Last week marked one of the most eventful Earth Days in recent history. Against the backdrop of a hallmark two-day virtual conference, the Biden administration spotlighted a variety of climate initiatives and commitments for the next four years. This included President Joe Biden’s commitment to a 50% reduction in the United States’ carbon emissions by 2030, and an executive order to “seek to” end international investments in “carbon-intensive” fossil fuel projects. In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) outlined a plan to garner $3.5 billion of private financing using $250 million of federal funding, in order to bolster climate initiatives over the next three years, and the U.S. Treasury named its first climate czar to direct climate goals for financial institutions such as the World Bank — all notable actions towards what some may consider to be moonshot goals.
In a self-proclaimed summary of the week from Biden’s official Twitter account: “This Earth Day, I’m proud to say science is back.”
Given just the sheer amount of activity on this front in the past three months, this tweet should come as no surprise. The appointment of John Kerry as Special Climate Envoy (and creation of that position), re-entry into the Paris Climate Agreement, elevation of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to a Cabinet-level position, and accomplishment of ambitious goals for vaccination are just a few examples of an explicit re-centering of science as a worthy component of governance.
However, there is an important distinction to be made. Science and technology are sometimes portrayed with a superpower veneer as the holy grail of any problem — to put a label on it, scientism at work. Yet, without falling prey to this mindset, there is still a case to be made for a general philosophical integration of science and technology with conventional political theory, unifying public service and intellectual inquiry through an approach that prioritizes people — the underlying reason for such an ethos at all.
The COVID-19 pandemic has perhaps turned a people-centric approach on its head and taken it to an extreme. Scientific experts — the most notable of which is, of course, Dr. Anthony Fauci — have been lionized in a way that may not be entirely healthy. On one hand, he and other such figures have provided valuable guidance and even reassurance over the course of this pandemic that has been well-received by many. Without their leadership, we would not be well on our way to an autumn that looks far closer to our pre-pandemic conception of normal, and Fauci, for example, has been exemplary in highlighting the collective effort in fighting this pandemic and framing science in a way that matters for the average American in their daily life. However, we have also seen a perversion of expertise over the past year; such figures have become a target, largely as a result of the increasingly polarized American political climate rather than of their own doing.
It is important to have such figures to lead and for us to look up to. But, when science becomes synonymous with a person or two, the focus quickly shifts from the message of how science can or cannot help the general public, to the messenger instead.
So how do we ensure we’re not shooting the messenger, and how do we re-center the paramount stakeholder that is society itself? While there is certainly no single or simple answer, this line of questioning renders the phenomenon of an increasing number of lawmakers with a science background particularly interesting. Assuming a model of constituent responsiveness, the concept of a scientist or engineer-turned lawmaker can reasonably be thought of as a community’s investment in and endorsement of a politician with a certain skill set and a different perspective; this translates to policymaking that reasonably handles issues of science and technology, whether that be climate, health, or Big Tech. Of course, no one person can be an expert in every topic, and there are many people on which any single politician relies. But, the broader form of scientific reasoning that flows from a more technical background, has the potential to apply across domains and lead to better governance s in a way that better serves constituents.
This by no means is an assertion that we need science to become the predominant professional background of anyone in Congress. Nor is it an endorsement of technocrats running the world. (In this column, I’ve highlighted the many problems that come with such a small subset of expertise making consequential decisions for society.) Instead, there’s a stronger case to be made for general scientific literacy in governance, whether that be a better ability to interpret numbers, handle public health, or ask critical questions about technology. For better or worse, science and technology have become intertwined with the very fabric of our daily existence and are only becoming more entrenched. An inability to grapple with these issues from a governance standpoint will only spell disaster, because we must be able to understand this system of human design in order to be able to manage it.
In recent decades, much of the updated designing and governing of this system — to the society’s general disadvantage — has been left to siloed entities in the private sector, despite strong negative implications for the public at large. This alone is a compelling case for public action and regulation on these fronts.
This literacy lends itself to a more general philosophical alignment between policy, science, and technology: striking a key balance of understanding and utilizing such tools, while not being overly technocratic. This manifests in two key ways — proactive and data-driven policymaking — both of which inform each other.
Proactiveness in this arena entails an understanding of predictions and an ability to respond proportionally, effectively managing uncertainty for the United States. That applies to areas ranging from climate change (where the failure to act now bears full consequences only decades later and the short-term implications are “freak” natural disasters) to public health (where a job well-done means that life looks completely normal). The same goes for our next chapter of managing technology — for example, emerging cryptocurrencies. If equipped with the right scientific tools as well as conventional approaches to policy, we can do a better job of deliberately building an appropriate new system to govern these technologies with a general investment in resilience, rather than retroactively responding in a crisis or retrofitting other approaches for a novel use case.
Of course, the ability to be proactive rests largely on behavioral incentives (commonly referred to “nudges”), but how we use data to iteratively develop policy also has a significant bearing. Sometimes, policy does not work the way it is intended — proactive or not. We have data that shows existing policies are failing with respect to issues such as incarceration, drug prices, and economic inequality, and this is only because our current system has been optimized for certain outcomes. Using this information to its full potential is only possible with a higher, more pervasive degree of scientific literacy for public sector governance. Akin to the work of Harvard economist Raj Chetty, there is an opportunity to use data to inform and evaluate the effectiveness of policymaking — how certain interventions work and others do not, and what iterative changes can be made to incrementally move in the direction of progress.
Moving in this direction is by no means unprecedented and would merely be a more fine-tuned policy tool to make large-scale change. Economics professor Mariana Mazzucato, founder of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, explained that “the 1960s Apollo program proved that bold, empowered governments can solve our biggest problems [and why] that model might work to tackle challenges like climate change,” while arguing that COVID-19 has been “the best time to put moon shot thinking into action.”
The climate moonshots of this past week will only be feasible if the public sector’s primary decision-makers have the literacy to think about the underlying problems relatively scientifically — understanding the long-term impact, recognizing the value of technological innovation to solve specific problems, and mobilizing to enable the systems-wide approach necessary to prepare and respond for any issue of such a magnitude. By leveraging the wide array of interdisciplinary tools at our disposal, an updated, 21st-century form of governance for our 21st-century problems will surely involve a better integration of science, technology, and policy; if tackled effectively, we will be well on our way to reaching this set of moonshots, and beyond.
Aishani would like to thank readers for journeying along with her this semester. She hopes that it has caused the term “Political Science,” the title of this column, to take on a new meaning.
Image by Greg Rakozy is licensed under the Unsplash License.
