News Updates

In addition to warning about current and future damages that global warming will inflict on the United States, the recently released National Climate Assessment provided a guide to ways the country will have to adapt. Issues has already explored some things that should be done, with analysts proposing a set of principles that governments, communities, businesses, and researchers should heed, as well as a blueprint for ramping up the technical and institutional resiliency of infrastructure to meet the unprecedented extreme weather events expected with climate change.

A researcher in China claims to have helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies, setting off alarms about what, if true, would represent a major shift in science and ethics. Indeed, it was the prospect of just such use of a powerful new gene-editing tool called CRISPR/Cas9 that catalyzed an international summit on the technology, and Issues captured some of the presentations in a series of articles examining its social, legal, ethical, and policy implications now and into the future. A second international summit on human gene editing begins November 27 in Hong Kong and will be streamed live.

New detailed evidence suggests that solar geoengineering—reducing global warming by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to dim the effects of sunlight—would be possible and inexpensive, but the researchers say they made no judgment about whether the technology should be deployed. In that regard, a longtime researcher in the field recently argued in Issues that the time is right for launching a substantial international research program on solar geoengineering, and he proposed some basic principles that should guide the scientific community and government.

Big technology-rich metropolitan areas have prospered in recent years while smaller cities and rural areas often lack tech resources and have languished, says a new report from the Brookings Institution, adding that new strategies are needed to ward off uneven development. One private investment firm is already on the job, and in Issues an official recently described its efforts to promote innovative start-ups and encourage diverse entrepreneurs in underserved areas.

Germany has made considerable gains in harvesting solar and wind energy, but is still likely to miss its goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions even as consumers are paying more for electricity, a US energy expert who helped manage a German utility group said recently in Issues. And there are worries that California may be on the same path, with an economist telling the Los Angeles Times that both have been leaders in energy innovation but “both have experienced a period of energy cost increases that are starting to create some worries of a pending backlash.”

The United States should take the lead in developing technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, says a leading economist and former presidential adviser, adding that doing so will not only help limit climate change but also create new markets for businesses and good jobs for workers. Two experts on carbon capture made this case earlier in Issues, arguing that carbon emissions should be viewed as a waste management problem and outlining promising options, including deployment of mass-produced synthetic tree farms, for solving it.

In a move thought likely to speed cell-based meat products to dinner tables, the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration have agreed to a joint regulatory framework for over seeing the production process from beginning to end. And none too soon, as experts on sustainable engineering have argued in Issues that society will need to consider a variety of political, economic, and social realignments that may well arrive with the new technology.

A scientific advocacy group just released a report warning that many US nuclear power plants face being retired abruptly for economic reasons. The group argues that plants meeting high safety standards should be kept running while alternatives for reducing carbon emissions are deployed and that the government should adopt policies to protect the plants’ immediate survival. Issues has published proposals for reinvigorating the nuclear enterprise (here and here), and a possible modest role for the military in aiding commercial operations.

Not long ago in Issues, an analyst painted an emerging space trend: more private businesses working globally on an array of activities, often beating out traditional government-run programs. And new brush strokes are adding ever more texture, as a scrappy US-based company is launching an innovative rocket from its private spaceport in New Zealand with the promise of offering routine access to orbit, and eager start-ups in China aim at bringing added competition to the party.

The former technology leader who is overseeing Europe’s efforts to define ethical principles that should underpin any future regulation of artificial intelligence favors a slow but steady approach, arguing for the need to “make sure that we do regulate when it’s the right time but we don’t do it prematurely when we would actually create impediments.” This aligns with ideas presented in Issues as two analysts warned against overly broad regulations on AI that would slow progress on beneficial applications and called for a high-level “cyber age commission” to nurture a nationwide public dialogue about where and when regulations would be warranted.