Earth Equity News

Obama's Science Adviser Shares His Perspective on Climate Leadership, Interviewed by Elizabeth Kolbert, Yale360Enviro, August 13, 2009. "Six weeks after he was elected, President Obama nominated John Holdren to be his chief science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Many scientists hailed the timing of the nomination -- George W. Bush waited almost a year before naming Holdren's predecessor -- and the choice of Holdren, too, was seen as encouraging: He was trained in plasma physics, is... a Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard, is a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, [and] served as director of the Woods Hole Research Center... Kolbert: 'You've said many times that we have basically three options with regard to climate change: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering, and that what's at issue is what the mix among those three things is going to be. Now we do have finally a piece of legislation that has passed the House at least. I'm wondering if you can just talk about how it does, in terms of that mix'... Holdren: 'We're going to have to do a lot of both mitigation and adaptation in order to reduce the amount of suffering that results from climate change in the United States and around the world... Adaptation has been, I think, understudied and underinvested in comparison to mitigation... science still doesn't necessarily specify a particular outcome because economics is going to matter, values are going to matter, preferences are going to matter. What one wants from science advice to policy makers is that the science is right, that policy makers aren't making choices on the basis of misconception about science. But people shouldn't imagine that good science advice is going to take the politics out of policy. It can't. And that's a good thing.'"