Transcripts For CSPAN3 John Holdren Discusses Science And Technology Policy 20170425

President obamas top science adviser discusses the science and environmental initiatives of the Obama Administration and how they are changing in the Trump Administration. This is about an hour. Welcome, everyone. Thank you, thank you. Welcome to the American Association for the advancement of science, or aaas, as we call it, and welcome to our kickoff event for the historic march for science tomorrow. Im celeste rolfing, chief operating officer here. Its my distinct pleasure today to introduce our speaker, dr. John holdrun. John is a professor of environmental policy at the Kennedy School of government and professor of Environmental Science and policy in the department of earth and Planetary Sciences at harvard university. In 1995, john gave the acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the pug wash conferences on science and world affairs, an International Organization of scientists and public figures in which he served in various leadership positions. More recently for the last eight years, john was president obamas science adviser and director of the White House Office of science and Technology Policy, where he was my boss for a while. John is the longest serving president ial science adviser in the history of the position. His portfolio included all science and Technology Issues, including economic competitiveness, public health, energy and Climate Change, s. T. E. M. Education, the space program, homeland security, as well as coordination of research and Development Funding and advancing scientific integrity and openness in government. John is also a member of the National Academy of sciences, the National Academy of engineering, and is a former president of the aaas. Please join me in welcoming dr. John holdrun. Well, thank you very much. Great pleasure to be back in this room, where i gave a number of speeches in my official capacity. They were necessarily somewhat more restrained than todays remarks will be. And i want to stress, therefore, at the beginning that aaas bears no responsibility for the content of my remarks, nor do the other institutions named here. I am now a free person, able to speak my mind, as you will see. All right. I start with something that wouldnt have to be, shouldnt have to be explained, but one of the purposes of the science march tomorrow, i think, is to make sure that the wider public and to the extent possible our policy makers understand why science and Technology Matter, and im not going to read you this list, you can read it faster than i can speak it, but the essence of the matter is that science and Technology Matter to virtually every other issue on the national and global agenda. These challenges that we face in all these domains cannot be understood, never mind surmounted without very substantial inputs from science and technology, and, of course, it is also the case that science and technology are one of the characteristics that really makes us human, characterizes us as humans. The excitement of discovery, the excitement of invention, and the determination to improve the human condition by bringing insights from this domain to bear. The federal government has important roles in science and technology, and again, this is one of the messages of the science march. Science and technology will not flourish without the contributions of the federal government. Most basic research in natural and social sciences is done in universities and it gets done largely with funding provided by the federal government. Federal government provides about 55 of the support for basic research in this country. Most applied r d is applied in the private sector, about 70 of r d in this country is performed by private firms, but the federal government has important roles in that, particularly in shaping policies that either encourage or discourage private Sector Research and development. In addition, of course, theres the whole domain of the application of science and technology to the provision of public goods. And this is, again, a domain because they are public goods where the government has the fundamental primary responsibility. Nationally and homeland security, public health, environmental protection, those are public goods and its a public responsibility to see that they are provided and they cannot be adequately provided, again, without major contributions from science and technology. In addition, there is s. T. E. M. Education, science, technology, engineering, and mass education at the k through 12 level, of course, that is part of the overall education responsibility that in this country resides mainly with states and local schoolboards, but the fact is, federal programs and incentives around s. T. E. M. Education play an important supporting role, in addition, federally orchestrated corporate and philanthropic partnerships with states and School Districts to lift up s. T. E. M. Education are becoming ever more important. This was a major priority in the Obama Administration. President obama said early in his administration to his cabinet, i think one of the most single important things we can do to improve the future of our country is to lift our game in s. T. E. M. Education. And he gave instructions to the various people in his administration with leverage in that domain that he wanted it done. Policy for science and technology in the federal government, of course, is a shared responsibility. Its not just the white house. Its a shared responsibility of the executive branch with many departments, agencies, and offices that have related to science and technology and, of course, the congress the overarching congressional science and Technology Authority sits in the house science space and technology committee, the commerce committee, the relevant appropriations committees and subcommittees, including many im not going to take the time to mention, but, again, a number of them are listed here. Science and technology is dispersed very widely across the federal government, both in the legislative branch and in the executive branch, and you get an idea in this slide ranging from the department of defense, which includes darpa, the Defense Advanced Research project agency and the National Security agency, as well as the director of Defense Research and engineering, health and Human Services includes not just n. I. H. , but both the centers for Disease Control and prevention and the fda, also scienceheavy organizations and so on down the list. Many countries have ministries of science and technology that try to concentrate a lot of this stuff under one minister. We dont. We have this dispersed model where the bulk of the science and Technology Talent is spread across the executive