US president Donald Trump鈥檚 is billed as an 鈥淎merica First鈥� programme, but the only Americans who get to go to the head of the queue are defence contractors.
The whole thing is driven by a 10 per cent increase in what is already the world鈥檚 most extravagant military spend. This is offset by savaging the government funding of a vast array of programmes that actually improve the lives of ordinary people and assure a more secure and prosperous future.
This budget is an American tragedy on many levels, not least the damage to science.
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On that front, there is one crumb of good news 鈥� 鈥済ood鈥� measured against the very low expectations many scientists have of Trump鈥檚 presidency. The Earth Science branch of NASA鈥檚 budget hasn鈥檛 been savaged to the extent that might have been expected based on campaign rhetoric.
Four Earth observation missions do get the axe: PACE (which would make observations relating to ocean ecosystems and marine clouds), OCO-3 (an International Space Station instrument to improve understanding of the global carbon dioxide budget) and CLARREO-Pathfinder (another space station instrument, testing techniques for improved measurement of climate forcing and feedback factors in the atmosphere).
There is also the petty termination of DSCOVR (which would include observations related to climate, aerosols and ozone). This saves only a pittance because DSCOVR involves a satellite already bought, launched, paid for and returning data. All in all, $102 million is cut out of the original $1.9 billion Earth Science budget.
There is no specific mention of funding for NASA鈥檚 premier climate modelling laboratories, such as , headed until recently by prominent climate scientist James Hansen. Outside Earth science, the scrapping of NASA鈥檚 $115 million Office of Education raises eyebrows, but planetary exploration fares reasonably well, with only the loss of a Europa lander and an asteroid-capture mission.
Assault on environment
Also in the good news category 鈥� one hopes 鈥� is that there is no mention of the $7.5 billion budget of the (NSF), which is a premier funder of the most fundamental curiosity-driven research in the US. However, one fear is that this omission is because the Trump administration doesn鈥檛 yet realise how much climate research is funded by the NSF.
Research at the National Institutes for Health is hit with a hefty cut of 18 per cent relative to this year. This is a puzzling move, given the long-standing and widespread bipartisan support for biomedical research; it has no obvious ideological motivation other than a vague disdain for the value of any government activity, apart from the military. This part of the budget is least likely to survive Congress.
Proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) are more ominous, and represent a full-scale ideologically motivated assault on environmental science research. This is work that tells us what kinds of problems we are facing, and the energy technology research that could provide solutions.
NOAA loses $250 million of funding for coastal and marine management research and a cut to the polar orbiting satellite programme, which has a key role in climate monitoring. However, there are no overall budget targets for NOAA, so it is impossible to know what the implications are for the constellation of laboratories that are the crown jewels of its climate research enterprise.
DOE loses the entire ARPA-e energy innovation research programme 鈥� $2 billion in energy efficiency and renewables work. Nearly $1 billion is lost from the department鈥檚 , which has supported national laboratories that have made transformative advances in areas such as battery technology, parallel computing and nuclear reactor design. That office also maintains an extensive portfolio of climate research.
Outright Armageddon
For DOE, the budget is a bloodbath, but for EPA, which loses nearly a third of its funding, it is outright Armageddon. Cuts include killing the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to cut emissions, and massive reductions in funds for enforcement of environmental laws.
There are also deep cuts to its Office of Research, which funds most of the EPA鈥檚 core research 鈥� on which policy is based. Also killed are the Great Lakes Restoration initiative, the Energy Star efficiency standards programme, the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (which identifies problems like BPA in plastic) and many other crucial programmes.
The result is that the EPA is at its lowest funding level ever 鈥� half of what it was during even the grim Reagan years, and under a quarter of its peak during the Carter years. The DOE cuts are likewise piled on top of years of declining federal investment in energy research.
Speaking about research on global warming and how to stop it, Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney said: 鈥淲e鈥檙e not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste of your money.鈥�
Based on this budget, there are a lot of things America doesn鈥檛 do anymore. I doubt that future generations will agree that expensive military posturing and pointless border walls represented a better use of scarce resources.
