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05.09
Obama
Pledges Commitment to S&T in Speech to National
Academies
On 27 April, President Obama
delivered a
major address on science, innovation and
education at the National Academy. In his remarks, the president
offered no new Kennedy-esque Moon challenge, but
he did signal a strong commitment to S&T
funding and STEM education in forthcoming
budgets, as well as to renewable energy
technology.
The formal text is appended
below, and the speech can be viewed online at
www.nas.edu.
=============================
Remarks of
President Barack Obama — As Prepared for
Delivery
National Academy of Sciences
Washington, DC
27 April 2009
It is my privilege to address
the distinguished members of the National
Academy of Sciences, as well as the leaders of
the National Academy of Engineering and the
Institute of Medicine who have gathered here
this morning.
I’d like to begin today with a
story of a previous visitor who also addressed
this august body.
In April of 1921, Albert
Einstein visited the United States for the first
time. His international celebrity was growing as
scientists around the world began to understand
and accept the vast implications of his theories
of special and general relativity. He attended
this annual meeting, and after sitting through a
series of long speeches by others, he reportedly
said, “I have just got a new theory of
eternity.” I’ll do my best to heed this
cautionary tale.
The very founding of this
institution stands as a testament to the
restless curiosity and boundless hope so
essential not just to the scientific enterprise,
but to this experiment we call America.
A few months after a devastating
defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg
would be won and Richmond would fall, before the
fate of the Union would be at all certain,
President Lincoln signed into law an act
creating the National Academy of Sciences.
Lincoln refused to accept that
our nation’s sole purpose was merely to survive.
He created this academy, founded the land grant
colleges, and began the work of the
transcontinental railroad, believing that we
must add “the fuel of interest to the fire of
genius in the discovery… of new and useful
things.”
This is America’s story. Even in
the hardest times, and against the toughest
odds, we have never given in to pessimism; we
have never surrendered our fates to chance; we
have endured; we have worked hard; we have
sought out new frontiers.
Today, of course, we face more
complex set of challenges than we ever have
before: a medical system that holds the promise
of unlocking new cures and treatments — attached
to a health care system that holds the potential
to bankrupt families and businesses. A system of
energy that powers our economy — but also
endangers our planet. Threats to our security
that seek to exploit the very interconnectedness
and openness so essential to our prosperity. And
challenges in a global marketplace which links
the derivative trader on Wall Street to the
homeowner on Main Street, the office worker in
America to the factory worker in China — a
marketplace in which we all share in
opportunity, but also in crisis.
At such a difficult moment,
there are those who say we cannot afford to
invest in science. That support for research is
somehow a luxury at a moment defined by
necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science
is more essential for our prosperity, our
security, our health, our environment, and our
quality of life than it has ever been. And if
there was ever a day that reminded us of our
shared stake in science and research, it’s
today.
We are closely monitoring the
emerging cases of swine flu in the United
States. This is obviously a cause for concern
and requires a heightened state of alert. But it
is not a cause for alarm. The Department of
Health and Human Services has declared a Public
Health Emergency as a precautionary tool to
ensure that we have the resources we need at our
disposal to respond quickly and effectively. I’m
getting regular updates on the situation from
the responsible agencies, and the Department of
Health and Human Services as well as the Centers
for Disease Control will be offering regular
updates to the American people so that they know
what steps are being taken and what steps they
may need to take. But one thing is clear — our
capacity to deal with a public health challenge
of this sort rests heavily on the work of our
scientific and medical community. And this is
one more example of why we cannot allow our
nation to fall behind.
Unfortunately, that is exactly
what has happened.
Federal funding in the physical
sciences as a portion of our gross domestic
product has fallen by nearly half over the past
quarter century. Time and again we’ve allowed
the research and experimentation tax credit,
which helps businesses grow and innovate, to
lapse.
Our schools continue to trail.
Our students are outperformed in math and
science by their peers in Singapore, Japan,
England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea,
among others. Another assessment shows American
fifteen year olds ranked 25th in math and 21st
in science when compared to nations around the
world.
And we have watched as
scientific integrity has been undermined and
scientific research politicized in an effort to
advance predetermined ideological agendas.
We know that our country is
better than this.
A half century ago, this nation
made a commitment to lead the world in
scientific and technological innovation; to
invest in education, in research, in
engineering; to set a goal of reaching space and
engaging every citizen in that historic mission.
That was the high water mark of America’s
investment in research and development. Since
then our investments have steadily declined as a
share of our national income — our GDP. As a
result, other countries are now beginning to
pull ahead in the pursuit of this generation’s
great discoveries.