branch, but a relatively small office of science and Technology Office in the white house tries to oversee it all and distill whats in it for the president and his senior advisers, and thats shown in this picture. The center of science and Technology Policy in the white house since the second eisenhower term where the office of science and technology, ost, was initiated since 1976. Its been osdp, the office of science and Technology Policy, ost had always been created by executive order and it was 1976 president nixon had abolished the predecessor organization ost and the corresponding Advisory Committee then called psac, fired his science adviser because he didnt like the advice he was getting and he liked even less that it had leaked and when president ford came into office, president ford understood that the institution would be more durable if it was created by statute rather than created by executive order which each president has to reissue and president ford got his colleagues in the congress to pass the statute that created ostp and that is why, by the way, the ostp director has to be Senate Confirmed because the office is created by statute and the statute specifies that the director is a senateconfirmed position and as many as four associate directors are Senate Confirmed. At least one of which is in the room. The associate director for environment in the clinton second term. The ostp works very closely with other entities in the white house as well as with the departments and agencies across the federal government that ive already mentioned, particularly closely with the entities in this great circle, semicircle on the slide. One of the big responsibilities is to work closely with the office of management and budget in developing the president s budget submitted to congress for the science and Technology Activities of the government and one of the things that is to be regretted about the fact that President Trump has not yet appointed a director of ostp or a science adviser is the budget that was released last month by the Trump White House understandably showed no sign whatsoever of any input from folks who understood science. There was nobody there in the top positions to work with the director of omb in developing that budget. Ostp basically has three responsibilities. The first is the one is science and technology for policy and that distinction was created by the late great harvey brooks, the godfather of science and technology. And science and technology for policy means the advice that scientists and technologists provide to government leaders about how science and Technology May be germane to the policy issues on their plates, whatever those may be. Whether it be Economic Policy or Health Policy or National Security policy, its desirable for the president or his or her top advisers to know what the relevant scientific and technological understandings are germane to that domain and thats what science and technology for policy are about. The other side, policy for science and technology includes the point i just made about working with the offices of management and budget and the departments and agencies and other White House Offices on the r d budgets and policies related to the r d budgets. Also policies on s. T. E. M. Education and tech workforce issues, interAgency Science and Technology Initiatives, scientific integrity and transparency. The use of science and technology to improve the operation of the government itself. All of those fall under the heading of policy for science and technology, and the third function is to serve as the president s emissaries in the science and Technology Space representing the president on science and Technology Issues with other white house officials and all of the executive Branch Agencies that have science and technology roles, with the congress, with the nongovernmental science and Technology Community both nationally and internationally and Foreign Government officials who have responsibilities for science and Technology Policy in their countries. And these interactions are twoway streets. Emissaries and ambassadors are supposed to not only represent and explain the policies of their boss, but theyre also supposed to collect insights from this wider constituency that may be valuable in the exercise of the president s responsibilities in science and technology. As part of those rather broad responsibilities, the ostp director and his or her team provide white House Oversight for the National Science foundation and for nasa. This is want widely understood, but those are two big science agencies that do not sit in a Cabinet Department and their connection to the president is through the ostp director. The ostp chairs and manages the interagency National Science and technology counsel, the nstc and oversees the initiatives and those include the Research Program and the National Nanotechnology initiative and many others that cut across lots of departments and agencies and usgcrp and 13 departments and agencies, total budget of 2. 7 billion a year. The National Nano Technology Initiative about 20 Department Agencies and offices budget again in the multiple billions. So that oversight responsibility is actually very significant. Ostp director and the team, cochair support the president s council of advisers on science and technology, pcast, about which ill say a bit more in the moment, but the prestory, pcast, as its predecessor psac, president s science adviser committee, are people that keep their day jobs and leaders in the Innovation Community around the country and keep their day job and conduct studies if are the president on complex issues in which access to this outside, Wider Community expertise is important. The only member who doesnt keep his or her day job outside government is the president s science adviser and ostp director who serves as cochair of pcast, and the ostp also has the responsibility of implementing the ministerial level bilateral science and Technology Cooperation agreements that the United States has with six countries the ones listed here, brazil, china, india, japan, the republic of korea and russia and supporting the state department in the implementation of the 40 other bilateral science and technology agreements, which we have with other countries. So what did obama do in the domain of science and technology and also particularly environment . He famously said in his first inaugural address, january 20, 2009. Notice the size of the crowd, please. He said he said we will restore science to its rightful place in my administration. What did that mean . What did he do . It entailed, first of all, he appointed the first ever u. S. Chief Technology Officer, the first chief informational officer, and the first Data Scientist