Science called key to economic, energy, health care challenges
By Robert S. Boyd | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Science and technology are key to solving the interconnected challenges of the economy, energy, climate change and health care, President Barack Obama's science advisers said this week.
"This president believes that science and technology are central to the problems facing the nation," biologist Eric Lander said at a two-day inaugural meeting of the blue-ribbon President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
The group is made up of 21 top scientists, engineers, university presidents and Nobel Prize-winning researchers who're charged with providing independent advice to the White House about how science and technology can best serve the nation. Amid the storm of political bickering in Washington over energy, climate and health policies, the hope is that their deliberations could provide some sensible, fact-based, nonpartisan guidance.
"There are many challenges ahead, but also huge opportunities (to) create new businesses and new jobs," said council co-Chairman John Holdren, who's also the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Holdren said that the Obama administration would give the highest priority to science and technology related to economic recovery, health care, national security and "the intersection of energy and the environment."
"The hardest part of the problem — the kernel of our predicament — is how to provide the affordable energy that's going to be needed, not just in the United States but throughout the world, without wrecking the climate," Holdren said.
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