I believe it is not in our
American character to follow — but to lead. And
it is time for us to lead once again. I am here
today to set this goal: we will devote more than
three percent of our GDP to research and
development. We will not just meet, but we will
exceed the level achieved at the height of the
Space Race, through policies that invest in
basic and applied research, create new
incentives for private innovation, promote
breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and
improve education in math and science. This
represents the largest commitment to scientific
research and innovation in American history.
Just think what this will allow
us to accomplish: solar cells as cheap as paint,
and green buildings that produce all of the
energy they consume; learning software as
effective as a personal tutor; prosthetics so
advanced that you could play the piano again; an
expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge
about ourselves and world the around us. We can
do this.
The pursuit of discovery half a
century ago fueled our prosperity and our
success as a nation in the half century that
followed. The commitment I am making today will
fuel our success for another fifty years. That
is how we will ensure that our children and
their children will look back on this
generation’s work as that which defined the
progress and delivered the prosperity of the
21st century.
This work begins with an
historic commitment to basic science and applied
research, from the labs of renowned universities
to the proving grounds of innovative companies.
Through the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act and with the support of
Congress, my administration is already providing
the largest single boost to investment in basic
research in American history.
This is important right now, as
public and private colleges and universities
across the country reckon with shrinking
endowments and tightening budgets. But this is
also incredibly important for our future. As
Vannevar Bush, who served as scientific advisor
to President Franklin Roosevelt, famously said:
“Basic scientific research is scientific
capital.”
The fact is, an investigation
into a particular physical, chemical, or
biological process might not pay off for a year,
or a decade, or at all. And when it does, the
rewards are often broadly shared, enjoyed by
those who bore its costs but also by those who
did not.
That’s why the private sector
under-invests in basic science — and why the
public sector must invest in this kind of
research. Because while the risks may be large,
so are the rewards for our economy and our
society.
No one can predict what new
applications will be born of basic research: new
treatments in our hospitals; new sources of
efficient energy; new building materials; new
kinds of crops more resistant to heat and
drought.
It was basic research in the
photoelectric effect that would one day lead to
solar panels. It was basic research in physics
that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The
calculations of today’s GPS satellites are based
on the equations that Einstein put to paper more
than a century ago.
In addition to the investments
in the Recovery Act, the budget I’ve proposed —
and versions have now passed both the House and
Senate — builds on the historic investments in
research contained in the recovery plan.
We double the budget of key
agencies, including the National Science
Foundation, a primary source of funding for
academic research, and the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, which supports a wide
range of pursuits — from improving health
information technology to measuring carbon
pollution, from testing “smart grid” designs to
developing advanced manufacturing processes. And
my budget doubles funding for the Department of
Energy’s Office of Science which builds and
operates accelerators, colliders,
supercomputers, high-energy light sources, and
facilities for making nano-materials. Because we
know that a nation’s potential for scientific
discovery is defined by the tools it makes
available to its researchers.
But the renewed commitment of
our nation will not be driven by government
investment alone. It is a commitment that
extends from the laboratory to the marketplace.
That is why my budget makes the
research and experimentation tax credit
permanent. This is a tax credit that returns two
dollars to the economy for every dollar we
spend, by helping companies afford the often
high costs of developing new ideas, new
technologies, and new products. Yet at times
we’ve allowed it to lapse or only renewed it
year to year. I’ve heard this time and again
from entrepreneurs across this country: by
making this credit permanent, we make it
possible for businesses to plan the kinds of
projects that create jobs and economic growth.
Second, in no area will
innovation be more important than in the
development of new technologies to produce, use,
and save energy — which is why my administration
has made an unprecedented commitment to
developing a 21st century clean energy economy.
Our future on this planet
depends upon our willingness to address the
challenge posed by carbon pollution. And our
future as a nation depends upon our willingness
to embrace this challenge as an opportunity to
lead the world in pursuit of new discovery.
When the Soviet Union launched
Sputnik a little more than a half century ago,
Americans were stunned: the Russians had beaten
us to space. We had a choice to make: we could
accept defeat — or we could accept the
challenge. And as always, we chose to accept the
challenge.
President Eisenhower signed
legislation to create NASA and to invest in
science and math education, from grade school to
graduate school. And just a few years later, a
month after his address to the 1961 Annual
Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences,
President Kennedy boldly declared before a joint
session of Congress that the United States would
send a man to the moon and return him safely to
the earth.