in the history of the United States. He restored the assistant to the president title to the ostp director and that title provides direct access to the president. The people with that title are the direct reports. If you dont have that title youre not a direct report to the president and my unfortunate predecessor and the late John Mar Berger was not given that title to george w. Bush and he did not have direct access and he managed to do a very creditable job despite the lack of that access. He got many important things done without direct access to the president , but you cant do anything that a president ial science adviser should do if youre not whispering in the president s ear, and he also, president obama also bestowed that title on his new chief Technology Officer and the cto, as well, was a direct report to the president of the United States. He restored the full compliment of full ostp Senate Confirmed associate directors and the previous director had two, one for science and one for technology omitting associate directors for environment and for National Security and international affairs. With the president s support, we built up the ostp staff from the 45 at the end of the george w. Bush administration to the 135 at the end of the Obama Administration. Some people think thats only because we worked a third as hard, but in fact, its because the president gave us three times as much to do and we had to work half again as hard. This is really important. The president made clear that he wanted his science and Technology Officials of appropriate rank to be at the table for policy discussions where insights about science and technology might be germane. That meant that i would be in the meetings of the National Security council on all topics where science and technology could possibly be development. I would be in the meetings of the National Policy council and my deputies would be in the principal meetings and the next level down. Extremely important. If the scientists and engineers in the white house are not at the table for those discussions you cannot expect the people who are at the table who have backgrounds in law and Political Science and economics even to know how and why insights from the National Science and technology might be at hand. Theyll be in a constrained office space because they simply dont know if the scientists and technologists are not at the table. President obama understood that and it made an immense difference. He quickly launched and em powered a new pcast. The president s council of advisers on science and technology, his first pcast of about 20 member his three Nobel Laureates and scientists on it, three University President s and the Vice President s of the National Academy of sciences and the National Academy of engineering, both women, by the way. The chairman of google and a lot of other extremely impressive and engaged folks. This is a picture of president Obama Meeting with his pcast in the roosevelt room where the meetings were often held. Too many for the oval office, but the roosevelt room is right across the corridor. If you go through the door behind professor jim gates and dr. Susan graham, you get to the oval office, and folks in this audience will recognize a number of the other folks at the table at the far right of that picture is mario molina, Nobel Laureate in chemistry. An amazing group, and the president was enormously engaged in his interactions with pcast. He asked pcast to do 39 different studies in the course of the eight years of the Obama Administration on topics of great substance and more than the number of studies, he requested and embraced an extraordinary fraction of the recommendations in policy. He placed early priority in his administration on scientific integrity, on open data and Public Access on s. T. E. M. Education and inclusion where inclusion means inclusion for young women and girls and minorities, historically underrepresented in s. T. E. M. Fields and the president said you cant win with half the team on the bench. We are wasting a large fraction of the potential science and Technology Talent in our population by not providing inspiration, opportunities, mentoring and support for women and underrepresented minorities. The loss when you dont do that is really a triple whammy. Those people lose the opportunity for exciting and productive careers in science and technology. The country loses the contributions that they would make to advancing the ball on so many important issues where science and technology are germane and you lose the benefits of diversity in each and every science and technology operation. It is well established that the more diversity you have in the science and Technology Team of a company or a university or Government Ministry the more options are put on the table and the better the discussion you have and the smarter the choices that get made. He placed early emphasis as well, on clean energy and Climate Change and ill say more about that in a moment. Emphasis on advancing public medicine and public health, strengthening science and technology he instructed me in the first week to rebuild our science and Technology Cooperation with china, russia, brazil, india, japan, south korea. Technological innovation for economic recovery and growth, a huge theme and the president inherited the worst recession in modern times and understood from the outset the role that science and technology could play in helping us out of that recession that included, for example, Big Investments in advanced manufacturing, in Nano Technology and material science to create new highquality and sustainable jobs in industries that take advantage of the technological edge that have long characterized the United States. We rebalanced nasa to boost science and advance technology. Ive said in this room in 2010 when we were doing this that we were trying to put the science back in Rocket Science because nasa for years had been spending the bulk of its budget on big rockets, the Space Shuttle and the Space Shuttle successor using 1980s technology or 1970s technology. Almost no investment in advanced technology, and those big rockets were so expensive that the budgets were being drained out of space science, space telescopes and aeronautics and we fixed that and we fixed that after quite a long struggle with the congress. Another big focus and an early priority for the president was exploiting modern Information Technology and private Sector Innovation talent to improve the responsiveness and the effectiveness of government itself. That was reflected in the quantity and quality of the talent that the president brought in to government from the science and Technology Space, drawing much of it from the private sector, much of it from the