Fixing the Disconnects

A prose poem from the US poet laureate evokes a land of a mystery and delicate beauty that is somehow also recognizably our own.

Vannevar Bush profoundly influenced how all of us think and write about the technological foundations of the everyday human-built world. Bush was also deeply involved in scientific debates that still resonate today.

Open science hardware is cheaper, easier to maintain, and allows more people in more places to do science. To encourage broader use, funding agencies, universities, and international organizations should collaborate and incentivize researchers to develop and share hardware designs.

Mercenary spyware firms are running rampant in a digital ecosystem that is invasive by design, insecure, poorly regulated, and easily exploited. It’s time to set some limits.

Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome charitable foundation in the United Kingdom, discusses the state of the COVID-19 pandemic and what society must do to prepare for future global crises.

What spurs religious action on climate change? The answer lies more in dialogue than in doctrine.

Benefit-cost analysis for sustainability and resilience planning needs new tools to proactively meet community needs and ensure that projects are successful.

Only by recognizing the complexity of biodiversity and the ancient and ongoing evolutionary and ecological processes that drive it will it be possible to develop coherent policies for sustaining the planet’s biodiversity and the services that it provides.

The divergent fates of two community mini-grids in Nigeria illustrate why energy systems should be built to enable economic transformation.

The recent National Intelligence Estimate on climate change illustrates how traditional national security approaches must be expanded to contend with global environmental change.

As US science policy shifts toward a new model intended to stimulate economic growth, the country must create an institutional infrastructure for federal industrial policy.

To continue to lift its population out of poverty, India should give its energy ministries a new mandate—moving the country away from coal and toward a more sustainable economy.

Devised by economists and set by bureaucrats, the social cost of carbon has a powerful moral implication: the sacrifice society is willing to make for posterity.

More equitable approaches to preparation and relief efforts for wildfires and other disasters must include undocumented Latino and Indigenous migrants.

Today’s health innovation system doesn’t benefit everyone equally. To change it we need to think differently about expertise, innovation, and systems for ensuring access to crucial technologies.