The scientific community rallied
behind this goal and set about achieving it. And
it would lead not just to those first steps on
the moon, but also to giant leaps in our
understanding here at home. The Apollo program
itself produced technologies that have improved
kidney dialysis and water purification systems;
sensors to test for hazardous gasses;
energy-saving building materials; and
fire-resistant fabrics used by firefighters and
soldiers. And, more broadly, the enormous
investment of that era — in science and
technology, in education and research funding —
produced a great outpouring of curiosity and
creativity, the benefits of which have been
incalculable.
The fact is, there will be no
single Sputnik moment for this generation’s
challenge to break our dependence on fossil
fuels. In many ways, this makes the challenge
even tougher to solve — and makes it all the
more important to keep our eyes fixed on the
work ahead.
That is why I have set as a goal
for our nation that we will reduce our carbon
pollution by more than 80 percent by 2050. And
that is why I am pursuing, in concert with
Congress, the policies that will help us meet
this goal.
My recovery plan provides the
incentives to double our nation’s capacity to
generate renewable energy over the next few
years — extending the production tax credit,
providing loan guarantees, and offering grants
to spur investment. For example, federally
funded research and development has dropped the
cost of solar panels by ten-fold over the last
three decades. Our renewed efforts will ensure
that solar and other clean energy technologies
will be competitive.
My budget includes $150 billion
over ten years to invest in sources of renewable
energy as well as energy efficiency; it supports
efforts at NASA, recommended as a priority by
the National Research Council, to develop new
space-based capabilities to help us better
understand our changing climate.
And today, I am also announcing
that for the first time, we are funding an
initiative — recommended by this organization —
called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for
Energy, or ARPA-E.
This is based on the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as
DARPA, which was created during the Eisenhower
administration in response to Sputnik. It has
been charged throughout its history with
conducting high-risk, high-reward research. The
precursor to the internet, known as ARPANET,
stealth technology, and the Global Positioning
System all owe a debt to the work of DARPA.
ARPA-E seeks to do this same
kind of high-risk, high-reward research. My
administration will also pursue comprehensive
legislation to place a market-based cap on
carbon emissions. We will make renewable energy
the profitable kind of energy in America. And I
am confident that we will find a wellspring of
creativity just waiting to be tapped by
researchers in this room and entrepreneurs
across our country.
The nation that leads the world
in 21st century clean energy will be the nation
that leads in the 21st century global economy.
America can and must be that nation.
Third, in order to lead in
the global economy — and ensure that our
businesses can grow and innovate, and our
families can thrive — we must address the
shortcomings of our health care system.
The Recovery Act will support
the long overdue step of computerizing America’s
medical records, to reduce the duplication,
waste, and errors that cost billions of dollars
and thousands of lives.
But it’s important to note:
these records also hold the potential of
offering patients the chance to be more active
participants in prevention and treatment. We
must maintain patient control over these records
and respect their privacy. At the same time,
however, we have the opportunity to offer
billions and billions of anonymous data points
to medical researchers who may find in this
information evidence that can help us better
understand disease.
History also teaches us the
greatest advances in medicine have come from
scientific breakthroughs: the discovery of
antibiotics; improved public health practices;
vaccines for smallpox, polio, and many other
infectious diseases; anti-retroviral drugs that
can return AIDS patients to productive lives;
pills that can control certain types of blood
cancers; and so many others.
And because of recent progress —
not just in biology, genetics and medicine, but
also in physics, chemistry, computer science,
and engineering — we have the potential to make
enormous progress against diseases in the coming
decades. That is why my Administration is
committed to increasing funding for the National
Institutes of Health, including $6 billion to
support cancer research, part of a sustained,
multi-year plan to double cancer research in our
country.
Fourth, we are restoring
science to its rightful place.
On March 9th, I signed an
executive memorandum with a clear message: Under
my administration, the days of science taking a
back seat to ideology are over. Our progress as
a nation — and our values as a nation — are
rooted in free and open inquiry. To undermine
scientific integrity is to undermine our
democracy.
That is why I have charged the
White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy with leading a new effort to ensure that
federal policies are based on the best and most
unbiased scientific information. I want to be
sure that facts are driving scientific decisions
— and not the other way around.
As part of this effort, we’ve
already launched a website that allows
individuals to not only make recommendations to
achieve this goal, but to collaborate on those
recommendations; it is a small step, but one
that is creating a more transparent,
participatory and democratic government.
We also need to engage the
scientific community directly in the work of
public policy. That is why, today, I am
announcing the appointment of the President’s
Council of Advisors on Science and Technology,
known as PCAST, with which I plan to work
closely.
