From the outset, understanding climate change and its potential remedies and responses has required a large amount of high-quality data and analysis—from satellites and remote sensing to supercomputers and Earth system modeling. Through two budget proposals, President Donald Trump has signaled a stark departure from the historical trend of federal funding for research activities that inform the public, academia, business leaders, policymakers, and the global community about climate change and energy systems. Congress acted in a bipartisan fashion to rescue—and even increase—funding for many such programs in the recent appropriations bill, but going forward, the devil will be in the details of how the Trump administration diminishes, reprograms, or otherwise interferes in these vital climate and energy data and research initiatives.
Please join the Center for American Progress for a discussion of these pressing issues and how crucial these programs are to monitoring and combating the effects of climate change.
Remarks:
Rep. Paul D. Tonko (D-NY)
In conversation:
The Honorable Ernest J. Moniz, former U.S. Secretary of Energy
John Podesta, founder, Center for American Progress
Panelists:
Joel Clement, Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School; Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists
Deborah Lawrence, Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
Kei Koizumi, Visiting Scholar in Science Policy, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Moderator:
Bina Venkataraman, Director of Global Policy Initiatives, Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University; lecturer, MIT; Future Tense Fellow, New America