NGO's call for greater US involvement

On Tuesday the over a dozen environmental organizations sent an open letter to the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling out the Obama administration for not living up to what he promised prior to taking office. Despite the economic free-fall since moving into the White House, President Obama has been criticized openly since the Copenhagen talks for not being aggressive enough in pushing for an international solution as well as not using the bully pulpit of the presidency to offer more leadership even if US commitments are restricted by what Congress will tolerate.

An excerpt from the letter states:

In November, 2008, President-elect Obama gave an inspiring video address to the Bi-Partisan Governors Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles, California. He said that "Few challenges facing America – and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change,” and pledged that “once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change."

Three years later, America risks being viewed not as a global leader on climate change, but as a major obstacle to progress. U.S. positions on two major issues – the mandate for future negotiations and climate finance – threaten to impede in Durban the global cooperation so desperately needed to address the threat of climate change.

Fake Plastic Trees

I teach a Freshman and Sophomore level class at the University of Missouri on climate change. The first two thirds of the course are devoted to the science that grounds what we know about climatic conditions, patterns and trends. The last third of the course involves looking at what is involved in making the transition from science to public policy. How does science actually inform what we do. It is a fascinating class to teach because the content we move through during the course of a semester covers both science and policy.

Science vs. Policy

Sitting in on a European Union presentation entitled "Roadmap 2050" I can't help but think that one of the fundamental problems separating public policy and many traditional views of the scientific enterprise is that empirical science primarily looks backwards as a key to understanding what might happen in the future while policy primarily looks forward with the present and the past used as a baseline.

Roadmap 2050 describes a strategy for reducing carbon emissions generated by the EU power grid by 80% by the middle of the century. It is a roadmap that describes different ways in which we can create the future we want. Of course, what we want and how we should best get there are highly debatable points but they provide us with targets to shoot for.

A great deal of science, especially science that most highly values empirical data and observations, has little to say about what should occur in the future. It is reflective, having the capacity to explain what has happened and what the driving factors behind those events are. Another factor is that what should occur is a normative question of value that cannot be easily answered from a perspective that prizes objectivity and dispassionate assessment of facts.

Lessons learned from empirical science can of course be applied to forecasts of the future and policy statements but often there seems to be a distinct split between reflective science and prospective science.