Laureates Urge More Climate R&D

A group of 34 U.S. Nobel Laureates last week called on President Barack Obama and Congress to substantially increase spending for climate-change-related R&D and technology deployment. They noted that Obama had proposed 10 years of funding at $15 billion per year for energy technology during his presidential campaign and more recently in a speech before the National Academy of Sciences. Climate-change legislation that recently cleared the House, the laureates added, allots one-fifteenth the amount Obama proposed for energy R&D and deployment. "This stable R&D is not a luxury," they wrote, "and is in fact necessary." Calling the lack of funding in climate-change legislation a "dangerous omission," Burton Richter, the leader of the group, said much can be done with current technologies but that to meet the necessary greenhouse gas reductions "will require technological advances that are possible only through research."