This council represents leaders
from many scientific disciplines who will bring
a diversity of experiences and views. I will
charge PCAST with advising me about national
strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of
scientific innovation. It will be co-chaired by
John Holdren, my top science advisor; Eric
Lander, one of the principal leaders of the
Human Genome Project; and Harold Varmus, former
head of the National Institutes of Health and a
Nobel laureate.
In biomedicine, for example,
this will include harnessing the historic
convergence between life sciences and physical
sciences that is underway today; undertaking
public projects — in the spirit of the Human
Genome Project — to create data and capabilities
that fuel discoveries in tens of thousands of
laboratories; and identifying and overcoming
scientific and bureaucratic barriers to rapidly
translating scientific breakthroughs into
diagnostics and therapeutics that serve
patients.
In environmental science, it
will require strengthening our weather
forecasting, our earth observation from space,
the management of our nation’s land, water and
forests, and the stewardship of our coastal
zones and ocean fisheries.
We also need to work with our
friends around the world. Science, technology,
and innovation proceed more rapidly and more
cost-effectively when insights, costs, and risks
are shared; and so many of the challenges that
science and technology will help us meet are
global in character. This is true of our
dependence on oil, the consequences of climate
change, the threat of epidemic disease, and the
spread of nuclear weapons, among other examples.
That is why my administration is
ramping up participation in — and our commitment
to — international science and technology
cooperation across the many areas where it is
clearly in our interest to do so. In fact, this
week, my administration is gathering the leaders
of the world’s major economies to begin the work
of addressing our common energy challenges
together.
Fifth, since we know that the
progress and prosperity of future generations
will depend on what we do now to educate the
next generation, today I am announcing a renewed
commitment to education in mathematics and
science.
Through this commitment,
American students will move from the middle to
the top of the pack in science and math over the
next decade. For we know that the nation that
out-educates us today — will out-compete us
tomorrow.
We cannot start soon enough. We
know that the quality of math and science
teachers is the most influential single factor
in determining whether or a student will succeed
or fail in these subjects. Yet, in high school,
more than twenty percent of students in math and
more than sixty percent of students in chemistry
and physics are taught by teachers without
expertise in these fields. And this problem is
only going to get worse; there is a projected
shortfall of more than 280,000 math and science
teachers across the country by 2015.
That is why I am announcing
today that states making strong commitments
and progress in math and science education
will be eligible to compete later this fall for
additional funds under the Secretary of
Education's $5 billion Race to the Top program.
I am challenging states to
dramatically improve achievement in math and
science by raising standards, modernizing
science labs, upgrading curriculum, and forging
partnerships to improve the use of science and
technology in our classrooms. And I am
challenging states to enhance teacher
preparation and training, and to attract new and
qualified math and science teachers to better
engage students and reinvigorate these subjects
in our schools.
In this endeavor, and others, we
will work to support inventive approaches. Let's
create systems that retain and reward effective
teachers, and let's create new pathways for
experienced professionals to enter the
classroom. There are, right now, chemists who
could teach chemistry; physicists who could
teach physics; statisticians who could teach
mathematics. But we need to create a way to
bring the expertise and the enthusiasm of these
folks — folks like you — into the classroom.
There are states, for example,
doing innovative work. I am pleased to announce
that Governor Ed Rendell will lead an effort
with the National Governors Association to
increase the number of states that are making
science, technology, engineering and mathematics
education a top priority. Six states are
currently participating in the initiative,
including Pennsylvania, which has launched an
effective program to ensure that his state has
the skilled workforce in place to draw the jobs
of the 21st century. I’d want every state
participate.
But our work does not end with a
high school diploma. For decades, we led the
world in educational attainment, and as a
consequence we led the world in economic growth.
The G.I. Bill, for example, helped send a
generation to college. But in this new economy,
we've come to trail other nations in graduation
rates, in educational achievement, and in the
production of scientists and engineers.
That's why my administration has
set a goal that will greatly enhance our ability
to compete for the high-wage, high-tech jobs of
the 21st century — and to foster the next
generation of scientists and engineers. In the
next decade — by 2020 — America will once again
have the highest proportion of college graduates
in the world. And we've provided tax credits and
grants to make a college education more
affordable.
My budget also triples the
number of National Science Foundation graduate
research fellowships. This program was created
as part of the Space Race five decades ago. In
the decades since, it’s remained largely the
same size — even as the numbers of students who
seek these fellowships has skyrocketed. We ought
to be supporting these young people who are
pursuing scientific careers, not putting
obstacles in their path.
