation and adaptation, this dialogue member is right about the fish problem. Fish stocks are in rapid decline to the point where we're already seeing shortages.
The complexity of this issue calls for creative solutions. The right approach means throwing out classical environmentalist preservationism and embracing the reality that we can and must influence the natural systems around us in order to maintain our quality of life. This influence, however, will only be successful if we abandon classic top-down strategies in favor of bottom-up approaches that are stakeholder designed and managed.
Continue reading "Bottom Up and Unrestrained: Updating Our Approach to Sustainable Fisheries Management" »
Markets and governments will each function best when they embrace the other, complementing their own strengths and mitigating their own limitations.
By Alex Trembath, Breakthrough Fellow
"As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can...he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."
- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
"...it is the main merit of real competition that through it use is made of knowledge divided between many persons which, if it were to be used in a centrally directed economy, would all have to enter the single plan."
- Friedrich Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order
It has become the central preoccupation of modern American politics to enlist ourselves in partisan warfare, one side defending government with neo-Keyensian support against its free-market foes embracing neoclassical doctrinaires. This makes development of American prosperity and innovation difficult. As Pisano and Shih aptly stated in their 2009 survey of American economic competitiveness for Harvard Business Review,
All too often, the debate about what role Washington should play in supporting innovation degenerates into a battle between two extremes: the laissez-faire camp and advocates of centralized industrial policy. Listening to them, you'd think there could be no middle ground [1].
But both political and economic history show that, if growth and increased prosperity are the goal, neither markets nor governments can function without the other. Indeed, governments and markets are partners, not enemies. A middle ground does exist; and it is precisely the partnership between government and private market participants that has historically driven economic growth and innovation.
Continue reading "The Invisible Handshake" »
Liberal scientism is a rhetoric of failure. By using the positive power of technology to improve the world, liberals can find their mojo.
By Michael Burnam-Fink, Breakthrough Fellow.
Liberalism as it exists today isn't so much an ideology as a flag of convenience. The progressive position on policies promoting the welfare state and cultural attitudes towards abortion, gun control, and gay marriage unites a solid minority coalition, but one without big ideas except for a vague notion of 'play nice' and 'be yourself.' As Michael Lind of the New America Foundation put it, the Democratic Party is about checking off the wish-lists of its constituent interests groups. "What is the liberal position on the environment? It's what the Sierra Club wants." Rather discuss values, liberals have retreated to policy literalism, appealing to a slew of "scientific" and "rational" policies to achieve narrow, tactical ends: price carbon dioxide, extend healthcare to the uninsured, stop the war, decrease classroom sizes. Liberals have ceded values and emotion to conservatives, with disastrous electoral and policy results at every level of government. Liberal scientism is a rhetoric of failure.
Continue reading "Technological Mojo" »
the greatest failing of the human race is its failure to understand the exponential function
By Jeff Kessler, Breakthrough Fellow
This year's Breakthrough Dialogue played host to a number of interesting discussions concerning technology and the environment. My thoughts from these discussions can best be summed up by Dr. Albert Bartlet: "the greatest failing of the human race is its failure to understand the exponential function." And so it seems that while people continue to remain optimistic about technological innovation, little emphasis is ever placed on the magnitude of the problem that technology needs to innovate around - especially when it comes to exponentials. Simply put, let's talk about growth, and what exactly technology would need to accomplish.
Continue reading "Growth and the Environment" »
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