President obamas top science adviser discusses the science and environmental initiatives of the Obama Administration and how they are changing in the Trump Administration. This is about an hour. Welcome, everyone. Thank you, thank you. Welcome to the American Association for the advancement of science, or aaas, as we call it, and welcome to our kickoff event for the historic march for science tomorrow. Im celeste rolfing, chief operating officer here. Its my distinct pleasure today to introduce our speaker, dr. John holdrun. John is a professor of environmental policy at the Kennedy School of government and professor of Environmental Science and policy in the department of earth and Planetary Sciences at harvard university. In 1995, john gave the acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the pug wash conferences on science and world affairs, an International Organization of scientists and public figures in which he served in various leadership positions. More recently for the last eight years, john was president obamas science adviser and director of the White House Office of science and Technology Policy, where he was my boss for a while. John is the longest serving president ial science adviser in the history of the position. His portfolio included all science and Technology Issues, including economic competitiveness, public health, energy and Climate Change, s. T. E. M. Education, the space program, homeland security, as well as coordination of research and Development Funding and advancing scientific integrity and openness in government. John is also a member of the National Academy of sciences, the National Academy of engineering, and is a former president of the aaas. Please join me in welcoming dr. John holdrun. Well, thank you very much. Great pleasure to be back in this room, where i gave a number of speeches in my official capacity. They were necessarily somewhat more restrained than todays remarks will be. And i want to stress, therefore, at the beginning that aaas bears no responsibility for the content of my remarks, nor do the other institutions named here. I am now a free person, able to speak my mind, as you will see. All right. I start with something that wouldnt have to be, shouldnt have to be explained, but one of the purposes of the science march tomorrow, i think, is to make sure that the wider public and to the extent possible our policy makers understand why science and Technology Matter, and im not going to read you this list, you can read it faster than i can speak it, but the essence of the matter is that science and Technology Matter to virtually every other issue on the national and global agenda. These challenges that we face in all these domains cannot be understood, never mind surmounted without very substantial inputs from science and technology, and, of course, it is also the case that science and technology are one of the characteristics that really makes us human, characterizes us as humans. The excitement of discovery, the excitement of invention, and the determination to improve the human condition by bringing insights from this domain to bear. The federal government has important roles in science and technology, and again, this is one of the messages of the science march. Science and technology will not flourish without the contributions of the federal government. Most basic research in natural and social sciences is done in universities and it gets done largely with funding provided by the federal government. Federal government provides about 55 of the support for basic research in this country. Most applied r d is applied in the private sector, about 70 of r d in this country is performed by private firms, but the federal government has important roles in that, particularly in shaping policies that either encourage or discourage private Sector Research and development. In addition, of course, theres the whole domain of the application of science and technology to the provision of public goods. And this is, again, a domain because they are public goods where the government has the fundamental primary responsibility. Nationally and homeland security, public health, environmental protection, those are public goods and its a public responsibility to see that they are provided and they cannot be adequately provided, again, without major contributions from science and technology. In addition, there is s. T. E. M. Education, science, technology, engineering, and mass education at the k through 12 level, of course, that is part of the overall education responsibility that in this country resides mainly with states and local schoolboards, but the fact is, federal programs and incentives around s. T. E. M. Education play an important supporting role, in addition, federally orchestrated corporate and philanthropic partnerships with states and School Districts to lift up s. T. E. M. Education are becoming ever more important. This was a major priority in the Obama Administration. President obama said early in his administration to his cabinet, i think one of the most single important things we can do to improve the future of our country is to lift our game in s. T. E. M. Education. And he gave instructions to the various people in his administration with leverage in that domain that he wanted it done. Policy for science and technology in the federal government, of course, is a shared responsibility. Its not just the white house. Its a shared responsibility of the executive branch with many departments, agencies, and offices that have related to science and technology and, of course, the congress the overarching congressional science and Technology Authority sits in the house science space and technology committee, the commerce committee, the relevant appropriations committees and subcommittees, including many im not going to take the time to mention, but, again, a number of them are listed here. Science and technology is dispersed very widely across the federal government, both in the legislative branch and in the executive branch, and you get an idea in this slide ranging from the department of defense, which includes darpa, the Defense Advanced Research project agency and the National Security agency, as well as the director of Defense Research and engineering, health and Human Services includes not just n. I. H. , but both the centers for Disease Control and prevention and the fda, also scienceheavy organizations and so on down the list. Many countries have ministries of science and technology that try to concentrate a lot of this stuff under one minister. We dont. We have this dispersed model where the bulk of the science and Technology Talent is spread across the executive branch, but a relatively small office of science and Technology Office in the white house tries to oversee it all and distill whats in it for the president and his senior advisers, and thats shown in this picture. The center of science and Technology Policy in the white house since the second eisenhower term where the office of science and technology, ost, was initiated since 1976. Its been osdp, the office of science and Technology Policy, ost had always been created by executive order and it was 1976 president nixon had abolished the predecessor organization ost and the corresponding Advisory Committee then called psac, fired his science adviser because he didnt like the advice he was getting and he liked even less that it had leaked and when president ford came into office, president ford understood that the institution would be more durable if it was created by statute rather than created by executive order which each president has to reissue and president ford got his colleagues in the congress to pass the statute that created ostp and that