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LOSING THE PEACE...FOREVER (Long: Loka Alert 2-8) (fwd)
LOSING THE PEACE...FOREVER
Post-Cold War Science & Technology Policy in Human Terms
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Friends and Colleagues:
This is one in an occasional series of electronic postings
on democratic politics of science and technology, issued by the
Loka Institute. If you would like to be added to, or removed
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to <loka@amherst.edu>.
Although fate has moved us to issue this Loka Alert
immediately on the heels of its predecessor (Loka Alert 2-7), we
distribute Alerts _on average_ only about once per month.
Cheers to all,
Dick Sclove
Executive Director, The Loka Institute, P.O. Box 355,
Amherst, MA 01004-0355, USA
Tel 413 253-2828; Fax 413 253-4942; Email: resclove@amherst.edu
World Wide Web: http://www.amherst.edu/~loka/
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LOSING THE PEACE...FOREVER
Post-Cold War Science & Technology Policy in Human Terms
Copyright 1995 by Richard Sclove
This memo reviews recent developments in U.S. science and
technology policy from the standpoint of a concern with social
needs, environmental sustainability, and democracy. (In part,
the memo fleshes out themes treated cursorily in Loka Alert 2-7).
I do so with some trepidation. The "Republican revolution" in
Congress is seeking to destroy/accomplish so much so fast that it
is extremely hard to stay abreast of the details, and harder
still to grasp their broader significance. But it is vital to
make the attempt. Even while the details continue to shift
daily, I believe the snapshot presented here conveys a useful
sense of Republican ambitions and momentum.
(Note: if you find factual errors or important omissions,
please let me know via e-mail to resclove@amherst.edu; if these
prove substantial, we will issue a corrected revision.)
*****************************************************************
CONTENTS OF THIS ALERT
I. Introduction (1 page)
II. The New Playing Field (1 page)
III. Some Details (8 pages)
a. Worker Health & Safety
b. Consumer Product Safety
c. Environmental Protection
d. Technology Assessment
e. Basic vs. Applied Research
f. National Labs
g. Transportation
h. Weapons & Defense Conversion
i. Dept. of Commerce
j. Telecommunications
IV. Democracy Derailed (1 page)
V. How to Participate & Help (1 page)
VI. Bibliography (2 pages)
*****************************************************************
I. INTRODUCTION
Suppose Congress went berserk and adopted a macabre,
dystopian vision for America's future: Deny funds for analyzing
environmental problems, and prohibit the Environmental Protection
Agency from enforcing laws. Quit investigating workplace
hazards, and license corporations to sell defective products.
Subsidize highways but not Amtrak. Slash funding for energy
conservation and for wind and solar power research. Drive blind
into the future by abolishing the U.S. Office of Technology
Assessment.
But don't stop there. Build an information superhighway
with express lanes for advertizing and for exporting jobs to low-
wage countries, but no on-ramps for the poor. Make it harder for
students to get a loan or for unemployed workers to learn new
skills. And, oh yes, to ensure that none of this lowers taxes or
the deficit, spend extravagantly on B-2 bombers the Pentagon
doesn't want plus an ineffectual Star Wars system that will
undermine vital peacekeeping treaties.
Is this science policy as fantasized by Beavis and Butthead?
A David Letterman parody? No, it is real-world science and
technology policy as embodied in actual bills now working toward
the President's desk.
For instance, Congress has endorsed a plan to slash federal
support for nonmilitary scientific research by 35% over the next
five years. Spending bills wending their way through Congress
translate that ambition into concrete terms. While the Pentagon
wins a 5.9% hike in its research and development (R&D) budget for
the coming year, the House has voted to cut research oriented
toward civilian needs by 7.9% overall. And the cuts go much
deeper in specific areas, such as research on global
environmental change and on renewable energy sources (which drop
32% and 38%, respectively, under House appropriations for FY
1996). (AAAS 1995; NRDC 1995b; Brown 1995).
The bottom line: if Congressional Republicans have their way
with science and technology policy, we are going to find
ourselves living in a nation (and upon a planet) that is less
healthy, safe, secure, sustainable, just, civic-minded, or
democratic. In narrow material terms, the U.S. could remain
prosperous. But that prosperity will represent a statistical
artifact. Many, arguably most, Americans will suffer a decline
in their standard of living as recent trends toward deteriorating
job quality, lower wages, and inequality deepen. (This policy
review is not, however, partisan. True, Republican science
policy promises to do great harm. But Democratic policies were
better primarily in comparison, not in absolute terms.)
II. THE NEW PLAYING FIELD
In the aftermath of the Cold War, Democrats and Republicans
quickly reached a consensus that science and technology should be
directed to advancing American competitiveness in global markets.
