The President of the United States visited Golden on
Thursday. Our little town was excited to have him. (Personally, I was a little
frustrated because all the traffic meant I didn’t have enough time to sneak a
mountain biking ride on North Table.) Colorado, as a swing
state, has seen a lot of President Obama lately but he is only the second
President to personally campaign in Golden. The other was Ulysses Grant!
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| President Obama speaking in Golden, CO. Check out the "M" behind him! |
Now I wasn't
there but I did think about what I would want to hear and I was surprised when
I read about his speech. I'm not going to get into politics in this post but I
do what to talk about what Obama didn’t say.
He didn't say
anything about energy or science or R&D research & development funding! Now, I know, Obama was
addressing the general public but, come on, he was just blocks away from a
purely science and engineering school, Colorado School of Mines, and a couple
miles from the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory in a state that has a large amount of natural gas!
But the lack of
talk about energy, science, and R&D research & development funding isn’t something new in this
campaign for both parties. The blog Science-Insider highlighted
last Wednesday a report comparing the technology innovation
policies supported by Obama and Romney released from The
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. The nonpartisan
think-tank concludes that neither party has it completely right. I was happy to
see the sentence below appear in the conclusion:
"The candidates’ proposals on science and technology, innovation, broadband and telecommunications, energy, etc. documented in this report represent an important first step, but it’s time for these issues to receive far greater attention in the presidential contest and beyond.”
The bottom line is that whoever
becomes the next President of the United States will affect the direction of
research and money in science and more specifically geophysics. Scientists
(this includes me) would like to think that politics don’t affect research but
that just isn’t true. The direction of energy and science matters and we need
to talk about it more!
President Obama, the next time
you come to Golden, could we please talk some energy and science? Please! It's something I treasure!
What do you
guys think? What science topic do you think is important in this election? Do
the candidates need to define their energy plans better?