University Sector and much of it from the Civil Society sector and the firstever president ial science fellows which the president brought in in large numbers and the president ial innovation fellows, pifs, some of whom are also sitting in this room who were very talented people brought in from the private sector and society and universities to be trouble shooters, problem solvers and innovators across all of the departments and agencies. In the first trench i believe we had Something Like 700 applications for 18 slots. Thats the way it went throughout. The quality of the people was enormous and their achievements in bringing this innovation talent from outside government into government were really extraordinary. The president used the bully pulpit and the white house venue to promote science and technology in a way that no predecessor in memory had done. He talked about science and technology in virtually every major address he made. He addressed the annual meetings of the National Academy of sciences twice, no other president had done that, jfk did it once and most didnt do it at all. He gave many major focuses and speeches focused exclusively on science and technology, energy Space Exploration and biomedicine and so on. Hosted six white house science fairs and there had never been one and we assembled the winners of science and engineering and robotics and rocketry and mathematics from around the country to come to the white house, bring their projects with them and set them up in the east wing and the president and the science leaders in the administration would chat up the students and the president typically spent as much time with the students as his schedulers had in fact it was first than that, the first science fair his schedulers had allocated 20 minutes for the president to interact with all these students and the president was on the floor playing with the robots and was chatting up the kids who had developed a uvactivated nanoenabled skin cancer therapy. In my day the science fairs were about baking soda volcanos and that was a long time ago, and the president is in there all alone now. Everybody else the head of the nih and his science adviser and the head of nasa have been there have all been evacuated into the east room along with the parents and the teachers and the mentors of these winning students and were all sitting in the east room waiting and waiting and waiting for the president to appear and make his remarks. 20 minutes was scheduled, 30 minutes goes by, 40, 50 minutes, an hour and ten minutes later the president appears. He couldnt tear himself away from the students. So the next year they scheduled an hour and the president was with the students for two hours. I mean, it was just impossible. He had more scientists, astronauts, innovators, nobel prize winners, intel finalists. He had more scientists, engineers and innovators in the white house than sports team and thats a real record. He also confided privately that he enjoyed meeting with the bright, young, science innovators more than he admitted with the sports teams, but he never said that publicly. You couldnt say that publicly as a president. Just some examples of some of these events and the first astronomy night for kids on the south lawn. 300 middle school kids, 16 telescopes each with an astronomer from nasa or the American Museum of Natural History to explain what was being looked at through the telescope. We were lucky we got a clear night. We had five astronauts there chatting up the kids. The president , the first lady and the first daughters spent two hours at this event mingling and looking through the telescopes and talking to the kids. We had charlie boldin, the nasa administrator was there. Sally ride, the First American woman in space was there, may jamison, the first africanamerican woman in space was there and we were really big on role models and buzz aldrin, the second person to set foot on the moon was there. John grunsfeld, the hubble repairman, the eighthour space walk to fix the hubbell there was and fantastic event and the kids will never be the same. I talked to a lot of those kids and i can tell you theyll never be the same in terms of their excitement and interest in science emerging from that event. The mathletes honoring outstanding teachers and mentors and the president was typically scheduled for what they call in the white house jargon one click. He comes in and says congratulations and one picture is taken and then he leaves what are regarded by the schedulers as more important things and the president never went to one of those events by shaking hands with every single winner without talking about where they came from and so on and driving his schedulers nuts, but again, showing an extraordinary degree of interest in support for science, technology, and teaching and mentoring around science and technology. He launched an unprecedented number of initiatives around science and technology and virtually all of them were based on using Public Private Academic Partnerships to make progress on national and Global Challenges. Those included, of course, as ive already mentioned science and technology for economic recovery and sustainable growth, s. T. E. M. Education, Information Technology, connectivity, and advanced computing, biomedicine, security, International Cooperation, energy and environment. This is just a partial list under those headings that i just gave you of the specific initiatives that president obama launched virtually every one of these seriously funded. Many of them with hundreds of millions of dollars. We were actually able to get support from the congress for many of these, innovation for the economy, congress was in favor of that. Biomedicine and health, congress was in favor of that. Its always been easier to get congressional support for the nih than for almost anything else because, of course, members of congress and their families are afflicted by the same diseases that the rest of us are, cancer, alzheimers, parkinsons and diabetes and so on and so they tend to favor funding nih searching for cures or better therapies for those diseases. As ill mention, we didnt have as much support in the energy and environment domain, but nonetheless, many important initiatives were successfully launched in that domain. So let me talk for a minute about the Energy Environment nexus. First of all, in the first term the president put 80 billion for clean and Efficient Energy into the recovery act. Some people say too bad the president didnt get interested in Climate Change until the second term and that is simply a wrong narrative. He was interested in Climate Change from the beginning and understood its importance as a national and Global Challenge and did what he could to move the needle on Climate Change. We put hundreds of millions of dollars into the budget for the advance Research Project agency, six new Energy Innovation hubs. The firstever fuel economy co2 tail pipe vehicles and fuel for trucks, and a huge raft of Energy Efficiency standards in the building and appliance sector and an Interagency Task force led by oscdp and noaa on Climate Change adaptation and it was the first time the government explicitly recognized that a Climate Change strategy has to include not only strategy and the ultimate magnitude of Climate Change and add adaptation, the steps you take to reduce damages in preventing the reinvigoration of the u. S. Global change Research Program. The reinvigoration of the u. S. Global change Research Program. That program of 13 agencies and 2. 