This is, of course, a version of trickle-down theory: if U.S.
businesses do well in world markets, so the story goes, Americans
generally will benefit. Apart from the likelihood that only a
_narrow spectrum_ of Americans will benefit (Rattner 1995), this
theory dwells exclusively on economic considerations, neglecting
entirely ancillary social, political, and environmental impacts
(Sclove 1995b).
Where the two political parties disagree is not on the ends,
but on the means. The Clinton Administration has envisioned the
federal government as an active partner with business in
undertaking research and in promoting innovation. In contrast,
the basic Republican strategy involves reduced overt government
expenditure, while using deregulation and tax incentives to
foster aggressive, market-driven innovation. (Neither approach
sees any need for worker, community, or public-interest group
representation in science and technology decisions.)
The major exception to the aforementioned rule-of-thumb
concerns the military. Since 1993 the Administration has been
working toward a 50:50 ratio of federal military to civilian R&D
expenditure (down from the Reagan-Bush highpoint in 1988, which
favored the military 2:1). The new Republican Congress is now
attempting to reverse the Clinton trajectory, augmenting the
Pentagon R&D budget while paring back civilian R&D budgets.
But deeper perniciousness lurks in the details. The basic
state of play is this: During the first 100 days of the
Republican Congress, the House and/or Senate passed a number of
bills seeking to implement portions of House Speaker Newt
Gingrich's "Contract with America." Relatively few of these have
made it through House-Senate conference to the President's desk
for signature or a veto. For instance, in February the House
approved a bill requiring agencies to perform elaborate cost-
risk-benefit analyses prior to promulgating any new environmental
or health regulations. This requirement would make it extremely
difficult to adopt regulatory safeguards, and would further
empower large corporations with the ability to hire their own
expert analysts. A companion Senate bill has been stalled;
however, Democratic Senator Charles Robb has recently begun
negotiating its passage with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole
(NRDC 1995c).
Meanwhile, the Republican Congress is pursuing many
substantive policy changes via the annual appropriations process.
Thirteen spending bills and a gigantic budget reconciliation bill
(which adjusts approved government expenditures to available
revenue) are now working their tortuous way toward enactment.
Only three have made it through joint House-Senate approval; the
President recently vetoed the one that pays for Congress's own
operation, while signing into law the appropriations bills for
military construction and for Department of Agriculture programs.
The remaining bills are still caught up in various stages of
Congressional process, with the House often (but not always)
ahead of the Senate in supporting radical policy shifts.
III. SOME DETAILS:
a. WORKER HEALTH & SAFETY: The House Appropriations
Committee has approved FY 1996 cuts in the Office of Safety &
Health Administration (OSHA) budget of 15.5%, while slashing the
agency's critical enforcement programs by 33%. The bill also
restricts OSHA's ability to carry out its mandate to protect
workers, prohibiting action on ergonomics standards. The Safety
and Health Improvement and Regulatory Reform Act of 1995 would
force OSHA to close roughly half of its 104 offices nationwide.
The Act would also curtail the agency's power to penalize
workplaces that fail to meet federal health and safety standards,
shifting its emphasis to consultation. The National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) would be abolished, and
the Federal Mine Safety Health Act (MSHA) would be repealed
(Maraniss and Weisskopf 1995).
Apart from the immediate cut-back on enforcing workplace
safety standards, over time these changes would mean less
business incentive to invest in research or technologies that
protect workers' health.
b. CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY: Congressional Republicans are
seeking to place strict caps on the punitive damages that can be
awarded in product liability lawsuits. The Senate has passed a
bill that would limit punitive awards to twice the amount of
compensatory damages in lawsuits involving products such as
drugs, cars, toys, and medical devices. A companion House bill
is even more far-reaching: it would apply to all civil
litigation, including medical malpractice. No date has been set
for a House-Senate conference, because Newt Gingrich has said he
will not compromise (Weiser 1995).
Under either bill, the U.S. legal system would lose much of
its longstanding ability to deter corporate malfeasance.
Manufacturers' incentive to produce safe and reliable products or
to take unsafe products off the market would be severely reduced.
Instead, firms will be able to anticipate possible legal damages
and factor them into their financial planning as a routine cost
of doing business.
c. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: Stand aside if you care about a
healthy environment for yourself and generations to come. For
example:
If the House has its way, the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) budget will be cut 1/3, while new legislative
language will bar the EPA from implementing key provisions of
environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Federal Water
Pollution Control Act, and the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic
Act. The Senate Appropriations Committee has passed a bill
reducing the EPA budget 23% and including similar restrictive
language (Kripke 1995).
