Science and science policy will suffer greatly under President Trump. He’s a climate change denier, his VP is a young earth creationist. And that’s not even the half of it.
- Subsidies for renewable energy will be reduced or removed. Fracking and coal mining will be expanded, probably with the help of taxpayer dollars and/or on public land.
- Scientists from NOAA to NASA will be legally and personally harassed by the GOP in the form of endless hearings, frivolous subpoenas, and not-so-veiled threats.
- We will see a resurgence in “Biblical science,” from K thru 12, which will go way past creationism under a possible Ben Carson as Sec of EDU: anything that measures environmental damage will be downplayed and anything that helps polluters will be promoted under religious guise.
- Cabinet secretaries and heads of other public organizations with purview over science policy will be held by industry friendly lobbyists, religious fanatics, and personal, laughingly unqualified cronies of Donald Trump.
- Reproductive science and developmental biology will be pressured to produce conclusions consistent with alt-right propaganda.
- Ideological restrictions will be imposed on federal science efforts across the board.
Some of it will be challenged, some of it will be hard and take time to do. But much of it can be done by executive order.
Depressing, no? Now we have a more visceral understanding of what drives people to pull up stakes and emigrate to a strange new land. FWIW, I think fleeing the US only makes sense if your very life is directly in the crosshairs of GOP promises to repeal every word of Obamacare. For us science-y types, until Mars is ready and open for business, our best bet is to stay and fight for what’s right.