Quote of the Day

Teryn Norris, from his piece "The Collapse of Competitiveness Policy" at the Huffington Post:

At the end of the Second World War, President Roosevelt wrote a letter requesting recommendations from Vannevar Bush, the first presidential science advisor and co-leader of the Manhattan Project, for the creation of a new federal enterprise for science and technology. "New frontiers of the mind are before us," the president wrote, "and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war we can create a fuller and more fruitful life." Today, in the face of great national challenges, we must defend and strengthen the federal innovation system once more.

Energetics Cliff Notes - Tuesday Edition

• T. Boone Pickens and Ted Turner in a video at Fox Business, discussing renewable energy and energy security.
• Here's a Forbes piece on "Nine more myths about electric cars" -- Robert Bryce should take a look.
• Australia has shelved its cap-and-trade program. PM Kevin Rudd blames "political opposition," and the plan will be put on hold unto Kyoto expires in 2012.
• Sir Richard Branson, of Virgin fortune, predicts $200/bbl oil prices in the near future.
• Valero Oil is raking in cash and using it to finance its war against AB 32.
• Spill, baby, spill -- The Economist reports on the recent rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana.
• Solar Feeds provides 10 reasons why Israel is becoming a global clean tech powerhouse.
• Mark Muro at Brookings offers his thoughts on how the COMPETES Act should be implemented.
• Philip Radford of Greenpeace trashes the state-preemption provisions in KGL.
• The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth a) needs a new name and b) has called for an international climate court.

The COMPETES Act and the road to discovery

Update: Cross-posted at the Breakthrough Generation Blog.

via The Breakthrough Blog: "The America COMPETES Act, originally passed in 2007 in response to major challenges to US economic competitiveness spelled out by the National Academies' seminal report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, is up for re-authorization."

The COMPETES Act is designed to strengthen R&D funding for "critical science and technology agencies," and so represents a vital component of any US action on energy policy. The process of decarbonizing the economy and replacing our ubiquitous carbon-fueled energy infrastructure is certainly the most massive and urgent technological challenge of our time, and we will need not just carbon prices and conservation but unprecedented scientific and social breakthroughs to guide our path. The best way to locate and realize those breakthroughs is through public and private activity, research and experimentation.

This whole story reminded me of a quotation from The West Wing, which I labored to dig up for my loyal readers:

"Great achievement has no road map. But the X-ray's pretty good. So is penicillin. And neither were discovered with any practical objective in mind. When the electron was discovered in 1897, it was useless; and now we have a whole world run on electronics. Hayden and Mozart never studied the classics - they couldn't. They invented them. "

- Dr. Dalton Milgate, "Dead Irish Writers"

The energy quest requires great achievement, practical objectives and a complete redesign of global infrastructure and economies. Dr. Milbank's invocation of the electron and his overall motivation in The West Wing is very appropriate for our discussion - his above soliloquy was intended to persuade a US Senator to invest $12 billion in particle physics for one simple purpose: discovery.

The fate of the COMPETES Act (along with RE-ENERGYSE, the climate/energy bills in Congress, and our nation's long-term effort on energy technology policy) will determine if America is serious about discovery, about competitiveness. If we fail, we will take our place in the new world order as a second-rate nation - once the standard bearer of free enterprise and scientific ambition, but now too economically short-sighted and politically gridlocked to rise to the challenges of our times.