A House-Senate conference recently completed negotiations on
a Department of Interior spending bill in which "numerous
provisions favor the development of natural resources on public
lands over conservation programs," reports the New York Times. A
broader omnibus budget reconciliation bill on which Congress has
just voted would open the coastal plain of the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas exploration. In
addition, the bill (as formulated several weeks ago) greatly
reduces Department of Energy (DOE) conservation programs (such as
financing for low-income home weatherization), prohibits DOE from
issuing new standards for energy efficiency in appliances, cuts
the budget of the National Biological Service, and places a
moratorium on listing new species under the Endangered Species
Act.
Back in March 1995 the House approved a bill requiring the
federal government to pay landowners to comply with the Clean
Water Act's wetland protection provisions and with the Endangered
Species Act. On Oct. 18 the Senate Judiciary Committee held
hearings on a bill (S. 605) that would require the government to
pay polluters to stop. Meanwhile, ten states have already
enacted "takings" laws requiring taxpayers to compensate property
owners if environmental restrictions reduce their property's
market value. In today's climate of fiscal austerity, such laws
produce a chilling effect on environmental protection. (NRDC
1995c; Schuchat 1995).
Three scientists just won the Nobel Prize for their research
elucidating the role of CFCs (chloroflourocarbons) in depleting
the earth's atmospheric ozone shield. Meanwhile, U.S.
Representative John Doolittle (R-CA) has introduced a bill to
postpone a ban on CFC production, arguing that "there has not
been a sufficient showing of scientific evidence to justify" the
ban. Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX) has introduced his own bill
that would repeal the ban altogether. The names of the two
sponsors of these bills say it best: "Doolittle" and "DeLay."
As to research on global environmental issues, the House has
voted to cut funding in the coming year 37% for NASA's Earth
Observation System, 30% for the Dept. of Energy's global climate
change research, and 21% for climate and air quality research at
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, while banning the
EPA altogether from conducting research on long-term global
climate change. (Representative Dana Rohrabacher's (R-CA)
charges that global warming is at best "unproven and at worst
liberal claptrap.") The Senate on the other hand, has almost met
the President's requests for funding such research. (AAAS 1995;
Cordes 1995; NRDC 1995a and 1955b).
The Administration has threatened to veto bills rolling back
the nation's commitment to environmental protection. However,
Congress is attempting to force the President's hand by
presenting him with an anti-environmental budget bill that also
includes the money needed to keep the EPA in operation.
None of this is to say that the nation's previous
environmental policies were perfect. But the current Republican
overhaul has nothing to do with learning from mistakes or
improvement; it represents a wholesale assault on the basic
concepts of environmental protection, restoration, and
sustainability. Over the long run, the weakening of
environmental programs means that companies will have less
incentive to invest in clean technologies or in environmental
clean-up. Today's children and their children will inherit a
technological world hard-wired for unsustainability.
d. TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT: For two decades, whenever you (or
your Congressman) wanted to know what lay ahead in socially
significant technological development, you could count on finding
useful background information in reports issued by the
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). No more.
Congress shut the OTA down at the end of September. Among other
things, this reveals starkly the cynicism of Republican attempts
to mandate cost-risk-benefit analysis for new regulations; a
Congress seriously committed to sound analysis wouldn't start by
killing off its most talented analytic agency (especially not an
agency that cost just $23 million annually--about 1% of the price
tag for a single unneeded B-2 bomber).
Of course, OTA could have done a better job of exploring
participatory approaches to technology assessment. But OTA's
shortcomings in this regard played no role whatsoever in the
decision to abolish it made by a Congress that has shown itself
utterly indifferent to expanding popular participation in
governance. (20 of OTA's professional staff members have formed
an independent nonprofit corporation, the Institute for
Technology Assessment, in a brave bid to preserve some national
capability for conducting technology assessments. The chances of
finding financing for such an enterprise are not especially
high.)
e. BASIC VS. APPLIED RESEARCH: One tenet of contemporary
Republican science policy is that industry should take the lead
doing _applied_ research, while government concentrates
especially on conducting or funding _basic_ research (which
industry will underfund because it is speculative and hard to
appropriate commercially). For this reason, federal agencies
most closely identified with conducting basic research--the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science
Foundation (NSF)--are faring relatively well in Congressional
appropriations. The House has voted to cut NSF's budget just
2.3% for FY 1996, while awarding NIH a (relatively) whopping 6.2%
increase. The Senate Appropriations Committee has weighed in
more modestly with a proposed 0.9% cut in the NSF budget, and a
3.2% increase for NIH (AAAS 1995).
There are many ironies and inconsistencies in relying
heavily on the basic/applied distinction in science policymaking.
For instance, the House is out to savage research on global
environmental change, even though industry is obviously not going
to rush in and pick up the slack.
