News Updates

As temporary director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, Alondra Nelson wants to ensure that the nation’s science and technology complex “benefits more people and includes more people,” she tells Politico. To that challenge she brings a new perspective—as a sociologist and a Black woman. In an interview with Issues, Nelson talks about creating “a new social compact for science and technology policy” that would use social science to improve policymaking. A key aim: “to address head-on disparities and inequities that exist because of things that have happened in the past and continue to happen in the present.”

As the United States sees more drivers over age 75—now numbering at least 17 million and going up with the surge of baby boomers—a Washington Post article asks whether they can be kept safe. In Issues, A. James McKnight offers answers. He first notes that older people generally aren’t worse drivers than younger people, but are simply more fragile and thus more likely to be injured in an accident. Ways to improve their safety, he writes, include making automobiles safer; making roads safer; offering remedial training in drivers’ skills; and developing alternative means of transportation, both public and private.

Many US communities facing flood threats are seeking federal help to fund new infrastructure, but there is some debate about what approaches work best to protect against flooding. In Issues, Thaddeus Miller, Mikhail Chester, and Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson offer a general guide, not only for water projects but for energy and transportation. Given that climate change may bring unprecedented weather events, they write, government at all levels should focus on developing and deploying infrastructure that provides technological, social, institutional, and ecological resilience. One example: building “safe-to-fail” systems that do not promise absolute protection but result in limited damage when they do fail.

A prototype mechanical tree that captures carbon dioxide directly from the air is sprouting at Arizona State University. Its developers envision a future when forests of the trees are busy 24/7 capturing carbon dioxide, a driver of climate change, and redirecting it to permanent storage or practical applications. In Issues, Klaus S. Lackner, who designed the tree, and Christophe Jospe examine the broad landscape of direct air capture technologies. The methods work, but are expensive. The authors call on government or philanthropies to fund their continued development and demonstration until they are so affordable that their widespread use gains public approval.

As an ecologist and evangelical Christian, Rick Lindroth wants to redirect the tendency of evangelicals to downplay climate change, the Washington Post reports. This makes him “part of a small but growing movement of people talking about climate change through the lens of hope motivated by faith.” Such efforts are vital, Forrest Clingerman and Robin Globus Veldman argue in Issues. “Religions are places where conversations happen and values emerge,” they write. Seeing religions this way “can provide policymakers, scientists, and the public with a more nuanced understanding of what communities of all kinds think, feel, and want to do about climate change.”

The US Navy plans to develop a fleet of robot ships operated by artificial intelligence, according to the Washington Post. The initiative, reportedly to counter China’s gains in antiship missile technology, might yield a more effective and cheaper way to increase US sea power while putting fewer sailors at risk. In Issues, Bruce Berkowitz surveys US plans for “unmanned maritime systems,” and he calls for government officials to promote discussion of policies covering their use. Adding urgency, he writes, other countries—and foreign companies—will likely build robot vessels, and US operations “will create precedents that other nations might cite.”

Following bushfires in 2019–20 that killed an estimated 64,000 koalas, Australia designated them an endangered species. Now researchers propose that the iconic marsupials can be restored using “assisted reproductive technology” to freeze koala sperm for impregnating females in breed-for-release programs. In Issues, John O’Brien writes that this epitomizes the range of technologies being used or developed to stem biodiversity loss. “Indeed,” he writes, “the willing and even aggressive adoption by conservation biologists of novel tools to tackle the multiple threats faced by habitats and the biota they harbor will be crucial to counteract widespread species extinction and ecosystem collapse.”

The United States continues to wrestle with how to permanently store radioactive waste generated at nuclear power plants. Efforts are now aimed at building interim storage facilities that can handle waste currently dispersed at dozens of locations, the Washington Post reports. For such a stopgap approach to be fair, Başak Saraç-Lesavre argues in Issues, the public must be closely involved in deciding whether and where to site nuclear waste facilities. The government is moving in this direction, the Post notes. The goal, Saraç-Lesavre writes, should be “a political process that can put the decision back where it belongs: with the consent of the governed.”