Hispanic Enterprise - December 2007/January 2008 - (Page 29) cheaper product. Nano-technology could make a huge difference in the chemical industry; even climate change could be affected by new ways of extracting carbon dioxide from the exhaust gases of coal-fired power plants, which are terrible sources of CO2 and contribute to global warming. And there may well be ways of chemically separating out the CO2 and doing something with the chemical rather than letting it go up into the atmosphere. HE: Where do you stand on global warming vis a vis the president’s policy? JM: If I really disagreed, if I thought that there was something going on that actually contradicted what science tell us, it’s my responsibility to say “This isn’t right.” One of my responsibilities is on behalf of the president, to get the best scientific advice and make sure the policy-makers know about it in the White House, from the president on down. So, I construe my job as telling it like it is from a science point of view. HE: What is climate change? JM: The climate is changing, we’re producing too much CO2, it’s contributing to the warming of the atmosphere and leading to all sorts of effects, both good and bad. In the long run we know we have to stop producing so much CO2, mostly from fossil fuels. It’s ultimately an energy problem because the human contributions to global change are created by the burning of fossil fuels which are taking carbon out of the ground where it’s been for millions of years and putting it up into the atmosphere, adding to what’s already there. It’s a greenhouse gas and it accumulates and stays in the atmosphere, so we have to produce less of it. Now the science part is easy; it’s what you do that’s hard. How are we going to stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere when everybody depends on fossil fuels for energy? HISPANIC ENTERPRISE Michel Euler/AP The task of limiting or reducing the carbon production from energy use is really daunting, and that is the hard problem. From the beginning I haven’t had any problem with the science of climate change. HE: Meaning you agree? JM: Sure, yes. The debate or the controversy over the science of climate change, I think, is largely a media-created phenomenon, maybe politics and media, because they like a controversy and the public debate about climate change is highly polarizing [and] full of vitriolic and emotions. It’s over-simplified on both sides. People feel like we have to do something right away—you can’t really do it, you have to have a strategy that brings in all of the energy producers around the world. you have to try, and I believe that the scientific evidence that we’re producing too much CO2 is ultimately going to convince everybody that they have to change their ways. Just to use energy efficiently, buy a Prius, turn off your lights and turn down your thermostat—that’s not enough. You really have to get at the huge power plants and the huge transportation industry and have a combination of policy measures and incentives on the one hand, and technology alternatives on the other. HE: What really intrigues you about the future? JM: I’m a physicist, and the frontiers of physics are fascinating to me. The idea that complicated things can be made out of simple ones. There’s a mystery there I think that’s what excites young people about science and nature, and we have to keep that alive to make sure we keep getting scientists in the future. 29 HE: Is that possible? JM: I don’t know, but most people think December/January 2008
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