Second--a point that scientific leaders do not usually
discuss in public--the preponderance of scholarly research on the
relationship between basic science vs. applied research/
technological development has found that the distinctions are
increasingly meaningless in practice or--when they are not--there
is more evidence for new technology driving basic science than
vice versa. This suggests that if Republicans want to accelerate
innovation (something I don't advocate, absent real democratic
processes for considering the social consequences of alternative
technologies), they've got their policy approach backwards. For
more technological innovation _and_ more basic science, they
should be most concerned with encouraging or funding direct
investment in technological development, not basic science.
Third, consider that big budget increase for NIH. This is
not the worst idea in the world. For instance, by augmenting
President Clinton's NIH budget proposal across the board, the
House winds up boosting the budget 6.9% for AIDS research and
9.0% for minority health and alternative medicine. On the other
hand, the House is paying for the NIH increase with deep cuts in
federal education and training programs. Is their overall
objective really to improve national health? If so, why would
Congress gut environmental and worker safety programs (which will
invariably increase disease and injury rates), heroically defend
the tobacco industry, and go gunning aggressively for Medicare
and Medicaid (which deliver essential health services to the poor
and elderly)? It is common knowledge that prevention is the best
medicine, but this Congress is tossing prevention to the lions,
and jabbering on about capping medical costs while ignoring the
role of health R&D in driving up those costs through
preoccupation with capital-intensive, non-preventive medical
approaches.
f. NATIONAL LABS: With the end of the Cold War, the national
weapons labs and multipurpose labs funded by the Energy and
Defense departments have become, in the apt words of Rep. Todd
Tiahrt (R-KS), "programs in search of rationales." Downsizing is
already in the works, but the political will is lacking to
radically reconsider the labs' size, structure and purpose
(Lawler 1995; "DOE Labs" 1995). Given that the nation spends
about $25 billion a year on more than 700 national laboratories
of all sorts, the end of the Cold War should have occasioned a
serious popular reexamination of the need, structure and purpose
of a national lab system. But neither the President nor Congress
(which is delighted to wax radical when it comes to unraveling
the nation's social welfare net) has shown any stomach for
tackling this golden opportunity to ferret out anachronistic
waste and pork on a monumental scale.
Some Republicans have, to their credit, urged the President
to shut down the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California, consolidating nuclear weapons research at the Los
Alamos and Sandia national labs in New Mexico. But Mr. Clinton
rejected this sensible first step toward adjusting to post-Cold
War realities. (The President presumably has his eye on
California's 1996 electoral votes, which might be jeopardized by
killing off a major California national lab. Informed rumor also
has it that he may have cut a backroom deal with the weapons
laboratories to ensure their public support for an upcoming
international treaty banning all nuclear weapons' tests. Ironic,
isn't it, that the President of the United States apparently has
to bribe scientists in U.S. national laboratories to testify
truthfully before Congress?)
g. TRANSPORTATION: The House and Senate have recently
decided to reduce funding for passenger rails (i.e., Amtrak) by a
minimum of 21.8 percent in FY 1996 and approximately 34 percent
from Amtrak's FY 1996 request. While funding for efficient, low-
polluting railroads is thus pruned back severely--as is funding
for other forms of public transit--nearly $20 billion of the
Department of Transportation's $37 billion budget is allocated to
increased spending on highway projects (NARP 1995; AAAS 1995).
h. WEAPONS & DEFENSE CONVERSION: A New York Times
editorial this summer began:
Pentagon officials can hardly believe their good
fortune. While furiously cutting domestic programs to
balance the federal budget, Congress is showering the
Defense Department with billions the generals did not
request. It is a disheartening exhibition of political
self-interest devoid of any plausible national security
justification. ("Pentagon Jackpot" 1995)
During the 1980's the Reagan administration spent $38
billion on Star Wars development; this expenditure is widely
acknowledged to have accomplished virtually nothing. Yet a
House-Senate conference report awards the Pentagon $9 billion
more than the President requested, including extra money for
unneeded B-2 bombers and a 25% increase for a Star Wars program--
"Ballistic Missile Defense"--that harbors negligible potential to
protect the U.S. from real military threats, but that does risk
undermining the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the START II
weapons reduction treaty, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT)
Treaty (Keeny 1995). (The House rejected this conference report
on Sept. 29, so the outcome is still in doubt.) As to the B-2, a
July 1995 draft report from Congress's own General Accounting
Office found that the 2.2 billion-dollar plane has, in the words
of the NY Times, "radar that cannot distinguish a raincloud from
a mountainside, has not passed most of its basic tests and may
not be nearly as stealthy as advertised" (Weiner 1995).
Republican support for outlandish defense expenditures is
partly a matter of theology, but also reflects both Democratic
and Republican legislators' longstanding commitment to procuring
funds for defense contractors located in their home districts.