7 billion on Global Change research and the launch of Climate Change on the United States and the Third National Climate Assessment was immensely influential in part because for the first time the model says had become adequate to give you useful, disaggregated information in eight different geographic sectors in the country and across economic sectors and what is Climate Change doing and what is it likely to do to fisheries, to forestry, to farming, to energy and so on. The first government calculation and use of carbon with agencies and offices instructed to take into account the social cost of carbon in their internal cost benefit analyses of policies and regulations and the First National oceans policy and the National Oceans council, which i cochaired with the head of the council on Environmental Quality to implement that policy. This is president obama signing the National Oceans policy executive order in july of 2010. Second term, unprecedented national and International Coordination on arctic issues, arctic science, conservation, energy, Indigenous Peoples issues. The president created the Arctic Executive Committee and made me the chairman of it to coordinate the activities related to the arctic across 25 Department Agencies and offices that have responsibilities related to the arctic. First time that had happened. Big focus on the implications on all of these sectors of the very rapid Climate Change thats going on in the arctic and the implementation of the National Ocean policy, the first two of the marine plans completed in draft. Banned offshore drilling in much of the u. S. Atlantic coastal waters and as much as the u. S. Arctic waters and greatly expand to u. S. Marine protected areas. International, our oceans conferences initiated by the department of state. Progress made in those global conferences on illegal fishing, marine pollution, Ocean Acidification and marine protected areas and of course, the Climate Action plan, launched and implemented starting in june 2013. In a speech given outdoors at Georgetown University on an incredibly hot day and i wanted to switch out this picture on another one that shows the president wiping the sweat off his brow as he gave that speech, rolling out his Climate Action plan with three major pillars, cutting Carbon Pollution in america, mitigation, preparing for the United States for the impacts of Climate Change, adaptation, and leading International Efforts to address Climate Change. And i will tell you if you look on the now archived Obama Administration websites at the reports of the president s council of advisers on science and technology, pcast, on what needed to be done on the energy and climate space you will find a virtual description of what the president then embodied into National Policy when he rolled out that National Climate action plan on june 2013. Its a great example of the president paying detailed attention to what his science and Technology Advisers were telling him. U. S. Emissions target for 2025 announced by president obama in beijing standing alongside president xi. For the first time the United States and china standing together and saying were the worlds two biggest economies and were the worlds two biggest emitters and we recognized global Climate Change as a challenge for all of human kind. We are going to lead jointly, together, the global fight against Climate Change. Many of us had been saying in meetings with the chinese and meetings with our own government for years that unless and until the United States and china stand up together and say those things that we recognize Climate Change as a huge challenge and we are both committed to working on it, unless and until that happens, we cannot expect the rest of the developed world to follow or the rest of the developing world to follow. You need the United States out there in front for the industrialized nations to follow and you need china in front and that happened in november 2014 and it is, in my view, the reason that the paris conference was so successful without that initiative by the United States and china, followed by india, brazil, mexico and indonesia climbing onboard because that joint agreement had been reached. All of that made the success that paris for nearly 200 countries committed to specific targets for reducing their Greenhouse Gas emissions and revisiting those targets over time to increase ambition and that would not have happened if obama and xi had not stood up and made that announcement. This is just some of the numbers on the u. S. Energy climate record under president obama. I always tell my students the numbers arent everything, but they usually are something and its helpful from time to time to take a look at the actual numbers. 2008 to 2016. These numbers just became available for 2016 in the Energy Information administrations Monthly Energy review released at the end of last month. You see here some very significant things. Electricity generation from coal down by nearly 40 . Electricity generation from natural gas, a much lower emitter of Carbon Dioxide per kilowatt hour up by 60 and wind electricity up by more than fourfold, solar electricity up by more than 40fold over the course of this administration and total Electricity Generation down 1 . That is a tribute to advances in increasing Energy Efficiency at the point of end use. Carbon dioxide from energy down 11 between 2008 and 2016 under president obama. Global co2 emissions may actually have peaked. We dont know at this point whether the downturn in 2015 is the fluctuation or the beginning of a trend. We will only find out over time, but there is reason to hope that it is the beginning of a trend and that global emissions will have peaked sooner than anyone dared to hope. But there is a very difficult road ahead if the change in surface air temperature is to be held to 2 degrees. The internationally agreed goal try to keep that delta degree, never mind the 1 1 2 degree you see in paris was ensconced