Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger is president and co-founder of Breakthrough Institute. He is co-author with Ted Nordhaus of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Time magazine called Break Through "prescient" for its prediction that pollution regulations could not transform the global energy economy, and Wired magazine said the book "could be the most important thing to happen to environmentalism since Silent Spring." The book received the 2007 Green Book Award and a starred review from Publishers' Weekly, which called the book "Convincing, resonant, and hopeful." In 2004, Shellenberger and Nordhaus generated a national debate in the pages of The New York Times and around the country when they published "The Death of Environmentalism," which argued against apocalyptic climate rhetoric and the regulation-centered policy approach in favor of an aspirational discourse and an investment and innovation-focused agenda. For their work, Shellenberger and Nordhaus were named Time magazine's Heroes of the Environment 2008. Breakthrough Institute's strategy to "Make Clean Energy Cheap" was the recent subject of a profile on NPR's Morning Edition. In 2002, Michael co-founded the Apollo Alliance. Michael has written for the The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The American Prospect, Salon, Harvard Law and Policy Review, Democracy, Glamour magazine and other publications.