Defense pork is, in effect, a high-end jobs maintenance
program...except that because military production is unusually
capital intensive, it represents an extraordinarily _inefficient_
form of jobs maintenance. Moreover, the resulting unneeded
weapons do absolutely nothing to address the nation's urgent
unmet social needs (e.g., for better pubic education and public
transit, more affordable housing, preventive medicine,
environmental clean-up, and so on.) The straightforward route
out of this political boondoggle would be to adopt a serious
national program for converting our bloated military-industrial
base to socially responsive civilian production. But defense
conversion is not a concept that government officials have found
easy to grasp.
For instance, the Pentagon's Technology Reinvestment Project
(TRP) is a $500 million/year effort to help integrate the
military's technology base into the civilian economy. The TRP
was at one time advertized as a "defense conversion" program, but
in reality 80 percent of TRP funds to date have gone to support
projects with clear military applications. The House has
nevertheless voted to abolish the TRP, on the theory that is not
defense-oriented enough. A House-Senate conference report
"compromises" by slashing TRP's FY 1996 budget to $195 million,
but the House has rejected this report (NCECD 1995).
i. DEPT. OF COMMERCE: A bill to eliminate the Department of
Commerce was drafted by 40 Republican freshmen and the plan is
shared by both the Senate and the House. Republicans have been
eager to eliminate a cabinet-level department, in order to
demonstrate their commitment to shrinking the U.S. government.
However, it is proving easier to erase a department on paper than
to actually eliminate its functions or cut costs (Sanger 1995).
Mr. Clinton has vowed to veto any attempt to dismantle Commerce.
Under amendments proposed by Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-PA),
Chair of the House Science Committee, the Commerce Dept.'s
National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency would be transferred into a new,
independent Science and Technology Administration. Some see this
as a first step toward fulfilling Walker's fervent wish to create
a cabinet level Department of Science (Munro 1995). Although
many find dubious Walker's proposition that a new Department is
needed to rationalize federal science policy making, wouldn't it
be a fine way to augment the power of his own Science Committee
(which would win primary Congressional jurisdiction over the new
department)? Not that there is anything unusual about
Congressmen seeking personal aggrandizement, but it is always
healthy to lift the veil of hypocrisy in which they are wont to
cloak such moves. It is difficult to see why Republicans, if
serious about wanting to shrink the federal government, would use
the occasion of killing off one department to begin immediately
establishing another.
Walker has also introduced H.R. 2405, the Omnibus Civilian
Science Authorization Act of 1996, which cleared the House on
October 12. H.R. 2405 eliminates all funding for the Commerce
Department's Advanced Technology Program (ATP). The ATP manages
a program of government/corporate cost-sharing for civilian
technology development. Republicans see the ATP as an exemplary
instance of "corporate welfare," and in this case they have a
point. If the ATP, a beloved Clinton initiative, had provided
incentives for worker or community participation in R&D, then the
program could have been justified for its role in promoting
economic democratization. But without such a social agenda, the
ATP essentially gave businesses grants to do things they are
reasonably adept at doing without government assistance. (The
Administration has defended the ATP as necessary to compensate
for corporate underinvestment in long-range, high-risk R&D. But
it is not obvious that existing R&D tax credits, which involve
more money, aren't an adequate tool for that job.) Of course,
most Congressional Republicans don't really object to "corporate
welfare" per se (Morgan 1995); they object to _Democratic_
variants that might curry corporate favor for Democratic
incumbents (a deeply endangered species).
H.R. 2405 also eliminates all funds for the Manufacturing
Extension Partnership (MEP), which is an industrial analog to the
agricultural extension service. The MEP establishes outreach
services in states to help small and medium sized firms adopt
modern equipment and information and accounting systems, develop
markets, enhance worker participation, and improve environmental
performance.
j. TELECOMMUNICATIONS: Whoopee! Fire-up your popcorn makers
and get set for 500+ channels of home shopping, enthralling game
show reruns, and pay-per-view videos! For the past several
years, a coalition of public-interest groups has been advocating
development of an information superhighway that would be
universally accessible and affordable, protect privacy and
freedom of speech, and support civic uses. The odds that this
civic-minded agenda would prevail in the face of overwhelming
corporate zeal for a commercially dominated, profit-maximizing
info-highway never seemed particularly high. These odds have
worsened considerably since the November 1994 election.
The Telecommunications Reform Act, currently in House-Senate
conference, is the first rewrite of the foundation of all current
federal telecommunications policy, the Communications Act of
1934. The Reform Act has been crafted ostensibly to advance the
public good by promoting competition and reducing regulation.
However, in its current form it violates 1st Amendment rights by
banning all "indecent" communication, repeals price controls on
monopoly cable and phone rates, and permits greater concentration
of ownership. There is no adequate public quid pro quo in this
bill, and the President has threatened to veto it.
