Weiye Loh's Library tagged Policy →  View Popular, Search in Google

“appreciates the power of science as a problem-solving tool and that seeks to exploit its methods of inquiry to resolve the great questions of the day”. Geek or non-geek, this is a manifesto we should all feel able to endorse.

Science Politics Policy

the problem is not so much people turning their faces against uncomfortable truths, but rather that we don't appreciate the vital role science has to play in evidence-based policymaking. 

Mark Henderson: There's very little of what you might term "anti-science" in politics, very few MPs who are actively hostile to what science has to offer. But there is, I think, a much broader problem of indifference to science. It's simply not something that the vast majority of our elected representatives, and indeed civil servants, have actually thought about.

Science Politics Policy

How much authority should we give to such work in our policy decisions?  The question is important because media reports often seem to assume that any result presented as “scientific” has a claim to our serious attention. But this is hardly a reasonable view

Social Sciences Economics Politics Data Policy Science Journalism

Climate Climate Change Policy Politics Decarbonisation

Policy History Philosophy Freedom of Speech Protest Respect Pragmatism Statistics Economics

Public-policy issues always have dimensions beyond science, and require more than technical responses. When framing debates, policy-makers should prioritize discussion of social benefits as well as science: there are many good non-scientific reasons to reduce global environmental footprints and consumption frenzy, and to pursue greater justice, for instance.

... 

Rather than assuming that disputes are solely scientific, opening up these decision-making processes would render their primary nature more honestly political and economic, while giving proper weight to scientific reason and evidence.

Scientism Science Power Authority Policy Politics Trust

Where both administrations and their respective critics get into trouble is when they try to hide political judgments by invoking science to justify or crticize decisions that are ultimately grounded in values. A perfect example is the debate over the so-called "emergency contraception" which is inherently political as a battleground for the US abortion wars. Combatants on all sides of the debate invoke science as justification for their political positions.

So long as we live in a democracy rather than a technocracy, such debates are to be expected. Bringing the values at stake out into the open will not only help to depoliticize science, but will also help to improve the practice of democracy.

Science Politics Policy Democracy Instability

That means that there are only two ways to reduce emissions to a level consistent with stabilization of concentrations at a low level (pick your favorite number, 350, 450, 550 ppm -- the policy implications are identical). One is to reduce GDP. The second is to reduce the carbon intensity of GDP -- to decarbonize. While there are a few brave/foolish souls who advocate a willful imposition of poverty as the remedy to accumulating carbon dioxide, that platform has not gathered much political steam. (See discussion of the Iron Law in TCF).

Instead, the only option left is innovation in how we produce and consume energy. That is it -- innovation is the only game in town. Consequently, the correct metric of progress in innovation is a decrease in the ratio of carbon to GDP. For those who wish to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions, the proper policy debate is thus how do we stimulate energy innovation?

Carbon Emission Climate Change Climate Science Policy Pragmatism Carbon Tax

t no one knows at present how to get the world on a path toward stabilized concentrations of the main greenhouse emission, carbon dioxide. In essence, he acknowledged that this process will take a very long time and require a series of generational handoffs, as data and options evolve. This is the iterative “learn and adjust” approach that also was stressed in the recent America’s Climate Choices report from the National Academy of Sciences.

Climate Science Climate Change Global Warming Policy

I’m going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real. I am a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment, and sound science. I am not a climate scientist. I’m a meteorologist, and the weather maps I’m staring at are making me uncomfortable. No, you’re not imagining it: we’ve clicked into a new and almost foreign weather pattern. To complicate matters, I’m in a small, frustrated and endangered minority:  a Republican deeply concerned about the environmental sacrifices some are asking us to make to keep our economy powered-up, long-term. It’s ironic. The root of the word conservative is “conserve.”  A staunch Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, set aside vast swaths of America for our National Parks System, the envy of the world. Another Republican, Richard Nixon, launched the EPA. Now some in my party believe the EPA and all those silly “global warming alarmists” are going to get in the way of drilling and mining our way to prosperity. Well, we have good reason to be alarmed.

Climate Change Conservative Science Policy Pragmatism

I’m going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real. I am a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment, and sound science. I am not a climate scientist. I’m a meteorologist, and the weather maps I’m staring at are making me uncomfortable. No, you’re not imagining it: we’ve clicked into a new and almost foreign weather pattern. To complicate matters, I’m in a small, frustrated and endangered minority: a Republican deeply concerned about the environmental sacrifices some are asking us to make to keep our economy powered-up, long-term. It’s ironic. The root of the word conservative is “conserve.”

