Political Science
In his latest Against the Grain commentary, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer looks at the politics of science in the Bush administration.
Who'd have thought that the first American president of the 21st century would be a science-phobic Luddite?
But that's precisely the portrait of President Bush that has emerged from his positioning on the issues of stem cell research and global warming, where science has clashed with pander politics early in his administration. Luckily, the paint on the portrait hasn't completely dried yet.
Let's start with the microscope rather than the telescope. The White House is publicly divided about whether to sanction using federal money for medical research that uses special cells extracted from just-formed human embryos called stem cells. These primordial stem cells can transform into most of the specialized tissues and cells in the human body, such as nerves, muscles and blood cells. Scientists believe these cells hold the key to finding cures or treatments for various conditions, including Parkinson's disease, diabetes, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, burns, spinal cord damage and Alzheimer's.
A powerful White House faction, reportedly led by Karl Rove, is unimpressed by the science. Rove isn't a scientist or even a scientific adviser. He's the president's political Svengali. As such, he's impressed with the objections some – but not nearly all – abortion opponents have about stem cell research.
Stem cells for research are not taken from aborted fetuses, but from microscopic frozen, fertilized eggs that contain something like eight cells total. Opponents believe this is baby killing and should be banned no matter the potential benefits to, say, children with juvenile diabetes or broken spines.
On the other hand, Tommy Thompson, the Catholic, anti-abortion secretary of Health and Human Services, is impressed with the science and thinks the government should fund stem cell research, under tight restrictions.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, long the anti-abortion leader in the Senate, is also impressed with the science and says stem research is "consistent with bedrock pro-life, pro-family values" and that the ethical issues involved are "fundamentally different" than with abortion.
But statements made by Candidate Bush and President Bush have been consistently hostile to stem cell research. And recently, Scientist Bush has been touting the research potential of stem cells taken from adult tissue. Currently, researchers do not find these cells useful; they may be some day, but for now, raising the prospect of research on adult cells is nothing more than weaseling out of the problem by invoking junk science.
The Clinton administration was no better (surprise, surprise). It didn't start the process of getting federal funding for this research until August of its final year. With so much uncertainty, vital research isn't beig done, and won't be any time soon.
On global warming, the clash between science and sense may be even more gargantuan, if that's possible.
Bush II, rather unlike Bush I, has long been suspicious of the near universal fundamental view of scientists that global warming is real, that the human causes of global warming are real and that the dangers of global warming are real.
The most recent and comprehensive scientific treatment of global warming was the "Climate Change 2001: Third Assessment Report" by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But since the IPCC is sponsored by the United Nations (and included left-wing, anti-energy radicals like the Saudis), the Bushies had automatic reason for suspicion.
So in May, the president asked this country's most prestigious scientific assemblage, the National Academy of Sciences, to report to him on global warming. Its conclusion was straightforward: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising… Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century."
With this "sky is warming" treatise taped to cue cards, Mr. Bush went to Europe, where the allies were fuming over his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. He spewed platitudinous make-goods such as a promise that he's "committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change." And he promised to come up with a policy.
But the cold, hard fact is that the administration does have a policy, as Bill McKibben has written in The New York Review of Books. It's called "National Energy Policy: Report of the National Energy Policy Development Group" led by Dick Cheney, né Halliburton. It's a policy inspired not by the long-term problem of climate change but by the dwarf-term political problem of high-ish gasoline prices and blackouts in California. The report's bottom line is clear: To meet a predicted increase in energy needs of an estimated 32 percent by 2020, the U.S. needs to dramatically increase its production of coal, gas and oil.
That, of course, would preclude any reduction of the manmade causes of global warming. If that's the administration's energy policy, any talk of leadership on global warming is lip service, at best. They are not going to trade cheap energy now for a safer environment someday.
And again, the Bush team has plenty in common with the Clinton team, which, despite Al Gore's efforts to be Mr. Green, did little of consequence on global warming. But at least they didn't try to pretend it wasn’t happening. That's something, I suppose.
This president, confident th scientists can build a missile shield to keep us safe from bad guys, doesn't trust them when it comes to stem cells and greenhouse gas.
Science-schmience.
©MMI Viacom Internet Services Inc., All Rights Reserved