Finding Funding For Science

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Some innovations might be imminently practical, such as applying new computer systems and algorithms to managing the nation's infrastructure of air and ground traffic; applying technology to build green cars; and developing new materials for the thousands of highways and bridges in desperate need of upgrades.

If this sounds pie-in-the-sky in an era of crisis deficits, let me throw out another number. The entire Works Progress Administration program, which employed millions and festooned America with state-of-the-art roads, bridges, and dams during a massive global depression, cost about $11.5 billion between 1935 and 1941.

That's $159 billion in 2007 dollars for a stimulus that's not a one-time tax cut encouraging people to buy another iPod, but an investment in ideas and in capital assets. Not incidentally, it would also upgrade our deteriorating infrastructure—some of which hasn't been updated since the W.P.A. 70 years ago.

Tacked onto a $700 billion bailout—which is really $1.6 trillion when Fannie, Freddie, and the rest are added in—what's another $159 billion, if it's used to actually build things that will last, and will make the nation more efficient and competitive?

Call it the New Technology Initiative, or New Tech. The plan would articulate a few basic, but highly ambitious goals that would be determined by a series of meetings called by the president-elect. Attendees would represent a variety of points of view in science, technology, the environment, economics, labor, finance, and public policy; together they could set a national investment agenda.

Once the president has made his decisions and consulted with Congress and other leaders in the U.S., he might then engage world leaders. The U.S. would be in a position of leadership—for a change—on critical global crises such as lessening carbon-dioxide emissions, and ending the world's dependency on oil.

Some will howl that government is too incompetent and corrupt to handle such an initiative. But I can give you 700 billion reasons why it can't do worse than the private sector, which has brought the world to the brink of economic collapse.

There is no shortage of ideas. Despite little help from Washington for the past seven years, entrepreneurs across America have been developing technologies for everything from green fuels and novel drugs to new materials to build roads.

Some ideas won't work. Failure and waste will be part of the equation—as it always is, in private as well as public enterprises—although one critical element that may help temper this would be a leadership that inspires people to think beyond their personal gain, at least for a minute or two.

When Barack Obama and John McCain talk about change, let's hope it includes a realization that real change means a recommitment to creativity and adaptation. We have made many mistakes as a species in using technologies that ultimately proved dangerous, but what choice do we have other than trying to learn and adapt with new and improved technologies?

Much more than our economy is at stake—this is survival.

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