We face two great crises with a world-wide pandemic and climate change that takes lives and livelihood away. While these two events can be connected scientifically (here and here), they can also be connected through a failure to enact science-based policy that could have diminished the threats early. A primary point of failure is that it falls on the scientists, who are not typically trained for this, to convince politicians and policy makers that there is indeed a problem. This at best slows the process and at worst, like the last four years, allows policy makers to outright ignore scientists and the science.
President-elect Joe Biden (love typing that) declared while campaigning, over and over and over again, that we need to listen to our scientists. Great! Wonderful! Then I respectfully ask you to sit them at the Big Table. Nominate a scientist, one with noted policy background, to a cabinet level position to prove your seriousness. The founding fathers had Benjamin Franklin, the colonies top scientist, at the table when drafting the Declaration of Independence. We need our modern day Ben Franklins to be in the room where it happens.
Go beyond having a physicist lead NASA, a geologist run the USGA, or a climatologist operate NOAA. Instead of having Dr. Fauci lead the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), have him run the whole HHS (if he is willing). Get knowledgeable people to positions where policy is set as opposed to having these smart people attempt to convince someone to convince someone to convince someone to do something.
One or more scientists could easily serve as Secretary of HHS, Interior, Energy, Transportation, and Commerce. If you are worried about a scientist having the right knowledge for Commerce, ask yourself what Wilber Ross knows about the mission and operations of the US Census, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US Patent Office, National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Weather Service, all part of Commerce.
Below the jump is a non-exhaustive list of candidates who have both the science and policy background to serve at a higher level than usually given to scientists. I have no connection to any of these people and have no doubt that there are other great candidates in and outside of the government. These are simply examples.
Bill Foster--George William Foster is an American businessman, physicist, and U.S. Representative for Illinois's 11th congressional district, winning the seat in 2012. He was previously the U.S. Representative for Illinois's 14th congressional district from 2008 to 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party.
Kate Kirby earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics from Harvard/Radcliffe College and her PhD from the University of Chicago. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard College Observatory she was appointed as Research Physicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Lecturer in the Harvard University Department of Astronomy. From 1988 to 2001, she served as an Associate Director at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, heading the Atomic and Molecular Physics Division. From 2001-2007, she served as Director of the Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (ITAMP) at Harvard-Smithsonian. From 2009-2014, she served as Executive Officer of the American Physical Society. In 2015, she was appointed the first Chief Executive Officer of the American Physical Society.
Marcia McNutt is a geophysicist and president of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2013 to 2016, she served as editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals. Prior to joining Science, she was director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from 2009 to 2013. During her tenure, the USGS responded to a number of major disasters, including earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and Japan, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. McNutt led a team of government scientists and engineers at BP headquarters in Houston who helped contain the oil and cap the well. She directed the flow rate technical group that estimated the rate of oil discharge during the spill’s active phase. For her contributions, she was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard’s Meritorious Service Medal.
Michael Mann was works in physics and geology, he obtained his Ph.D. in geophysics in 1998 from Yale University. Mann is currently Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science with a joint appointment in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science and the Department of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. He is also Director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center. Perhaps Mann’s single most famous scientific contribution has been his famous “hockey stick” graph. This was an illustration in a 1999 paper of Mann’s (with two co-authors) showing mean surface temperature anomaly (departures from an reference value, or “calibration period”) in C° for the Northern Hemisphere during the past millennium.
Susan Solomon holds a Ph.D. (1981) in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. She spent most of her career working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), first with the Chemistry and Climate Processes Group, and later with the Earth System Research Laboratory. In 2011, she moved to MIT, where she is currently Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (with a joint appointment in the Chemistry Department).
P.S. My first draft called it the Adult table, but it is clear that there are current no adults in the Cabinet. So I went with ‘big’.