Barack Obama elected President; Speculation reigns over his appointments, speed of implementation of new science policies

Imagine, if you will, pouring your morning coffee and sitting down to breakfast with your favorite newspaper (the old-fashioned paper kind) several months from now. The lead story begins something like this:

“President Barack Obama’s science adviser Harold Varmus said at a White House cabinet meeting Wednesday that he fully supports the decision by Environmental Protection Agency director Robert F. Kennedy Jr to tighten restrictions on emissions from coal-fired power plants as part of a cap-and-trade program intended as a first step in cutting US carbon emissions 80% by 2050.”

Varmus? Kennedy? A science adviser at a White House cabinet meeting? An environmental lawyer heading the EPA? Goodness.

Although the media is engaged in mass speculation about who will be appointed to what and what those appointments will mean for science, a sentence like the one above could appear in the Washington Post or the New York Times by next spring and seem almost normal. Reams of copy have been written since November 4 about what an Obama administration will mean for science.

While the speculation is just that, the underlying tone in almost all of the articles is that Obama will be very good for science. Here are the main topics being discussed:

Climate Change - Everyone who follows the issue noted Obama’s reference to a “planet in peril” during his acceptance speech, and that is being taken as a clear signal that Obama will indeed push early and hard for a goal of reducing US greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and then cutting them by 80% by 2050. This would be done, under proposals Obama discussed prior to the election, through a cap-and-trade program.

Stem Cells - Obama has promised to lift the federal restrictions imposed by the Bush administration on stem cell research, and the assumption in many of the articles is that it will happen soon. “On stem cells, Obama can simply reverse President Bush’s August 2001 executive order limiting research to pre-existing cell lines,” wrote Chris Mooney on the Science Progress website. In related pieces, the Detroit Free Press ran an article noting that a proposal to loosen restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research in Michigan passed, while this blog focused on the funding difficulties Michigan researchers will face .

While the voters in Michigan were lifting a ban, voters in Colorado were preventing one by rejecting an attempt to amend the state constitution to give fertilized eggs the same rights as human beings. The “Personhood Amendment” was rejected by a 3-to-1 margin .

Energy - The future direction of the Department of Energy as Obama moves toward an alternative-energy emphasis was discussed in detail by Steve Mufson on the Newsweek/Washington Post website at. Mufson speculates on who might be the next energy secretary, with names ranging from Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell to Senator Arlen Specter in the running.

There was also an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal online about the conflict between energy policies and the various green initiatives.

There were several more comprehensive pieces that discussed all of the above topics, as well as the end of the Bush administration’s war on science, the future role of science advice, the role of technology in the new administration, science funding, science and overpopulation, and NASA.

A sampling of the better articles includes

• Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log at MSNBC
• A piece by Constance Holden and others titled “Big Night for Obama Also Brings Changes for Science”
• New York Times writer Andrew Revkin’s piece on Dot Earth titled “The President and the Planet, on a Budget”

Jim Dawson