is why, by the way, the ostp director has to be Senate Confirmed because the office is created by statute and the statute specifies that the director is a senateconfirmed position and as many as four associate directors are Senate Confirmed. At least one of which is in the room. The associate director for environment in the clinton second term. The ostp works very closely with other entities in the white house as well as with the departments and agencies across the federal government that ive already mentioned, particularly closely with the entities in this great circle, semicircle on the slide. One of the big responsibilities is to work closely with the office of management and budget in developing the president s budget submitted to congress for the science and Technology Activities of the government and one of the things that is to be regretted about the fact that President Trump has not yet appointed a director of ostp or a science adviser is the budget that was released last month by the Trump White House understandably showed no sign whatsoever of any input from folks who understood science. There was nobody there in the top positions to work with the director of omb in developing that budget. Ostp basically has three responsibilities. The first is the one is science and technology for policy and that distinction was created by the late great harvey brooks, the godfather of science and technology. And science and technology for policy means the advice that scientists and technologists provide to government leaders about how science and Technology May be germane to the policy issues on their plates, whatever those may be. Whether it be Economic Policy or Health Policy or National Security policy, its desirable for the president or his or her top advisers to know what the relevant scientific and technological understandings are germane to that domain and thats what science and technology for policy are about. The other side, policy for science and technology includes the point i just made about working with the offices of management and budget and the departments and agencies and other White House Offices on the r d budgets and policies related to the r d budgets. Also policies on s. T. E. M. Education and tech workforce issues, interAgency Science and Technology Initiatives, scientific integrity and transparency. The use of science and technology to improve the operation of the government itself. All of those fall under the heading of policy for science and technology, and the third function is to serve as the president s emissaries in the science and Technology Space representing the president on science and Technology Issues with other white house officials and all of the executive Branch Agencies that have science and technology roles, with the congress, with the nongovernmental science and Technology Community both nationally and internationally and Foreign Government officials who have responsibilities for science and Technology Policy in their countries. And these interactions are twoway streets. Emissaries and ambassadors are supposed to not only represent and explain the policies of their boss, but theyre also supposed to collect insights from this wider constituency that may be valuable in the exercise of the president s responsibilities in science and technology. As part of those rather broad responsibilities, the ostp director and his or her team provide white House Oversight for the National Science foundation and for nasa. This is want widely understood, but those are two big science agencies that do not sit in a Cabinet Department and their connection to the president is through the ostp director. The ostp chairs and manages the interagency National Science and technology counsel, the nstc and oversees the initiatives and those include the Research Program and the National Nanotechnology initiative and many others that cut across lots of departments and agencies and usgcrp and 13 departments and agencies, total budget of 2. 7 billion a year. The National NanoTechnology Initiative about 20 Department Agencies and offices budget again in the multiple billions. So that oversight responsibility is actually very significant. Ostp director and the team, cochair support the president s council of advisers on science and technology, pcast, about which ill say a bit more in the moment, but the prestory, pcast, as its predecessor psac, president s science adviser committee, are people that keep their day jobs and leaders in the Innovation Community around the country and keep their day job and conduct studies if are the president on complex issues in which access to this outside, Wider Community expertise is important. The only member who doesnt keep his or her day job outside government is the president s science adviser and ostp director who serves as cochair of pcast, and the ostp also has the responsibility of implementing the ministerial level bilateral science and Technology Cooperation agreements that the United States has with six countries the ones listed here, brazil, china, india, japan, the republic of korea and russia and supporting the state department in the implementation of the 40 other bilateral science and technology agreements, which we have with other countries. So what did obama do in the domain of science and technology and also particularly environment . He famously said in his first inaugural address, january 20, 2009. Notice the size of the crowd, please. He said he said we will restore science to its rightful place in my administration. What did that mean . What did he do . It entailed, first of all, he appointed the first ever u. S. Chief Technology Officer, the first chief informational officer, and the first Data Scientist in the history of the United States. He restored the assistant to the president title to the ostp director and that title provides direct access to the president. The people with that title are the direct reports. If you dont have that title youre not a direct report to the president and my unfortunate predecessor and the late John Mar Berger was not given that title to george w. Bush and he did not have direct access and he managed to do a very creditable job despite the lack of that access. He got many important things done without direct access to the president , but you cant do anything that a president ial science adviser should do if youre not whispering in the president s ear, and he also, president obama also bestowed that title on his new chief Technology Officer and the cto, as well, was a direct report to the president of the United States. He restored the full compliment of full ostp Senate Confirmed associate directors and the previous director had two, one for science and one for technology omitting associate directors for environment and for National Security and international affairs. With the president s support, we built up the ostp staff from the 45 at the end of the george w. Bush administration to the 135 at the end of the Obama Administration. Some people think thats only because we worked a third as hard, but in fact, its because the president gave us three times as much to do and we had to work half again as hard. This is really important. The president made clear that he wanted his science and Technology Officials of appropriate rank to be at the table for policy discussions where insights about science and technology might be germane. That meant that i would be in the meetings of the National Security council on all topics where science and technology could possibly be development. I would be in the meetings of the National Policy council and my deputies would be in the principal meetings and the next level down. Extremely important. If the scientists and engineers in the white