IT IS budget crunching time in Washington DC. 快猫短视频s and their defenders in Congress are negotiating how much they get to spend in the next fiscal year. Each side knows the other鈥檚 moves like an old couple on the dance floor. The White House says scientists are spending too much, while they say scientific enterprise is what makes the economy go round.
What is unusual this year is where some of the cuts are aimed. The Bush administration appears to be dissing the energy big shots that helped put him in office. Money for oil and gas research will disappear. In fact the cuts go even deeper than those for renewable energy research.
Remarkably, one renewable programme is getting the kind of funding boost usually reserved for the oil and gas boys 鈥� hydrogen fuel research. The White House seems to be betting big on the hydrogen hope 鈥� or hype, as some would have it. In a world that is already embracing fuel cells and electric hybrid cars, hydrogen is farthest from reality. If proven technologies are closer to hand, why not spend our money on them?
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Well perhaps it is just a coincidence, but one of the ways Bush鈥檚 planners want to produce hydrogen for those cars of the future is with nuclear power, another big winner in this year鈥檚 energy budget.
THE Bush administration did not sweep into power on the strength of its strong stand on environmental issues. Quite the contrary. Though the president is behind initiatives with green-sounding titles such as Clear Skies, most people reckon he is more concerned with the economic health of industries, including the serious polluters, than with the fragility of the ecosystem and the need to protect it.
So it comes as a bit of a shock to find that Bush has nominated Stephen L. Johnson for the administrator鈥檚 post at the Environmental Protection Agency. Johnson has been with the EPA for 24 years. He is a scientist who has trained in biology and pathology. Both environmental and industry lobby groups seem to regard him as a straight shooter, someone who makes judgements based on the science, someone who can be persuaded by the facts.
It is tempting to think that a scientific leader of a scientific agency would be the most effective advocate for that agency. But really, in Washington, the head of any large agency is a politician. It is not a question of what you know, but who you know, and more importantly, whom you can influence. Mike Leavitt, the last EPA administrator and a former governor of Utah, probably has more powerful friends in the Republican leadership than a scientist like Johnson.
True, Johnson may make environmentalists happy by raising all the right questions and launching all the right investigations. He may even make all the right scientific decisions, but if he cannot sell them to the White House, they will not become policy.
