Nuclear Realism Meets Pragmatic Philanthropy: A Case for Earthrise Accord–Arnold Ventures Partnership

Deepening the Abundance Agenda: Earthrise Accord's Nuclear Realism and the Path Forward with Arnold Ventures

Introduction: The Purpose of this Report

This report lays out the rationale and potential for a strategic partnership between Earthrise Accord (EA) and Arnold Ventures (AV) to significantly advance the abundance agenda through nuclear realism. The abundance agenda—championed by influential voices such as Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, and Jonathan Chait—represents a transformative shift away from the politics of austerity and restriction toward proactive investment in infrastructure, innovation, and climate solutions at scale.

However, while this vision has begun reshaping political conversations—particularly within the Democratic Party—its full potential remains constrained by deeply entrenched anti-nuclear misinformation and institutional resistance. Earthrise Accord seeks to address these constraints directly, grounding its nuclear realism in robust scientific evidence, notably the authoritative 2018 report from MIT Energy Initiative, The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World.

This landmark study concluded unequivocally that without substantial inclusion of nuclear energy, the global effort to achieve deep decarbonization would become "dramatically" more costly, difficult, and uncertain. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar, while critically important, face inherent limitations such as intermittency, land-use intensity, and reliance on extensive transmission infrastructure.

The MIT analysis underscores that nuclear power uniquely offers scalable, reliable, and zero-carbon electricity essential for meeting growing energy demands and aggressive climate targets. Importantly, the MIT report also confirms that nuclear energy is remarkably safe, cost-effective, and that nuclear waste can be responsibly managed using proven, existing technologies—facts clearly demonstrated by France’s successful nuclear program initiated after the 1973 oil embargo. France’s experience shows conclusively that nuclear energy, deployed at scale, is not only viable but economically sound and environmentally safe, resulting in a deeply decarbonized grid that remains among the cleanest in the world. Thus, Earthrise Accord positions nuclear power not merely as one option among many, but as an indispensable cornerstone for effective climate action and equitable abundance. EA’s nuclear realism is, fundamentally, a clean-energy realism—it rejects the ideological narrowness of "renewables-only" orthodoxy and embraces a pragmatic approach that eagerly accepts contributions from all clean energy sources, recognizing that the climate crisis demands every available tool at humanity’s disposal.

By combining EA’s moral clarity and scientific rigor with AV’s pragmatic, bipartisan approach to energy policy and permitting reform, this report outlines how the partnership can overcome long-standing ideological biases and regulatory obstacles that have undermined nuclear development. Together, EA and AV can forge a new climate policy paradigm—one that fully integrates nuclear power as a central component of abundant, affordable, and truly sustainable energy.

The following sections detail the political stakes, institutional challenges, and strategic opportunities ahead, emphasizing the urgency and practicality of this nuclear-forward approach as essential to achieving deep decarbonization, energy justice, and long-term climate resilience.

The Promise and the Provocation: Abundance, Party Realignment, and the Fight for Nuclear Clarity

The promise of abundance has become one of the most compelling and destabilizing narratives in American climate and economic policy. Coined by Derek Thompson and sharpened by policy thinkers like Jonathan Chait, the “abundance agenda” rejects the fatalism of austerity politics, the unnecessary caution of procedural paralysis, and the reflexive anti-growth sentiment that has dominated much of the American left since the 1970s.

Instead, it asserts that democratic governance must prove itself anew—not by managing scarcity, but by building more: more housing, more infrastructure, more innovation, and critically, more clean energy. Yet for this abundant vision to materialize in a way that meaningfully addresses climate change rather than exacerbates it, policymakers must decisively embrace nuclear power—the only clean energy source capable of providing firm, baseline electricity at the necessary scale.

The abundance agenda is an ethos of scale, not scolding—one that insists liberalism can deliver tangible, material improvements to a public increasingly skeptical that government can do anything at all. But this agenda will only succeed if it moves past undue hesitancy and fully embraces nuclear energy as indispensable for sustainable abundance and genuine climate progress.

Nowhere is this ethos more urgently needed than in energy policy, where the stakes of inaction are existential and the solutions—particularly nuclear energy—require intellectual and political courage. Decarbonization demands new infrastructure at a pace and scale not seen since the New Deal or WWII. Yet even as public opinion inches toward pragmatism, the institutions of liberal politics, especially the Democratic Party, are still catching up.

