The Breakthrough Institute News Update 2/16 China and Germany Race to Fusion; Electrify Africa Passes; Breakthrough Paper Published

China and Germany go Head-to-Head on Fusion If the sci/tech press is any indication, research labs in Germany and China appear to be racing towards a successful demonstration of fusion energy. We won't get into the physics because we don't understand them, but we were fascinated to see the consistent "Germany vs. China" meme across different outlets last week. The clichéd knock against nuclear fusion is "fusion is the energy of the future and it always will be." As fusion optimists, we like to remind people that Thomas Edison made over 1,000 unsuccessful attempts to create a workable incandescent lightbulb, and that was after over 80 years of other people failing. Fusion has been the dream of scientists and engineers for something like 60 years. If it takes a comparable amount of time to successfully create a tiny artificial sun as it took to generate small amounts of light with electricity, we'll count that as a win for human ingenuity, cynical doubters notwithstanding.   Speaking of nuclear in China, two commercial gas-cooled reactors are scheduled to go online in the Shandong province next year. Tech Review's Richard Martin has the details on these advanced "meltdown-proof" plants.  President Obama signs Africa electricity plan into law President Obama signed the Electrify Africa Act last week! Another brick in the policy edifice in support of Our High-Energy Planet.   Nuclear Costs Reconsidered Breakthrough Institute paper published in Energy Policy If you haven't read it yet, Breakthrough's Jessica Lovering, Arthur Yip, and Ted Nordhaus published a ground-breaking paper, Historical Construction Costs of Global Nuclear Power Reactors, in the journal Energy Policy last week. The paper is currently the number one most downloaded article on Energy Policy and was featured by Reason. Breakthrough's Ted Nordhaus weighed in with a discussion on how this paper disproves the "intrinsic negative learning" characterization of nuclear plants.  A New Kind of Environmentalist: the 'ecomodernist.' Over at EcoScienceWire, Adam Hanburry-Brown has a great note on a "new kind of environmentalist: the 'ecomodernist.'" We'll take it: Whether or not you agree with their approach, ecomodernists appear to me to be people who envision a future where technology has enabled us to do more with less so that we can leave parts of Earth for non-human life. An ecomodernist is a person with guiding principles about what they want the world to look like, a pragmatic approach, and a quest for solutions.   Plea for culinary modernism: Why we should love processed food We can't keep up with all the good writing Rachel Laudan is doing on modern food and farming systems. Check out her new piece at Genetic Literacy Project on "Why we should love processed food."   Why the Paris Climate Agreement Can't Save The Planet Jen Schwartz has a good piece at Popular Science on why the Paris climate agreement is good progress, but not enough. In her piece, she cites 'An Ecomodernist Manifesto' coauthor Michael Shellenberger on how sharply Paris' ostensible targets contrast with countries' technological capabilities.   Obama’s energy budget doubles down on innovation In what may be more of a symbolic statement than a realistic proposal, President Obama's final budget contains big ambitions for increasing US federal investment in energy innovation. Mark Muro digs in at Brookings Metro, and correctly observes how important this is for those of us who've been advocating this type of action for years.   Monsanto, Biased Scientists, or the Media: Which One Scares You Most? David Ropeik has a helpful, if frustrating, piece at Big Think on how bias, scientism, and conflicts-of-interest are treated differently by the media depending on the subject of inquiry (in this case, organic vs. "conventional" food). Ropeik's take on media integrity and scrutiny is always well worth a read.   Purpose over urgency... and things are getting better We'll close this with a couple seeming non-sequiturs that nonetheless caused us to ponder ecomodern-ly. The first is on urgency. On the subject of tech companies and software teams, Kimber Lockhart argues at Medium that a "sense of urgency" is inferior and possibly dangerous compared to a "sense of purpose." We couldn't help but draw parallels to environmental campaigns, where lots of social science shows that doomsaying and catastrophism don't motivate people, but rather alienates and depresses them. Lockhart hits the nail on the head when she explains that undue urgency leads to 1) shortcuts and sloppiness, 2) limited space for creative solutions, 3) micromanagement, 4) a loss of potency, 5) a takeover of the communications stream. Can we get a hollaback, climate pragmatists? Finally, we greatly enjoyed this Vox article titled "Today's teens are better than you, and we can prove it." As Sarah Kliff, Soo Oh, and Sarah Frostenson describe in the piece, today's teenagers are less prone than previous generations to fighting, drug use, unwanted pregnancy, binge drinking, carrying weapons, and watching television. So yet again, despite Donald Trump and Naomi Klein arguing to the contrary, the world is getting better. We are reminded, thankfully, of other prognosticators of progress like 'Manifesto' coauthor Ruth DeFries, Max Roser, Mike Grunwald, Charles Kenny, Louise Fresco, Hans Rosling, Bill and Melinda Gates, and many others. Most importantly, we are reminded of this great Louis C.K. line on generational progress: "If you feel stupid around young people, things are going good."