What Is To Be Done?

In June 2004, a westbound Union Pacific Railroad freight train in Macdona, Texas, struck the midpoint of an eastbound BNSF Railway Company freight train as it was leaving the main line to enter a parallel siding. The derailment caused a car loaded with pressurized, liquefied chlorine to be punctured, creating a cloud of chlorine gas more than a quarter-mile in diameter.

“We haven’t thought our way through this challenge, especially when it comes to these industries that have been so hard hit. Now that we’re in the next phase, we need to be geared up for something that’s going to last another couple years, and that money may be better used to start preparing people for new jobs.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into stark relief the nation’s urgent need for timely, reliable scientific information. Though information on the pandemic is in ample supply, less readily available is reliable analysis of what this flood of information means.

Between Beijing’s soaring climate change agenda and its lackluster implementation lies a political paradox, and understanding it requires delving into the institutional constraints embedded in China’s climate and environmental politics at the local and national level.

Declining to talk about industrial policies has not meant that the United States does not pursue them by other names and other means. It does mean that thoughtful approaches to industrial policy, supported by sound analysis, evidence-based reasoning, and vigorous open debate, have rarely been pursued.

This evolution will change the character of work and the firm as profoundly as industrial automation did in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with correspondingly profound implications for individuals, businesses, and policy-makers.

When Americans talk about automation, they tend to ask first how many jobs are at risk, or more broadly, how many jobs will there be, who will do them, and where will they be located. These are the wrong questions.

Inspired by Endless Frontier, a broad set of organizations, incentives, and relationships evolved after World War II. To meet the challenges we now face, we need a generational advance in our innovation ecosystem with new methods, new participants, and new incentives.

Just as geologists were realizing that beach development damaged beaches, the government began working to support development that in turn generated new demands for still more infrastructure on the beach. As a result, today the nation faces a shattered coastal landscape and continuing bills for spending to prop up all of this beachfront building.

The United States is in the midst of a historically catastrophic response to COVID-19 that should raise questions about Bush’s continuing influence on science policies. The central metaphor of the endless frontier draws on an influential but severely dated and misleading conception of American history, which hides challenges and problems in the guise of idyllic imagery.

As the pandemic continues to disproportionately infect and kill people in prisons and jails, the current system of mass incarceration must be reevaluated.