Education, science boost threatened in stimulus package

Even as federal science agencies and the wider science community tried to absorb the possibility of up to $20 billion in new science funding as part of the stimulus package, battles in the Senate to pare down the $900 billion proposal threatened funding for NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The science funding differences between the stimulus package passed recently by the House and the scaled-back version on the verge of passage in the Senate were detailed nicely in a piece by Jeffrey Mervis in Science magazine .

Whatever the final numbers, science policy experts are trying to define “shovel-ready” science projects while at the same time get money into the base of science programs so that it will have a long-term effect. “I do think that money of the magnitude being proposed can be spent on useful things,” George W. Bush’s science adviser, John Marburger, told Mervis. “But it’s short-term money. The great danger is creating facilities that no one can afford to operate.” Harold Varmus, a former director of NIH and one of President Barack Obama’s chief advisers on science, said that, “Not everybody understands that grants create an obligation. So the base is crucial. Obama talked repeatedly during the campaign about gradual and consistent funding for science. Maybe part of this [stimulus] should go into the base.”

While the focus this week was on the very partisan fight over the stimulus package, there were some concrete steps by the administration that reversed several of the Bush policies. Obama announced new energy guidelines for household appliances , guidelines that he said would save the equivalent of the energy produced by all coal-fired plants for two years. He called the new standards “a significant down payment” on a clean energy future.

In his remarks, Obama also said he was serious about building a “smarter electricity grid” and leading a “revolution in energy efficiency” by “modernizing more than 75 percent of federal buildings and improving the efficiency of more than 2 million American homes.”

Focusing on that theme, RenewableEnergyWorld.com noted that “renewable energy, climate change and green jobs are hot topics around the beltway.” The post highlighted discussions around the newly proposed “Markey-Platts Bill,” which would boost clean-energy development. The bill would boost renewable energy generation 135 percent above current policies between now and 2025. The Union of Concerned Scientists has a longer posting on the proposed legislation .

The RenewableEnergyWorld piece also details Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) press conference announcing six broad principles that need to be addressed in upcoming climate change legislation. While climate change legislation is on the agenda, she noted that the timeline is iffy. The goal is to get a cap-and-trade bill passed before the Copenhagen round of climate change negotiations in December.

While Boxer was unsure of how fast climate change legislation could make it through Congress, new energy secretary Steven Chu used a Los Angeles Times interview to warn that if climate change continues unabated, California’s agriculture could vanish by the end of the century. “I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” he told the paper. “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.” An article about the interview appeared in the Christian Science Monitor .

The WorldWatch Institute also published a piece about the push for climate change legislation under the headline, “Growing Optimism for U.S. Climate Change Bill.” “After years of being the last place on Earth to act on climate change, this is our moment,” the posting quoted Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as saying. “The science is screaming at us. There is no time to waste. We must learn from the lessons of Kyoto, and we must make Copenhagen a success.”

The US Department of the Interior moved to reverse another Bush policy by cancelling energy leases that would have opened lands near national parks in Utah to oil and natural gas drilling. “I have directed [the] Bureau of Land Management not to accept the bids,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters. Environmental groups hailed the decision, while oil and gas industry representatives expressed concern.

The New York Times ran a piece on Obama’s approach to dealing with Iran , saying the administration “may take a tough line with Tehran in coming months even as it signals a willingness to move toward direct talks with Iranian officials.” This came after Iran announced early in the week that it launched its first satellite into orbit.

Associated Press writer Barry Schweid notes the apparent restart of the START talks with Russia. “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has notified Congress and her staff that she intends to get started quickly on talks with the Russians, who have voiced interest in recent weeks in settling on a new treaty calling for cutbacks in [the nuclear] arsenals on both sides.” The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires at the end of the year. It limited the US and Russia to 6,000 nuclear warheads each.

Jim Dawson