Wed
Feb
04
2009
Innovation Trumps Reason
A bold new approach to funding Climate Change was reported this morning on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition (02/04/2009) by Richard Harris, science reporter.
The spin word used was innovation, the innovator being interviewed being a Dr. Dan Sarewitz of Arizona State University who is the Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes.
While there are those who might consider circumventing the will of the taxpayer to spend gobs of money to promote a politically unpopular faux scientific agenda as unethical Harris sees the situation differently, describing Dr. Sarewitz as ‘One person pushing for an intellectual paradigm shift . . .’
So that’s what they call it now.
The strategy Dr Sarewitz unveiled is this:
‘The idea really is to take the political heat off of climate change and instead move this into the realm of policy wonkdom,’ he says, ‘where many many small decisions made across many agencies, many types of policies, many domains, set the conditions for moving in the right direction without demanding that people accept that this is the most important problem in the world.’
As of late public support for spending big money on Climate Change appears to be a political no go. Dr Sarewitz answers the question of how to side step the public and just spend lots of money. Skip the whole inconvenience of asking for permission and just implement through policy, the issue is just too important for the unwashed masses to chime in.
You have to love innovation.
