The Breakthrough: Senior Fellows 2015

An iconoclastic forefather of ecomodernism. A leading scholar on energy and the environment in Africa. A researcher who finds human development is “decoupling” from nature. Breakthrough is proud to announce Stewart Brand, John Asafu-Adjaye, and Iddo Wernick as Senior Fellows.

The Breakthrough: Senior Fellows 2015

We are also proud to announce the arrival of Peter Teague to the senior leadership of Breakthrough Institute. Teague co-founded Breakthrough Institute with the two of us in 2003 while at Nathan Cummings Foundation. Teague will develop and oversee Breakthrough’s new work on universal energy access.

The Breakthrough: Peter Teague

This is the seventh year Breakthrough has conferred Senior Fellows. Brand, Asafu-Adjaye, and Wernick join a group of 35 Senior Fellows awarded in previous years. Breakthrough Senior Fellows advise Breakthrough Institute staff, collaborate on scholarly and popular papers and reports, and attend Breakthrough Institute’s annual conference, the Breakthrough Dialogue. 

Energy access has become a high priority issue for Breakthrough and many others concerned with development and the environment. Evangelical Christians have motivated Republicans to support energy access efforts in Congress, while liberal leaders from Bono to President Obama point to electrification as a core human need. Last year, the House of Representatives passed the Electrify Africa Act, legislation to increase energy access in Africa. 

Forty years ago, and long before the current debate over a human-defined Anthropocene, Brand declared in his landmark publication Whole Earth Catalog that, “We are as gods, and might as well get good at it.” This philosophy underlies much of Brand’s varied career, from his early ideas about computers and Internet, to his praise for nuclear, to his recent work on de-extinction.  

Ghanian economist Asafu-Adjaye recently authored an important study on the economic impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa. Concerted efforts to help Africa adapt and modernize — through agricultural intensification, irrigation, and other modern infrastructure — will be needed to keep the continent resilient and competitive.  

Decoupling resource use from the environment is a process Wernick has long studied. Due to improved yields, slowing population growth, changing consumer preferences, and growing affluence, the world has reached “peak farmland,” he recently argued.  With the land required to feed humanity at its apex, there are greater chances for land once used for agriculture to become wilderness.

Last December, Teague travelled through Rwanda and Congo visiting power plants and conducting interviews to better understand the relationship between energy access, development and conservation. “I’m excited to be joining Breakthrough in this new role, to focus on an issue I feel passionately about,” said Teague, who worked for two years in Sierra Leone as a Peace Corps volunteer. “At a young age, I saw up-close how fundamental access to modern energy is if we want people to be able to live healthy, dignified lives.”

You can read more about these remarkable individuals here: Stewart Brand, John Asafu-Adjaye, Iddo Wernick and Peter Teague.

— Michael and Ted

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Michael Shellenberger, President, Breakthrough Institute

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