This is how we will lead the
world in new discoveries in this new century.
But it will take far more than the work of
government. It will take all of us. It will take
all of you.
And so today I want to challenge
you to use your love and knowledge of science to
spark the same sense of wonder and excitement in
a new generation.
America’s young people will rise
to the challenge if given the opportunity — if
called upon to join a cause larger than
themselves. And we’ve got evidence. The average
age in NASA’s mission control during the Apollo
17 mission was just 26. I know that young people
today are ready to tackle the grand challenges
of this century
So I want to persuade you to
spend time in the classroom, talking — and
showing — young people what it is that your work
can mean, and what it means to you. Encourage
your university to participate in programs to
allow students to get a degree in scientific
fields and a teaching certificate at the same
time. Think about new and creative ways to
engage young people in science and engineering,
like science festivals, robotics competitions,
and fairs that encourage young people to create,
build, and invent — to be makers of things.
And I want you to know that I’m
going to be working along side you. I’m going to
participate in a public awareness and outreach
campaign to encourage students to consider
careers in science, mathematics, and engineering
— because our future depends on it.
And the Department of Energy and
the National Science Foundation will be
launching a joint initiative to inspire tens of
thousands of American students to pursue careers
in science, engineering and entrepreneurship
related to clean energy.
It will support an educational
campaign to capture the imagination of young
people who can help us meet the energy
challenge. It will create research opportunities
for undergraduates and educational opportunities
for women and minorities who too often have been
underrepresented in scientific and technological
fields — but are no less capable of inventing
the solutions that will help us grow our economy
and save our planet. And it will support
fellowships, interdisciplinary graduate
programs, and partnerships between academic
institutions and innovative companies to prepare
a generation of Americans to meet this
generational challenge.
For we must always remember that
somewhere in America there’s an entrepreneur
seeking a loan to start a business that could
transform an industry — but she hasn’t secured
it yet. There’s a researcher with an idea for an
experiment that might offer a new cancer
treatment — but he hasn’t found the funding yet.
There is a child with an inquisitive mind
staring up at the night sky. Maybe she has the
potential to change our world — but she just
doesn’t know it yet.
As you know, scientific
discovery takes far more than the occasional
flash of brilliance — as important as that can
be. Usually, it takes time, hard work, patience;
it takes training; often, it requires the
support of a nation.
But it holds a promise like no
other area of human endeavor.
In 1968, a year defined by loss
and conflict, Apollo 8 carried into space the
first human beings ever to slip beyond the
earth’s gravity. The ship would circle the moon
ten times before returning home. But on its
fourth orbit, the capsule rotated and for the
first time earth became visible through the
windows.
Bill Anders, one of the
astronauts aboard Apollo 8, could not believe
what he saw. He scrambled for a camera. He took
a photo that showed the earth coming up over the
moon’s horizon. It was the first ever taken from
so distant a vantage point, soon to become known
as “Earthrise.”
Anders would say that the moment
forever changed him, to see our world — this
pale blue sphere — without borders, without
divisions, at once so tranquil and beautiful and
alone.
“We came all this way to explore
the moon,” he said, “and the most important
thing is that we discovered the Earth.”
Yes, scientific innovation
offers us the chance to achieve prosperity. It
has offered us benefits that have improved our
health and our lives — often improvements we
take too easily for granted. But it also gives
us something more.
At root, science forces us to
reckon with the truth as best as we can
ascertain it. Some truths fill us with awe.
Others force us to question long held views.
Science cannot answer every question; indeed, it
seems at times the more we plumb the mysteries
of the physical world, the more humble we must
be. Science cannot supplant our ethics, our
values, our principles, or our faith, but
science can inform those things, and help put
these values, these moral sentiments, that
faith, to work — to feed a child, to heal the
sick, to be good stewards of this earth.
We are reminded that with each
new discovery and the new power it brings, comes
new responsibility; that the fragility and the
sheer specialness of life requires us to move
past our differences, to address our common
problems, to endure and continue humanity’s
strivings for a better world.
As President Kennedy said when
he addressed the National Academy of Sciences
more than 45 years ago: “The challenge, in
short, may be our salvation.”
Thank you all for your past,
present, and future discoveries. God bless you
and may God bless the United States of America.
#As President Kennedy said when he addressed the
National Academy of Sciences more than 45 years
ago: “The challenge, in short, may be our
salvation.”
Thank you all for your past,
present, and future discoveries. God bless you
and may God bless the United States of America.
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