The National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA), located within the beleaguered Commerce
Department, is the President's principal advisor on
telecommunications policy. The Senate voted on September 30 to
cut the NTIA budget 82 percent. Although several NTIA programs
are still standing, their survival is not assured. The Public
Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) stands an especially
small chance. PTFP provides matching grants to assist non-
commercial firms in planning and constructing facilities to
extend public telecommunications services to as many people as
possible. It also provides significant funding for children's
programming. Surprisingly, the Senate voted at the last minute
not to cut funding for the Telecommunications Information
Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP). TIIAP is the grant
program that has supported nonprofit as well as state and local
government applications of information technology. An earlier
Congressional budget resolution called for eliminating both the
TIIAP and PTFP.
In this climate, much of the public-interest agenda has been
shoved onto a dim and distant back burner. Moreover, that
agenda--while admirable--has always been seriously incomplete.
For example, it neglects sociotechnical dynamics whereby an
information superhighway may:
o Force many people to use it who might rather not (whether
as consumers or workers), while facilitating job exports
(Bradsher 1995);
o By enabling more commerce to be conducted electronically,
extract revenue from existing downtown and neighborhood centers.
This is apt inadvertently to put many small businesses and local
professional service providers out of business (a cybernetic
"Wal-Mart effect"), in turn impairing local community and
cultural vibrancy;
o Further erode face-to-face social engagement at a time
when many people yearn for more of it; and accelerate the pace of
life, at a time when stress is already a major social complaint
and health risk; and
o Make people and localities ever more dependent on global
market forces and on transnational corporations that cannot be
influenced from the local level (Sclove and Scheuer 1994).
IV. DEMOCRACY DERAILED
The beauty--from a Republican standpoint--of using science
and technology policy as a significant vehicle for pursuing their
overall agenda is that there will be little popular recognition
of the source of resulting social woes. (It is certainly
unlikely Republicans will be blamed, if one takes as an
indication their spectacular success in tarring "Big-Spending
Democrats" with responsibility for a national debt that is, in
truth, most directly the result of Reagan Administration tax cuts
and military largesse.) And the substantive consequences--
because deeply embedded in technological hardware, irreversible
ecological damage, institutional design, and arcane policy
domains--will long endure. If we "won" the Cold War, we will
have lost the peace...for many years to come.
From a public-interest perspective, there was certainly much
with which to be disappointed in the Clinton Administration's
1993 technology policy proposals, and even more with which to be
dismayed in Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" (Sclove 1994
and 1995a). However, in terms of democratic process, both at
least had the modest virtue of being packaged in relatively
accessible, coherent form. This created some opportunity for
popular understanding and comment (albeit little real influence).
In contrast, the subsequent strategy of the Republican
revolution has been to pursue an awesome range of radical policy
shifts via a bewildering array of near-simultaneous legislative
initiatives and slick parliamentary maneuvers. The consequence
is that in any given substantive policy domain, the only
significant actors--other than Congress itself--become lobbyists
from affected industries (to whom the Republican Congress are
unabashedly partial) and a few oppositional public-interest
groups (whose resources are in most cases immeasurably smaller
than industry's).
In a less fragmented and sweeping policy climate, the
public-interest groups' resource disadvantage would be partially
offset by the steady spotlight of media attention, galvanizing
some supportive popular attention and involvement. However, the
contemporary media are not equipped to come to terms with today's
fragmented, swiftly moving policy agenda--that is, to put the
pieces back together into a meaningful whole. As a result,
industry is in many cases writing its own legislative ticket,
with none of the checks and balances that are supposedly the
strength of a pluralistic political system (Cushman 1995a; Miller
1995).
[Aside: Compounding the problem with respect to science
and technology policy is that it remains extremely difficult
to get serious, critical discussion of science and
technology issues into the mainstream media. In some cases,
editors and producers are calculating that people simply
don't want to hear about these issues. But the problem goes
deeper.]
[In the past few years, the news media have actually
devoted extravagant amounts of coverage to new technology--
especially to information and telecommunications technology.
But the overwhelming bulk of this reportage is hype and
pablum--self-serving utopian fantasies masquerading as news
analysis. (Just peek at the _New York Times'_ new media
coverage in the Business Section on any Monday.) One
national reporter informs me that his paper has begun
publishing extra "fluff" articles about information
technology simply to accommodate advertisers who want their
ads to appear adjacent to info-tech reporting.]
[Compound this with the fact that many major news
outlets are owned by parent companies that are heavily
invested in the telecommunications industry, and it is not
hard to see why balanced reporting on science and technology
is a scarce and dwindling resource.]
* * *
Irreversible environmental devastation, faulty and dangerous
appliances, hazardous workplaces, the demise of technology
assessment, more asphalt highways/fewer Amtrak routes, a
remilitarized national research agenda, foolhardy weapons
purchases, and the info superhighway as a civil-society-
dismantling job-exports program and a winner-take-all commercial
free-for-all. Is this the new American dream? It looks more
like a perverse race backwards to try to match the kinds of
social and environmental crises in which former Communist states
are mired.
