Apollo or Manhattan Project: Which Paradigm Fits Energy Better?

In Wednesday’s posting, I forgot to mention the release of a related petition that has been endorsed by some 70 organizations — ones that likely represent a majority of working scientists and engineers. This new document, destined for the desks of Barack Obama and John McCain, describes why the signatory groups consider investing substantially more money into basic energy research a national imperative.

At the Wednesday briefing I covered, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory director Steven Chu and MIT president Susan Hockfield both likened the scale of federal investment and effort needed as being the modern corollary of the Apollo program, which landed the first man on the moon. Explained Hockfield: “For my generation of scientists and engineers, the Apollo mission was our inspiration, the galvanizing event that showed the vast power of science and technology to create change. Today at MIT, our students see energy as their Apollo, their generation’s new cause and driving mission.”

I understand Hockfield’s analogy, but also think it misses the mark. While going to the moon was inspirational, it was hardly essential. I would argue that a better comparison would be to the Manhattan Project that created nuclear weaponry. It proved a defining endeavor because it helped end a long and bloody war. Despite the horrific devastation it wrought on two Japanese cities, it likely saved many more lives than it took — and ultimately brought a form of democracy to one of the world powers behind that war.

In fact, wars might eventually break out over rights to energy resources, if current policies prevail. And the polluting fossil fuels that the world relies on today already cause choking illness and death to millions of people each year. And then there’s that carbon dioxide issue. We can’t continue to spew huge quantities without eventually causing huge havoc to Earth’s climate.

A potentially peaceable Manhattan Project — to develop sustainable energy supplies — won’t come cheap. Then again, the alternative, business-as-usual policy is already costing the planet dearly, just in more diffuse, hard-to-tally ways.

And I think that’s what this new petition meant to argue — but didn’t.

Instead, it offers cogent reasons for spending more on energy research. People have heard these arguments for years, and comfortably ignored them.

I think the new petition should have taken a tack more akin to Jimmy Carter’s “moral equivalent of war” rhetoric. Scare people into doing the right thing. Because the prospect facing Americans and everyone else on the planet is, in fact, downright scary.

The only people for whom it isn’t, in my humble opinion, are those who play ostrich.

By the way, you can read the new petition at the Association of American Universities — and see the impressive list of organizations that have already endorsed it.