for the first time as an aspirational goal. This will be very, very hard. What has already been done and already been agreed in the United States and around the world wont be nearly enough. This slide, a little busy, but well post this so people can examine this slide at their abundant pleasure or look up the paper in science, but this shows a variety of emissions pathways basically, the reference cases are the ones at the top where emissions keep going up through the 21st century, the century were now in. The paris continued ambition is the trajectory through the middle and the trajectory that we need to get a 50 chance of staying below 2 degrees c and the trajectory at the bottom are much, much more aggressive in terms of the reductions required than even just continuation of what was agreed in paris. We have to be focused on what well do for an encore after 2030 when the Paris Agreement expires. When you look at it in detail you see that it is very, very difficult to envision a situation where we can reduce emissions enough to hold the temperature increase below a degree and a half. So the question becomes now what will President Trump do in these domains that ive been talking about. Some obvious challenges under the new regime. Can we keep science in its rightful place and the meaning it had under president obama . The cultivation and use of s. T. E. M. Talent and government and evidencebased decision making, scientific integrity and transparency, Public Access to federal research, research for s. T. E. M. Education. We have to be able to ask, will we be able to do that under President Trump . Those are endangered by trumps stances, by trump appointees, and now if id updated this by a number of executive orders that President Trump has already issued, reversing those obama initiatives. Advancing u. S. And global science policy in the face of the u. S. And Trump Administration. They proposed to cut back nasas budget for earth observations. Threats to monitoring in the atmosphere and the oceans, to monitoring on land and ice to federal climate data, to federal Climate Assessments and tools for preparedness and resilience where again the Trump Administration has issued executive orders calling for cutbacks or elimination on some of these activities. Climate change education, clean energy research, development and demonstration. The trump budget, partial budget released last month which of course is a partial and preliminary budget and its a proposal, congress will do something different, but that trump budget indicating what the Trump Administrations priorities are has called for eliminating the advanced Research Project agencies and its called for a 2 billion cut in other energy r d focused on clean energy r d at the department of energy. Obviously, challenges to the authority of the epa to regulate emissions and not just Greenhouse Gas emissions, but to regulate Water Pollution and to regulate conventional air pollution, and, of course, the threat to u. S. Climate policy leadership globally. If the United States retreats globally from a leadership position on Climate Change, i can assure you china will be only too happy to wear that mantle of leadership exclusively. That is not something that we should love. Sustaining support for science and technology under the likely budget cuts. Its going to be difficult particularly to avoid deep cuts for nasa, particularly earth observations and s. T. E. M. Activities at nasa and the polar orbiting satellites and fusion and National Science foundation and basic research and social Science Research are not the favorite topics of the republicans in power in the relevant committees in the house. Epa and fda of course in research and support of regulation is threatened. Well see that in more detail in a minute, the usgcrp and Climate Science and sustainability science going to have a hard time. And it is always an early target for folks who dont believe that International Cooperation is in the u. S. Interest and widely regarded in the congress and new administration as a oneway street, where u. S. Competitive advantage is siphoned into the possession of our adversaries and competitors. Thats not the way it really works, but thats what all too many folks think. Of course, as i mentioned already nih funding is less contentious politically and members of Congress Like what nih does, but it still will be difficult to sustain, and you see that in the proposed 6 billion cut for nih in the trump budget. If the Congress Honors the overall trump budget priorities, candidate trump said he wanted to boost defense spending, and hes proposed to do that. Wants to put 1 trillion into social structure and reduce the deficit. If you do those things there is no alternative to drastic cuts in all Discretionary Spending other than defense and infrastructure and so it must simply be hoped that congress will not honor that combination of commitments by candidate trump. So what is he actually doing or proposing so far . The appointment of climate contrarians to keep posts. We know about that. Drastic cuts in budget and authority for epa. Other cuts and Climate Change monitoring and analysis zeroing out a number of nasa programs essential to understanding the continuing course of Climate Change. Cutting ocean grants and programs by 250 million. Cuts in energy r d i already mentioned. Roll back or, quote, the roll back or, quote, reexamination of obama climate executive orders and the Clean Power Plan and the coal plant and the methane strategy and all called into question and the social cost of carbon and the consideration of Climate Change in nipa. The preparedness eos have largely already been reversed by new executive orders by President Trump, both on International Domestic on Climate Change preparedness. Transparency and integrity in government and i just put a few headlines and covers here from recent stories. Keeping the list of white house visitors secret and this is not confined to science and technology and potential conflicts of interest among appointees and no transparency about how those conflicts are being dealt with. No release of tax returns. Candidate trump promised to drain the swamp in terms of the leadership of wall street and so on and newsweek cover says the swamp he promised to drain is growing again when you look at the appointments hes made. This one i really like and some people that wish i wouldnt show a slide like this at aaas and its not their fault, its my fault. I hope you can read this. President trump is saying hoover brought you a chicken in every pot. I bring you a fox in every chicken coop with a number of appointees and the dead chickens representing their departments. The Agency Science and technology budgets, what trump has proposed for fy18 and