A new, more participatory politics of science and technology
would not admit of such perilous nonsense. In the face of this
sweeping range of assaults on common sense and the common good,
the Loka Institute persists in searching out ways to make a
constructive difference. It is urgent that people whose taxes
and purchases pay for science & technology and who experience the
consequences (i.e., everyone) begin demanding--and winning--a say
in making fundamental science and technology decisions.
--------------------
Richard E. Sclove, executive director of the Loka Institute
in Amherst, Massachusetts, is the author of _Democracy and
Technology_ (New York: Guilford Press, 1995). Madeleine
Scammell, a Loka Institute intern, provided important research
assistance with the factual content of this Alert.
_Democracy and Technology_ can be ordered from your local
bookseller, or it is available in paperback for U.S. $18.95 (plus
shipping cost) from Guilford Press, 72 Spring St., New York, NY
10012, USA. Within the U.S. call toll free (800) 365-7006.
Contact Guilford Press also for information on distributors
outside the U.S.: Tel. +(212) 431-9800; Fax +(212) 966-6708; E-
mail <info@guilford.com>.
*****************************************************************
V. TO PARTICIPATE AND HELP
To encourage President Clinton to resist Congress's skewed
R&D priorities and to take steps to democratize science and
technology decisionmaking, contact:
Leon Panetta Don Baer
Chief of Staff Director of Communication
The White House and/or The White House
Tel. (202) 456-6797 Tel. (202) 456-2640
Fax (202) 456-2883 Fax (202) 456-1213
Baer is responsible for the content of the President's
public remarks; Panetta is responsible for the President's
substantive actions.
LOKA INSTITUTE WEB PAGE: To find out more about the Loka
Institute or to help Loka in its work, visit our Web page
(http://www.amherst.edu/~loka) or contact us via e-mail at
loka@amherst.edu
THE LOKA E-MAIL LIST: Traffic on the Loka Institute e-mail
list (Loka-L)--which distributes Loka Alerts as a one-way news-
and-opinion distribution service--is intentionally kept low (an
average of one message per month), to protect overbusy people
from unwanted clutter. To be added to, or removed from, the
list, please send an e-mail message to that effect to:
loka@amherst.edu
TO PARTICIPATE MORE ACTIVELY in promoting a democratic
politics of science and technology--or to discuss this Loka Alert
with other list subscribers--please join the Federation of
Activists on Science & Technology Network (FASTnet). Just send
an e-mail message to <majordomo@igc.apc.org> with a blank subject
line. The text of your message should read:
subscribe FASTnet
You will receive an automated reply giving more details.
FASTnet is now a moderated discussion list, which protects
subscribers from receiving posts inappropriate to the list's
purpose.
HELPING FINANCIALLY: FASTnet, Loka Alerts, and _Democracy
and Technology_ are activities of the Loka Institute's broader
Technology & Democracy Project, which promotes a strong
grassroots, worker, and public-interest group voice in science
and technology decisionmaking. The project has been made
possible through the generosity of individual donors as well as
seed grants from nonprofit foundations, including the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Foundation for Deep
Ecology, the Menemsha Fund, and Rockefeller Family Associates.
For information on contributing--and contributions are
essential now that the Project's formative seed grants have been
spent--please contact the Loka Institute (e-mail:
loka@amherst.edu) or write a check drawn in U.S. dollars to
"Proteus Fund/Loka," and send it to: The Loka Institute, P.O.
Box 355, Amherst, MA 01004, USA. U.S. contributions are tax-
deductible. Thank you!
LIST UPDATE: There are currently 1,585 people and
organizations worldwide on the Loka e-mail list (plus others
reading via the Institute for Global Communications' electronic
conference loka.alerts, via repostings to other electronic lists
and Usenet groups, and via authorized republication in various
newsletters and magazines). Our apologies if you receive more
than one copy of this Alert owing to cross-postings to multiple
lists.
*****************************************************************
VI. PRINCIPAL SOURCES for Loka Alert 2-8
Apart from the works cited below, in preparing this Alert we
benefitted from conversations with Elizabeth Bird (Center for
Rural Affairs), Greg Bischak (National Center for Economic
Conversion & Disarmament), George Perkovich (W. Alton Jones
Foundation), as well as several journalists and government
officials who shall remain anonymous. Of course, these good
folks bear no responsibility whatsoever for errors of fact or
interpretation in the Alert.
[AAAS]. American Association for the Advancement of
Science. 1995. _Interim Report on Congressional Appropriations
for R&D in FY 1996_. Washington, DC: AAAS Directorate for
Science & Policy Programs, Aug. 29 (and updated periodically on
the AAAS Web page).
Bradsher, Keith. 1995. "Skilled Workers Watch Their Jobs
Migrate Overseas." _New York Times_, Aug. 28.
