The Democratic Party and their satellite media-sphere have an abysmal record on climate with all time fossil fuel champion Joe Biden – the Mike Tyson of carbon emissions – and Kamala “I love to frack in my spare time” Harris defining the so-called green segment of the US environmental continuum. The Donald “Drill Baby Drill” Trump other end of that continuum gave us a choice between burning as much industrial extinction as we possibly can, and firing up (in theory) a tiny (inconsequential) bit less.

The Democratic strategy, ever since the chain saw wielding Trump has cut the nuts off of all the morally degraded bits of flotsam that still call themselves Republicans, has been to welcome the old Bush neocons into the blue party. One well known faction of renegade Bush whackers is The Bulwark, and for some strange reason, the algorithms fill up my Email and YouTube feed with Bulwark content. Thus I got a full on dose of “bipartisan/centrist” climate happiness this morning – an interview with the Bulwark’s own John Avlon tossing one softball question after another to self proclaimed environmentalist, Rachel Pritzker.

Pritzker is affiliated with The Breakthrough Institute, noted for the promotion of nuclear energy. Pritzker, a Hyatt Hotel scion, calls herself a philanthropist and an ecomodernist, and if she added flat earther or palm reader (she did not, unfortunately) to her bio, those would be the least concerning parts of her self embraced identity. The Breakthrough Institute just received a half billion dollar grant from The Gates Foundation, and if the climate schemes of billionaire cheerleaders for nuclear power don’t keep you awake at night, send me your sleep secrets – I need to catch up on rest.

The Breakthrough Institute and their brainchild, ecomodernism, has, for the past decade inspired a cult devoted to the worship of technology. In our unravelling times of fascist movements, environmental catastrophes and runaway inequity, it may be hard to imagine an organization bursting with optimistic faith in future innovations and free markets, but that is the giddy vibration that people like Rachel Pritzker convey. The Breakthrough Institute denies accepting money from the nuclear power industry, but it does not take professional scrutiny to blow up that claim once we realize that Bill Gates is both a massive investor in Nuclear energy and one of The Breakthrough Institute’s most lavish donors.

The Avlon interview with Pritzker offered no surprises – this is climate narrative so denuded of introspection, and serious analysis as to be fully accessible background noise to be ingested simultaneously with Steph Curry highlights on YouTube. The Pritzker interview lasted for about 12 minutes while you can watch Curry highlights non-stop for hours. Even in our dark age, some elements of proportional satisfaction still prevail.

The Pritzker interview began with a long rant by Avlon complaining that Trump has aligned himself with Putin. He then segued to Pritzker by calling for a “centrist vision for global energy policy” that left me wondering what – other than a centrist energy policy – has been busily destroying the planet since the end of WW II.

Pritzker, for her part, pointedly broke with Avlon on the bile directed at Trump. She rather offered an optimistic view of Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, noting that his confirmation hearings revealed bipartisan support for (you guessed it) nuclear energy. Pritzker launched into Breakthrough Institute talking points about avoiding shrinking “the human footprint” and focusing on the need for “abundance.” In addition to nuclear development, she talked about bipartisan support for “unleashing” the ability to mine rare earth metals by removing the “sludge” (I took sludge to be a euphemism for the treaties giving indigenous people rights to their lands – upon which over 50% of the rare earth metals needed for “renewables” are located globally.

Pritzker confusingly attempted to both distance herself from nuclear energy’s association with atomic weapons, while lauding nuclear energy as a cornerstone of “national security.” This train left the station about seven years ago when Michael Shellenberger, a co-founder of The Breakthrough Institute, “learned to love the bomb.”

I am quoting from the above referenced piece by Jim Green:

“The new sales pitch openly links nuclear power to weapons and argues that weapons programs will be jeopardised unless greater subsidies are provided for the civil nuclear industry. The US Nuclear Energy Institute, for example, tried in mid-2017 to convince politicians in Washington that if the only reactor construction projects in the US ‒ in South Carolina and Georgia ‒ weren’t completed, it would stunt development of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.”

The simple realities that make climate mitigation nearly impossible is this: climate narratives reflect the influence of money – organizations like The Bulwark and The Breakthrough Institute have fabulously wealthy supporters. It did not trouble me much when The Bulwark or The Lincoln Project made cutesy videos skewering Trump, but I now realize this came at a steep price. Do we really want the Bulwark to now morph into an organization spewing ecomodernist climate disinformation?

Neither Jason Hickel or Kohei Saito (the most prominent voices for Degrowth) have access to the kind of cash dispensed by “Saving Democracy Together,” which donates to The Bulwark, nor to The Gates Foundation which supports The Breakthrough Institute. The public is being continuously bombarded with low quality, deceptive and manipulative climate propaganda bankrolled by wealthy interests. The progressive media, what little there is of it, has to battle a much more powerful foe.

Phil Wilson writes the blog Nobody’s Voice.

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