Recent electoral outcomes have complicated this picture. The June 2025 upset win by Zoran Mamdani in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary was widely interpreted as a major victory for the progressive wing of the party. A DSA-aligned candidate and longtime critic of corporate power and fossil fuels, Mamdani’s campaign energized the city’s activist left, which saw in his win a mandate to revive bold progressive governance in the nation’s largest city. For many, this seemed a corrective to the centrist, abundance-flavored messaging of the Adams and Hochul era. The left, it seemed, was not ready to be eclipsed by the YIMBYs, the deregulators, or the pro-build liberals.

But the deeper political realignment underway tells a more complicated story.

If anything, the emergence of abundance politics is posing a more significant long-term challenge to the progressive coalition than Mamdani’s victory suggests. That challenge will only intensify if organizations like Earthrise Accord have any say in it. Earthrise Accord—a progressive, pro-nuclear, pro-abundance nonprofit—insists that climate justice, energy equity, and environmental responsibility require not less technological ambition, but more. And unlike many legacy environmental groups, Earthrise Accord refuses to apologize for nuclear energy. In fact, it considers nuclear energy the ethical core of any climate agenda that claims to be serious about saving lives, decarbonizing at scale, and resisting petrostate authoritarianism.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party, still shaped by its New Left inheritance, is deeply uncomfortable with nuclear power. It clings to outdated fears and folk memories of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, even as it increasingly tolerates fossil fuels by default—through indecision, permitting inertia, or outright closures of clean nuclear plants. In this sense, the progressives are falling into the very contradiction the abundance movement was designed to expose: an insistence on radical goals coupled with a refusal to build the systems that make those goals possible.

Earthrise Accord offers a different model: a progressive politics of climate realism, grounded in hard science, moral clarity, and internationalist ambition. We see nuclear energy not as a regrettable compromise, but as the central pillar of any abundance agenda that takes equity and ecological survival seriously. France decarbonized its grid in a generation using nuclear. The United States could have done the same, but didn’t—due in large part to progressive environmentalists who mistook fear for virtue, and delay for caution.

To be clear, the abundance agenda is not anti-progressive. On the contrary, it carries the DNA of progressive reformers who once dreamed big: FDR’s dam-building technocrats, JFK’s space-age optimism, LBJ’s belief in planning for equity. But the current progressive establishment, from NRDC to DSA climate platforms, too often substitutes critique for construction, opposition for operation. It tells us that we must decarbonize urgently, yet celebrates the shutdown of nuclear plants that supply carbon-free electricity to millions. It warns of petrostate autocracy, yet disables the very tools that would free us from fossil dependence.

The abundance agenda is, at heart, a call to transcend this impasse—not by abandoning progressive goals, but by rejecting the anti-modern hangover of 20th-century environmentalism. If Zoran Mamdani’s win represents a resurgence of grassroots progressive organizing, the abundance realignment represents something more tectonic: a shift in the philosophical center of gravity for the Democratic Party. And Earthrise Accord is committed to ensuring that nuclear power is not only part of that shift—but the keystone that makes the entire arch of abundance structurally sound.

If the progressive movement is to remain relevant in the era of climate emergency, it must make peace with atoms. Not grudgingly, not apologetically, but affirmatively—because climate justice requires power, and clean abundance requires fission.

In a sense, Earthrise Accord is asking all those who take climate change seriously to take seriously what the most authoritative scientists are telling us about how to effectively decarbonize our world (MIT report) and to stop listening to ideologically stuck non-scientists like Bill McKibben and other "renewables only" propopents (the "only" here is directed directly at nuclear, so just another way of saying "anti-nuclear" like their legacy forebearers of the 20th C who took money from the fossil fuel companies to help them undermine the only firm clean energy source competing, nuclear, and so helped them get the world addicted to fossil fuels ... and, yes, ended up in millions of unnecessary deaths since pollution from fossil fuel emissions kills 8 million per year, 1 out of every 5 deaths in the world. This is the science talking here, not just some hunch like McKibben's hunch that we can survive climate change just relying on the "big nuclear reactor in the sky" as he dismissively and condescendedly wrote to me after praising my father for his Earthrise image.

