“PRACTICAL politics consists in ignoring facts,” said Henry Adams, American historian and political biographer. But when the politics will determine who will be the next president of the United States of America, then the facts matter.
In a 12-page special report this week (starting on page 12) we examine the big issues where the messy business of politics knocks up against the objective, fact-based discipline of science. We detail the impact that US policies are having, or could have, on mitigating climate change, the spread of nuclear weapons, ending the world’s addiction to oil, saving rare and endangered species, and using stem cells to find cures for diseases such as juvenile diabetes. Such issues ultimately affect everyone inside the US and beyond.
Around the water coolers of offices in New York, Washington and San Francisco, or the dinner tables in swing states like Ohio and Florida, the talk is of Iraq and the economy. The facts people are likely to pay attention to, or ignore if they so choose, are those related to the presidential candidates’ legislative, voting and war records. But Adams’s cautionary words shouldn’t be forgotten. Born in 1838, he lived for 80 years through a time when science and technology were revolutionising society, bringing the telephone, electric light, mass-produced internal combustion engines and an understanding of evolution and special and general relativity, to name but a few of that era’s advances. Adams was a keen student of science and the impact it could have. He also understood his politics, being the grandson of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States.
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Fast-forward a century and Adams’s quote is as relevant as ever. Today, science generates the facts we apply to build weapons, generate energy, treat disease and decide how we should steward the environment. And while politicians have always twisted those facts to suit their own agendas, doing so has never been more dangerous than it is now.
This habit will likely continue over the next four years whoever wins next month’s election. But with a GDP of almost $11 trillion, one-third of the total shared by all the OECD countries, the US has real clout. It funds 44 per cent of the world’s research and development, and is home to one-third of the world’s scientists. So when the US elects its president and decides its policies on global issues, everyone on Earth has a vested interest. And for that reason if no other, ignoring the facts isn’t an option.