versus fy16 as most really good data on government r d spending do, this comes from work here at the aaas. One of the things you see 100 reduction being zeroed and one of the thing thats very important and not widely understood, goes down by 50 . The overall epa cut is 31 and the office of research and development in epa, the basis of sciencebased regulation cut in half if the Congress Accepts the trump recommendations. I hope they dont. What hes doing or proposing on environment and headlines and you can read these headlines faster than i can read them to you, but the picture is pretty clear and priority and the clean energy and claim at chief and the epa chief has called publicly for an exit from the paris climate accord. There is an ongoing debate we understand in the administration as to whether to stay in or out the epas head opinion is clear. There are evidently other opinions to the contrary including interestingly, secretary of state rex tillerson, the former ceo of exxon, believes we should stay in. Interesting news was released the other day, a number of Coal Companies have piped up saying we should stay in. Its better to have a seat at the table than not. Even from the standpoint of the Coal Companies. Thats an interesting indicator as sort of like the plastic thermometer and the turkey popping out to tell you its done. So heres another one. This, again, i hope you can read it all and it looks like a gas attack on babies. The other voice from the white house is saying i dont think so, its not on cable tv. What he has not done, he has not, as i noted yet appointed an ostp director assistant to the president for science and technology or made clear that he intends to do that. He has not appointed no administrator or nasa administrator, doe chief scientist, center for Disease Control and prevention director, nor has he appointed most of the undersecretaries and assistant secretaries across the departments, the Cabinet Departments, with science and technology responsibilities. And hes not given any other indication of awareness of the role of science and government so what should the Science Community do . What should scientists and engineers and supporters of science and technology do . Well, scientists should keep doing our science while looking, of course, for alternatives to federal government funding to states to firms to philanthropy and it will be difficult to replace big cuts in government funding from these sources. Most state budgets are in difficulty. Firms do a lot of research and development as it is but getting them to pick up the basic Research Burden is going to be impossible. Philanthropy is going to step up. There are clear signs from the major foundations, some of which have already formed consortia to increase money. Well seizure of that, im sure. But the civil expenditures are about 65 billion and the defense side, 70 billion. Big cuts are not going to be easy to replace. We should all keep talking about the results of science and their implications for society, how science benefits society. We should get better at explaining the science to lay people and not just what we know and why it matters but how we know it. We need to focus more on the process of science and science education, not just filling peoples heads with facts and getting them to understand how science works, how evidence accumulates, how peer review works, what the sources of credibility are in science and the imprudence of ignoring science. You know, uncertainty. A lot of people think that when scientists say, well, theres uncertainty, that means we dont know enough to do anything, that uncertainty is a prescription for paralysis. It shouldnt be. People should understand that uncertainties are twosided. Uncertainly doesnt mean when we know more, it will turn out to be better than we feared. Uncertainty can go in the other direction and when we know more it might turn out to be worse than we feared. And by the way, in the case of Climate Change, which us one of my passions and president obamas passions. The evidence is quite persuasive that the uncertainty is not symmetric. That the Downside Risks are enormous. Most of the things we dont know enough about are likely to make things worse when we know more about them rather than making things better. People need to understand about the rarity of revolutions. People hear about scientific revolutions and continental drift, they hear about einsteins theory of relativity and replaced newtons laws of motion and they dont understand that, number one, real revolutions in science are extremely rare when major mainstream understandings are completely overturned. I note with respect to continental drift that the proposition that the continents arent moving is perfectly adequate for getting you from here to london. For most other practical purposes other than understanding earthquakes, if you think einsteins laws of relativity overturn newtons laws of mechanics, you should note if you drive your car into a brick wall at 60 miles per hour, newtons laws are quite adequate to explain whats going to happen to you. It is not likely our understandings of evolution our understandings of Climate Change are going to be overturned by some new discovery. I think that scientists and engineers and supporters of science and technology and innovation should all, no matter what our occupations are primarily, should tithe 10 of our time to public and policymaker education and political and policy activism. I made the same recommendation at the conclusion of my aaas president ial address in 2007. I think it is more likely to happen and that is reflected in the enthusiasm for the science march to take place tomorrow. If the scientists and engineers and innovators are coming to understand they have to become activists and they have to speak up and their voices have to be heard. And that leads to my final slide youll be relieved to know. Some thoughts on the scientist march. Will marching scientists seem to be Just Another Interest Group . That has been suggested as a reason not to march. Scientists are an interest group. Theyre interested in increasing understanding of ourselves, our world and youre universe. Interested in the use of science to improve our economy, the health of the public, our environment and our security. They are interested in evidence and the application of evidence to Public Policy. Will marching scientists seem to be just worried about their jobs . The message is not, please save our jobs. It is really this. Given what science is and does, if governments funding for and use of science are slashed, all of society will be the loser. Contrary to some of the arguments made on the other side, most scientists are not in it for the money. If they were all that interested in