I am exploring the concept of organizing a science-motivated bundling of campaign donations for the 2012 presidential campaign. The science motivations are:
1. Acceptance of human-caused climate change, combined with a willingness to take significant steps to combat the problem.
2. Support for increased science funding by the federal government.
3. Depoliticizing science in government (keeping political actors from altering scientific judgments and from muzzling scientists).
I think this could be a potentially-valuable step to highlight the importance of science. It's abundantly clear at this point that no major Republican candidate for president meets the criteria (Huntsman comes closest, but rejects taking action). So this is about Obama, but really about trying to help/push Obama and the Democrats to realize that they get support to the extent that they support science.
So this is just an initial post - I'll have to think about and research the subject more. I won't need to run myself in 2012 though, and this could be a way for science-motivated people to have an effect and be recognized.
I wonder if you should drop the GW theme on the grounds that what is really needed is rational evaluation of evidence. That theme runs through so many things. Part 3 of your proposal sort-of addresses that, but not really. What we actually need is politicians to be making judgements based on good evidence rather than head-in-the-sand only-listen-to-my-friends kind of stuff.
ReplyDeleteI could see that argument. OTOH, I think people who care about science see this as a very important thing blocked by denialism.
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