Brown, George E., Jr. 1995. Letter to President Clinton,
Sept. 7. [Congressman Brown is the ranking Democratic member and
former chairman of the House Science Committee.]
Cordes, Colleen. 1995. "Environmental Research Fares
Poorly with House Budget Cutters." _Chronicle of Higher
Education_, Oct. 6, p. A34.
Cushman, John H., Jr. 1995a. "Industry Helped Draft Clean
Water Law." _New York Times_, March 22, p. A16.
Cushman, John H., Jr. 1995b. "Spending Bill Would Reverse
Nation's Environmental Policy." _New York Times_, Sept. 22, p.
A1.
"DOE Labs Future Remains Unclear." 1995. _Science &
Technology in Congress_, Oct., pp. 1, 4.
Graham, Bradley. 1995. "Son of Star Wars." _Washington
Post National Weekly Edition_, Sept. 11-17, p. 31.
Keeny, Spurgeon M., Jr. 1995. "The Arms Race is On." Op-
ed., _New York Times_, Sept. 12, p. A23.
Kripke, Gawain. 1995. _Assault on Environmental
Protection: EPA Under Attack in Appropriations_. Washington, DC:
Friends of the Earth, July 17.
Lawler, Andrew. 1995. Congress Split on Best Way to
Reshape Network of Labs." _Science_, Vol. 269 (Sept 15), p.
1510.
Leath, Audrey T. 1995. "Commerce Department Dismantling
Bill Progresses in House." American Institute of Physics
Bulletin of Science Policy News, No. 146, Oct. 17.
Maraniss, David, and Michael Weisskopf. 1995. "Industry's
Thumbprint on New OSHA Legislation." _Washington Post National
Weekly Edition_, Sept. 4-10, pp. 8-9.
Miller, George. 1995. "Authors of the Law." Op-ed, _New
York Times_, May 24, p. A15.
Morgan, Dan. 1995. "Taking Care of Business." _Washington
Post National Weekly Edition_, July 3-9, p. 31.
Munro, Neil. 1995. "Walker Pushes for Science Department."
_Washington Technology_, Sept. 28, p. 10.
[NARP]. National Association of Rail Passengers. 1995.
"Passenger Rail Appropriations H.R. 2002, For Fiscal 1996."
[NCECD]. National Commission on Economic Conversion and
Disarmament. 1995. _Conversion Legislative Update_.
Washington, DC: NCECD, Sept. 27.
[NRDC]. Natural Resources Defense Council. 1995a.
_Stealth Attack: Gutting Environmental Protection Through the
Budget Process_. New York: NRDC, July.
[NRDC]. Natural Resources Defense Council. 1995b.
_Formula for Failure: Consequences of Proposed Federal Science
Funding Cuts_. New York: NRDC, Sept.
[NRDC]. Natural Resources Defense Council. 1995c.
_Legislative Watch_. New York: NRDC, Oct. 27.
"Pentagon Jackpot." 1995. Editorial. _The New York
Times_, July 10, p. A12.
Rattner, Steven. 1995. "Leaky Boats on the Rising Tide."
Op-ed, _New York Times_, Aug. 29, p. A19.
Sanger, David E. 1995. "G.O.P. Finds Commerce Dept. Is
Hard to Uproot." _New York Times_, Sept. 20, p. A1, B8.
Schuchat, Sam. 1995. "Unfit Stewards." Op-ed, _New York
Times_, Sept. 20, p. A21.
Sclove, Richard E. 1994. "Democratizing Technology."
_Chronicle of Higher Education_, Vol. 40, No. 19 (Jan. 12), pp.
B1-B2.
Sclove, Richard E. 1995a. "Democratizing Science and
Technology under a Republican Congress?" _Space Times_, Vol. 34,
No. 2, March-April, pp. 9-11.
Sclove, Richard E. 1995b. _Democracy and Technology_. New
York: Guilford Press, 1995.
Sclove, Richard E., and Jeffrey Scheuer. 1994. "The Ghost
in the Modem: For Architects of the Info-Highway, Some Lessons
>From the Concrete Interstate." Sunday Outlook Section, _The
Washington Post_, May 29, p. C3.
Weiner, Tim. 1995. "B-2, After 14 Years, Is Still Failing
Basic Tests." _New York Times_, July 15, pp. 1, 8.
Weiser, Benjamin. 1995. "How Much Is Too Much?:
Congressional Tort Reform Could Cap the Cost of Wrongdoing for
Business." _Washington Post National Weekly Edition_, Oct. 9-15,
pp. 6-7.
Weisskopf, Michael, and David Maraniss. 1995. "Ruling Out
OSHA." _Washington Post National Weekly Edition_, Sept. 4-10,
pp. 6-7.
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