Climate Change Conservative Politics Science Policy Pragmatism

On average, wealthier countries spend roughly 11% of their GDP on health, with more than 80% publicly financed and only 14% of spending taking place on a fee-for-service basis. Public finance (or, in some cases, government-regulated cooperative insurance funds that amount to public financing) pays for most discretionary medical services, with private insurance supplementing only minimal extra services.
Most rich countries choose to finance their health care publicly for several reasons. First, free-market health care is usually inequitable and inefficient. Individual needs vary significantly, and private companies are often unwilling to insure the very people who need the most care (such as those who are already ill, or who have conditions like diabetes, which predispose them to other health problems). Moreover, those who buy care – insurers and patients – are unlikely to have the information necessary to choose the safest and most effective treatments.
At the same time, public spending acts as a brake on overall spending, and prevents the rapid cost escalation to which America’s private insurance companies contribute. The US spends 1% of its GDP annually simply to administer its complex, unwieldy insurance system. Without reform of the type now before the Supreme Court, total US health expenditures will rise from 16% of GDP today to 25% by 2025.

Public Health Care Tax Policy

Above is a graph from the St. Louis Fed's excellent data portal which shows manufacturing employment in the US (blue), Germany (black) and Japan (red) from 1990 to 2010 (2011 for the US, note 100 = the series average over 1990 to 2010). The data clearly show that each of these three big manufacturing powerhouses have seen about the same proportional decline in manufacturing employment. Claims that Japan or Germany have not seen the same declines in manufacturing employment as the US are watching wiggles not trends.

The wiggles are important as they can represent the effects of policies aimed at reducing the impacts of recessions. But the trend is important as well, and seeing the same trend in manufacturing employment across three of the world's largest economies is pretty strong evidence that there is a single over-whelming dynamic at play - productivity growth in manufacturing.

Manufacturing Productivity Labour Policy Economics

[A]lthough political (and religious) ideology has no place in deciding scientific questions, the practice of science is inherently political. In that sense, science can never come before politics. Scientists everywhere enter into a social contract, not least because they are not their own paymasters. Much, if not most, scientific research has social and political implications, often broadly visible from the outset. In times of crisis (like the present), scientists must respond intellectually and professionally to the challenges facing society, and not think that safeguarding their funding is enough.

Science Politics Value Policy Uncertainty Funding

With professional & business services currently employing about 18 million people, as compared to about 12 million in manufacturing, someone will have to remind me why manufacturing is supposed to be a special sector and not not professional and business services.

Economics Politics Income Inequality Policy Manufacturing

Economics Politics Income Inequality Policy Manufacturing

Little has been done to make the aviation industry pay for its negative effect on the environment. It is largely exempt from fuel tax, and it is not charged for the impact of its carbon-dioxide emissions on climate change.

Yet, according to a report published by the International Panel on Climate Change, the airline industry is responsible for 4.9% of all human-caused global warming worldwide. That figure is high, and it is growing rapidly. Airlines’ CO2 emissions rose by 11.2% from 2005 to 2010, despite a severe global recession during this period.

Aviation Carbon Emission Policy Globalization Climate Change

For various reasons we're very late posting this interview with University of Colorado Professor Roger Pielke Jr, who's specialty is the intersection between policy and science. Regular readers will know that Pielke's blog is a regular stop for me (in fact, it ought to inspire other academics to blog).

Professor Pielke spoke at the Lowy Institute in February, and we did this short interview afterwards.

Science Politics Policy

A significant role for women in policy-making allows diversity in the foreign policy landscape by recognising and integrating softer developmental concerns as well as their participation in peacemaking and security agendas. Advocacy of these policies must not be the exclusive purview of female leaders — it must be the responsibility of all policy-makers, irrespective of gender.

Gender Stereotype Policy Gender Equality

Health care is an unusual product in that it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, for the customer to say “no.” In certain cases, the customer is passed out, or otherwise incapable of making decisions about her care, and the decisions are made by providers whose mandate is, correctly, to save lives rather than money.

In other cases, there is more time for loved ones to consider costs, but little emotional space to do so — no one wants to think there was something more they could have done to save their parent or child. It is not like buying a television, where you can easily comparison shop and walk out of the store, and even forgo the purchase if it’s too expensive. And imagine what you would pay for a television if the salesmen at Best Buy knew that you couldn’t leave without making a purchase.

Health Care Policy Capitalism