Science Funding From Government
There’s been a lot of talk recently about having a science debate for the presidential candidates, which I think would be really cool, to see how much they really know and if their policies concerning the environment, especially global warming and endangered species and the oceans, make sense, if they are not simply politically pandering to the popular views of the people to get more votes.
Science and technology, if you think about it, is really all that is responsible for the advancement of human civilization. The only other thing was the invention of the idea of democracy, which the United States embodies to a large extent, and certainly more than any other country. Agriculture stopped nomadic life, the plow and other agricultural improvements such as fertilizers greatly increased our food supply and stopped nonstop hunger, at least in some places, transportation made the settlement of large areas of land possible, and the transport of food as well, and medicine and increased our life spans and saved people from horrific diseases.
So the solution to a lot of the world’s problems lies in technology; but governments are trying to cut a lot of funding from science to minimize their budget deficits. At the same time, these governments deny or misuse science to support their own policies. Our next president needs to have a very good sense of what science has done for the world and how it has allowed people to live better lives, how it allowed democracy to flourish. We need so much more science funding for research, and we need a president who will be willing to set aside money for those purposes. I mean, like 10 billion would be an immense amount, and people complain about it; but what about the 1.4 trillion we’ve spent in Iraq? America needs science funding to stay ahead in the world.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
