By Ted Nordhaus and Alex Trembath
The end of the Biden Administration marked the end of an era. The long effort to center climate change as the organizing principle for Democratic energy and economic policy collapsed under the weight of inflation, polarization, and proceduralism. In its place has risen a nascent bipartisan consensus focused on affordability, regulatory reform, nuclear energy, and all-of-the-above energy abundance.
Each of these ascendent priorities comports with themes that the Breakthrough Institute has long expounded. We were among the first civil society advocates in the US and globally to make the case for cheap, abundant energy, to recognize nuclear power as an essential climate solution, and to understand that deregulation held the key to many important environmental outcomes.
As a result, Breakthrough is far better positioned for the current moment and the second Trump administration than most environmental and clean energy advocates. This has enabled us to effectively defend public investment in energy innovation and clean baseload power in the Big Beautiful Bill, to shape nuclear policy at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and to inform both parties’ policy priorities amid ongoing congressional permitting reform negotiations. More broadly, as the lead organizers of this fall’s Abundance 2025 conference, we’ve played an outsized role in birthing a new cross-partisan energy politics for the post-climate era.
Over twenty years after the publication of the “The Death of Environmentalism,” what was once prophecy has largely come to pass. The legacy environmental movement is a shell of its former self, still capable of obstruction but intellectually exhausted and politically impotent. The folly of apocalyptic messages and the politics of limits is now undeniable. Love or hate the Trump administration, it is serious about unleashing America’s promethean possibilities in a way that no US administration of recent memory compares. Democrats too increasingly recognize this imperative. America will build again or it will die.
Now, though, is not the time for a victory lap. This decade offers a generational opportunity to remake 50 years of environmental law and policy, to relaunch a globally competitive American nuclear industry, and to build a new ecomodernist politics of abundance for the 21st century. The signs all augur well and we remain grateful for the enduring support of our donors and allies. But there is much work still to do.
Thanks for the thoughtful essay; "legacy environmental movement is a shell of its former self, still capable of obstruction but intellectually exhausted and politically impotent." This is sad and did not have to be this way. When the environmental movement started back then, it had a purpose with science behind it. Over time political ambition and greed for power overtook it and the world lost an opportunity, for the environment is still important, deniers or alarmists not withstanding.