their salaries, they would be in another line of work. You all know that. Finally, will marching scientists seem to be politicizing science . I think this is quite crazy as an argument. Science is already politicized. That mean that is the governments decisions about how to fund, assist, encourage and use science are made in this country in a political process. They are made by the executive branch and congress and interaction and informed by inputs by Interest Groups and the public. Scientists surely have no less right and no less responsibility than any other group to ensure that their voices are heard in this process. Thank you very much. So it looks like i pretty much used up the time but we can take a few questions. There are microphones on each aisle. If you want to ask a question, please come to a microphone. When you ask your question, please note that a question is not more than two sentences. The second of which ends in a question mark. Yes. Thank you very much for your talk. What advice would you give to federal scientists in the federal government who are not necessarily working on popular topics . Well, again, in a way, i already gave that advice. I think all scientists in and out of the government should continue to do their science. They should continue to talk about the results and the implications of the results. If they are told they cannot do that, then they should find employment outside of government. But you should do your best to stay in government and do the good work that you have been doing in the government because the government needs it. The Society Needs it. The world needs it. It is an interesting phenomenon that most new president ial administrations who believe they are going to change the whole government find thats a lot harder than they thought and it is a lot harder than they thought in part because the people who are in government, the people who are working in the cabinet agencies, Cabinet Departments and agencies, understand what needs to be done and they tend to keep doing it. It is important that folks in the government continue to do that now for as long as and as effectively as they can. This side. Thank you for that informative and inspiring talk. I and many other people in academia advise a lot of faculty that are working towards tenure and some of them are beginning to question whether they have made the right choice to go into the field they have gone into. Lots of people have lots of different advice for them. I am wondering what your advice would be to respond to those students. My advice, first of all, is that an education in science, engineering or math or the interception of those issues with Public Policy will never be wasted. That is, the skills, abilities, capacities that you develop in that sort of education can be applied in a wide variety of domains. If there is less employment Going Forward for a while in the federal government, there will be more elsewhere. Again, i expect to see philanthropy step up, Civil Society step up. I expect to see to some extent states step up. Governor jerry brown of california famously said the Trump Administration reduces support for earth satellites, california will put up a few. I think there are going to be opportunities, and i think people who are inspired by and impassioned about science and technology and innovation should keep at it and should tithe 10 of their time to working to ensure that science and Technology Continue to be respected and continue to be used in government for societys benefit. On this side. Thank you. Im the president of sigma phi. How do you counter the often repeated charge that scientists and science in general is fundamentally elitist and that the celebration of excellence is a celebration of elitism and privilege . First of all, you have to admit that it is elitist in the sense that it respects and honors achievement. The extent to which we should be embarrassed is related to the lack of opportunity that we provide in science and technology and innovation to the groups that historically have been underrepresented there. We should be working hard to remedy that aspect of the elitism. We should not apologize for a commitment to excellence and to performance. Because its excellence in performance that advances the aims of society that makes us a richer, healthier, more secure, more sustainable place that makes a better life for our children and our grandchildren. If we do not respect performance and excellence, all of society will be the loser. It looks like we have exhausted the audience, if not the topic. Thank you again very much for being here. I appreciate it. Let me simply say in closing i hope you all spend at least 10 of your time working these issues. [ applause ] coming up live on cspan, former state Department Officials testify on capitol hill about u. S. Aid to egypt. Earlier this month, President Trump met with the egyptian president at the white house and todays subcommittee on foreign operations will get under way at 2 15 eastern live here on cspan3. In case you missed it on cspan. Karen harper royal at Georgetown Universitys slave sail dedication. Naming these buildings for Isaac Hawkins and ann marie bekroft is the journey of healing from the jesuits of legacy of slavery. Pennsylvania congressman Matt Cartwright holding a town hall meeting. We have moved the needle on this discussion. It used to be no way no how on anything like the aca. But now, its lets make it work. The competitive enterprise institutes marlo lewis on science and Public Policy. To the extent its possible, Scientific Research should similarly be separated from government. Then you would not find Climate Science in particular being a faction ridden orthodoxy enforcing, you know, political movement. But rather, the quest for knowledge. Treasury secretary steve mnuchin. The object is are simplify personal taxes, create middle income tax cuts to spur the income and make our business taxes competitive. Former ambassador to afghanistan, ryan crocker. Clearly, we have got to work with the afghans to first stabilize the situation against a taliban onslaught. And then move ahead with a political process that is going to have to include pakistan. Attorney general Jeff Sessions on transnational crime organizations. If you are a gang member, we will find you. We will devastate your networks. We will starve your revenue sources, deplete your ranks and seize your profits. We will not concede a single block or a Street Corner to your vicious tactics. Cspan programs are available at cspan. Org and by searching the video library. Democratic congressman Matt Cartwright held a town hall meeting with constituents at Northampton Community college in North Bethlehem last week. This is about an hour 15 minutes. [ applause ]