In essence, Earthrise Accord calls upon all who sincerely care about addressing climate change to heed the clear guidance provided by the most authoritative scientific voices—such as the comprehensive analysis presented in the MIT Energy Initiative’s landmark 2018 report—on how we can effectively achieve global decarbonization. It is past time to stop giving undue credibility to ideologically entrenched non-scientists like Bill McKibben and other vocal proponents of a “renewables-only” approach—a stance that, practically speaking, equates to an anti-nuclear bias. This bias echoes the legacy environmental groups of the 20th century, many of whom actively took funding from fossil fuel interests to wage misinformation campaigns against nuclear power, inadvertently (and tragically) cementing global fossil fuel dependency. The catastrophic result has been millions of preventable deaths: pollution from fossil fuel emissions currently kills approximately eight million people each year—roughly one in five global deaths. This stark reality is supported by rigorous science, not merely conjecture or intuition. It stands in sharp contrast to McKibben’s dismissive suggestion—sent to me personally—that humanity could adequately address climate change by relying exclusively on what he calls the “big nuclear reactor in the sky,” even while paradoxically praising my father’s Earthrise image, an icon symbolizing the fragile interconnectedness and vulnerability of our planet. Earthrise Accord insists that genuine climate realism demands embracing every available clean energy solution—especially nuclear energy, the only firm, scalable, and scientifically endorsed path to abundant, sustainable decarbonization.

From Hesitation to Clarity—Why Abundance Demands Nuclear Realism

The promise of abundance has become one of the most compelling narratives in American climate and economic policy. Coined by Derek Thompson and elaborated by thinkers like Jonathan Chait, the “abundance agenda” calls for replacing the politics of austerity, restriction, and procedural paralysis with a forward-looking commitment to build—more housing, more infrastructure, more clean energy. It is an ethos rooted in democratic legitimacy: a belief that liberal governance can deliver tangible, large-scale improvements in the public good. And nowhere is this ethos more urgently needed than in energy policy, where the decarbonization imperative demands massive new infrastructure and technological boldness.

Yet while the abundance movement marks a pivotal break with the anti-growth reflexes of legacy environmentalism, it still struggles to fully escape their gravitational pull—especially on the question of nuclear power. Support for nuclear energy is now nominally part of the abundance toolkit. It is mentioned approvingly in wonk circles and policy proposals; it is acknowledged, in principle, as necessary for a post-carbon future. But in practice, the agenda continues to repeat old mistakes: apologizing for nuclear’s costs, hedging on its role, and failing to confront the ideological misinformation that has marginalized it for decades. It is a politics of half-measures, insufficient for the scale of the crisis.

This is where Earthrise Accord (EA) enters the picture. EA’s mission—grounded in “nuclear realism” and climate justice—aligns with the abundance agenda’s core goals while correcting its critical blind spots. The alliance with Arnold Ventures (AV), a leader in pragmatic, evidence-based policy reform, offers a historic opportunity: to fully integrate nuclear energy into a new climate and energy paradigm rooted not in compromise, but in clarity.

To understand the stakes, consider the recent evolution of abundance discourse. Derek Thompson’s influential essays praise nuclear energy for its climate potential but temper this praise with anecdotes about cost overruns, such as the $35 billion spent on Georgia’s Vogtle plant—equivalent, he quips, to “eight to ten Burj Khalifas.” This framing, however well-intentioned, risks reinforcing the very narratives that anti-nuclear legacy groups and fossil fuel interests have spent fifty years propagating. When nuclear energy’s costs are exaggerated without context—while the far greater costs of fossil-fuel pollution, war, instability, and premature death are obscured—we get policy stasis wrapped in the language of progress.

The 2018 MIT Energy Initiative report was clear: if nuclear is excluded from the clean energy mix, the costs of decarbonization “escalate dramatically.” France proved this point in practice. After the 1973 oil shock, France responded not with hesitation or hedging, but with a national commitment to build nuclear power at scale. In less than two decades, France constructed a fleet of standardized reactors that now provide over 70% of its electricity. The result was not financial ruin but stable, low-cost, low-carbon energy that shielded the French economy from oil shocks, reduced air pollution, and slashed emissions. France’s per-capita electricity sector emissions remain a fraction of the U.S. level to this day.

In contrast, the United States—swayed by regulatory paralysis, anti-nuclear activism, and fossil-fuel-backed misinformation—abandoned its own ambitious reactor plans. As detailed in the “Climate Misinformation Dominates Climate Misinformation Report,” this retreat had catastrophic consequences: billions of tons of avoidable emissions and millions of premature deaths from fossil pollution. Groups like Greenpeace and NRDC, often unknowingly aligned with fossil fuel interests, pushed to close nuclear plants like Indian Point and Diablo Canyon—decisions that directly increased emissions and undermined climate progress.

