Thought for Food

Cha-Ching Leads to Cha-Change

In a lecture at the Solar Summit yesterday, The New York Times science writer Andy Revkin showed us this very interesting graph that charts science research and development spending by the US government since 1953.*

• On the left, with that surge of yellow (ie, Space), we see Sputnik (Holy red rover! The Russians made it to space!).
• On the right, in that rising tide of blue (Health), we see the war on cancer.
• In the middle, with that little green surge (Energy), we see the energy crisis of the late 1970s.

What this proves is that throwing money at a problem may not be terribly efficient but it gets results. More yellow spending led to a man on the moon. More blue, and now cancer is far from a death sentence.

Imagine what we could do if we upped the green, now, when we need it most. (Imagine where we would be if the last four administrations had kept it at Carter-era levels.)

* This doesn’t include any military-related R & D. For some perspective, last year the government spent:

• $1 billion in energy research
• $70 billion on “future thinking defense research” – ie, gadgets and whiz-bang doohickies (that doesn’t include your run-of-the-mill fighter jet / smart bomb / invisible force field research).