Despite this history, the abundance movement has not fully reckoned with the anti-nuclear disinformation campaign that shaped—and continues to distort—climate discourse. It remains hesitant to name names, challenge legacy environmentalists, or draw clear moral lines. Earthrise Accord does not share this hesitation. We see the war on nuclear energy for what it was: a coordinated misinformation effort that prolonged the fossil age, endangered public health, and squandered our best chance at rapid decarbonization. We reject the tepid stance that sees nuclear as a “last resort” or “false solution.” We insist that any abundance worthy of the name must include abundant truth—and that means correcting the record.

The EA–AV partnership therefore represents not just a policy alignment but a strategic and moral convergence. AV’s commitment to pragmatic reform—especially on permitting and infrastructure—can be deepened by EA’s moral clarity and nuclear-forward advocacy. Together, we can move from cautious accommodation to unapologetic embrace: not just allowing nuclear, but championing it as the backbone of a prosperous, low-carbon future.

It is time to stop apologizing for a clean energy source that has already saved millions of lives and prevented billions of tons of carbon pollution. It is time to stop pretending that nuclear energy needs to prove itself, when it has already done so—most powerfully in France, and most tragically in what America failed to do. The abundance agenda, if it is to be real, must follow the evidence all the way—and that road leads through nuclear realism.

Let this partnership mark a turning point. Together, Earthrise Accord and Arnold Ventures can redefine what abundance means in the 21st century. Not just more housing and faster permitting, but more courage, more truth, and more energy—delivered cleanly, safely, and abundantly by the atom.

The UN’s Dangerous Alliance with Anti-Nuclear Misinformation

The abundance agenda faces resistance not only within U.S. progressive politics but also from the highest levels of international climate governance. This resistance stems from an entrenched alliance between influential institutions and legacy environmental groups whose decades-long misinformation campaigns against nuclear power have profoundly distorted climate policy worldwide.

A glaring example is the United Nations-sanctioned International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) report, which was intended to identify and expose misinformation undermining climate solutions. Remarkably, despite cataloging how fossil fuel interests have systematically spread disinformation about climate change and renewables, the IPIE entirely omitted the anti-nuclear misinformation propagated by prominent NGOs such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and NRDC. By doing so, it ignored arguably the most damaging and consequential climate misinformation campaign ever waged.

These groups, while ostensibly environmental champions, have consistently disseminated false narratives about nuclear safety, waste management, and costs—misleading claims debunked repeatedly by independent scientific authorities like the MIT Energy Initiative. Nuclear power, contrary to activist portrayals, has a stellar safety record, minimal waste footprint, and demonstrably lower lifecycle emissions than even wind energy. Yet, the misinformation fostered by these organizations has contributed directly to the shutdown of vital nuclear facilities such as Indian Point in New York, resulting in increased reliance on fossil fuels, spikes in emissions, and thousands of preventable deaths from pollution.

More disturbingly, substantial evidence indicates that fossil fuel interests have historically funded or exploited anti-nuclear advocacy to protect their market dominance. Groups such as Greenpeace inadvertently became the foot soldiers for Big Oil, stifling nuclear development that threatened fossil fuel profits. This symbiotic relationship between legacy environmentalists and fossil fuel interests constitutes not merely misguided activism but a profound moral failing with catastrophic consequences—millions of lives lost prematurely, and billions of tons of unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions released.

This institutional capture extends even to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has adopted biased terminology like "low-carbon" instead of accurately labeling nuclear as "zero-carbon" or acknowledging its emissions advantage over intermittent renewables like wind. This linguistic distortion reveals how deeply anti-nuclear ideology has infiltrated institutions expected to be scientific bastions, perpetuating myths that impede genuine climate progress.

The silence on this issue from climate elites at the UN and other international platforms amounts to complicity. While aggressively combating misinformation from fossil-fuel companies and anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, these institutions overlook similarly harmful lies spread by environmentalist groups, effectively treating anti-nuclear propaganda as acceptable—even virtuous—disinformation. This hypocrisy is intellectually and morally indefensible.

Earthrise Accord insists on accountability: misinformation about nuclear power is not a victimless act but a grievous obstruction of urgently needed climate solutions. The climate justice community must denounce anti-nuclear propaganda with the same vigor as fossil fuel misinformation, recognizing its equivalently deadly impact. Unless this reckoning occurs, the abundance agenda risks remaining trapped by ideological contradictions, its promise undermined by the very institutions meant to support it.

For abundance politics to truly reshape progressive governance, it must break decisively from the legacy of fear-based, fossil-fueled anti-nuclear activism. The future of a livable planet depends on calling misinformation by its rightful name—regardless of its source.