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David Dodwell

Click onto the Columbia Law School’s “Silencing Science Tracker”, and a sobering list scrolls down:
• August 8, 2019: the US Navy shuts its task force on climate change.
• July 22, 2019: US Department of Interior removes references to climate change from its WaterSMART web page.
• July 22, 2019: The US Forest Service removes references to climate change from its wilderness web page.
• July 22, 2019: US Environmental Protection Agency reclassifies research groups to remove its climate change group.
• July 18, 2019: US Department of Agriculture buries a plan detailing how agriculture can adapt to climate change.
The “Silencing Science Tracker” continues – systematically noting over 370 anti-science initiatives taken by the US administration since Donald Trump arrived in office. The list includes “any action that has the effect of restricting or prohibiting scientific research, education, or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information”.
A majority of cases focus on climate change. As one official quoted in a 2018 article in the journal Nature observed, this administration treats climate change “like Voldemort – he who shall not be named”.
No wonder Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went to such lengths in May this year to ensure that the ministers of the Arctic Council, meeting in Rovaniemi in Finland, purged the words “climate change” from their closing report.

The war on science includes censorship, misrepresentation, budget cuts, personnel changes, research hindrance, interference with education and self-censorship.
It does not include – but perhaps should – moves like the decision in July to move two research agencies at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Economic Research Service, from Washington to Kansas City. The move is likely to force the resignation of the great majority of the agencies’ research staff: “With [Agriculture] Secretary [Sonny] Perdue not listening to agricultural research experts or USDA employees, we need the leadership of Congress,” Gale Buchanan, former USDA chief scientist and undersecretary for research, education and economics under George W. Bush, protested in an op-ed.
US involvement in fight against climate change is crucial
For a president so concerned about “fake news”, this systematic assault on evidence-based research may superficially seem odd – except of course that so much evidence has over the past two years contradicted the claims, and the interests, of so many who are currently supporting his populist leadership.
This is nowhere clearer than in the evidence of harm being done by climate change. Nothing could be more inconvenient to supporters invested in fossil fuel industries, or to policymakers keen to develop natural gas fracking as a means of keeping petrol prices low, and reliance on energy imports to a minimum.
Remember, Donald Trump has claimed that global warming is no more than scaremongering by the perfidious Chinese who are bent on undermining the competitiveness of US manufacturing.




It would of course be unfair to imply that Trump is alone in his disdain for evidence-based policymaking, and the dull but vital research institutions that underpin this process. The forlorn pickle of the British public as they stare over the Brexit precipice has much to do with the cavalier disregard for, and abuse of, evidence by Boris Johnson and his Brexit campaign team.
So too have outbreaks of measles across the world as scientific ignorance has raised alarm about inoculation campaigns.
China, whose policies have been driven for four decades by engineers who follow Deng Xiaoping’s mantra of “learning truth from facts”, has good reason to remember the price paid for scientific ignorance. Remember Mao’s Great Leap Forward to build a steel industry by persuading villagers to melt down their pots and pans?
China leaves Mao’s legacy alone, even as Taiwan purges Chiang’s
Remember the “Four Pests Campaign” between 1958 and 1962 that called on the population to protect the grain crop by exterminating rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows? Before the lunacy ended, an estimated 1.5 billion rats had been killed, along with over 220 million pounds of flies, and over 24 million pounds of mosquitoes. Around 1 billion sparrows were exterminated, virtually eliminating the sparrow population.
The price paid? Between 15-45 million people died in the great Chinese famine as insects, in the absence of predatory sparrows, consumed large parts of the country’s crops.
So deep are the US’ historic commitments to rigorous science-based policymaking that the battle in its defence is likely to be strong
For sure, China’s leaders nowadays take very seriously the need to learn truth from facts. But it seems that our Western populists, uncowed by such sobering setbacks, are ready and willing to play fast and loose with the scientific research that underpins our evidence-based policymaking.
There is also plentiful evidence here in Hong Kong that our policymakers have wilfully ignored the facts where they have stood in the way of decisions that serve the interests of particularly influential segments of the business community. Note the shortcomings of our Mandatory Provident Fund, which may have provided a lucrative financial product for Hong Kong’s fund management industry, but falls pitifully short of providing security for our population in old age.
Why Hong Kong’s MPF is little more than a cruel joke
Note the government refusal to introduce compulsory health care insurance (instead offering voluntary arrangements) fully aware that voluntary health insurance plans by definition are doomed to fail – the old and the sick sign on, while the young and the healthy stay out, leaving the insurance pools too small, and the numbers seeking care too large.
Most recently, recall the puzzling decision of the Carrie Lam administration last autumn to decide that we should tackle our land supply and housing crisis by building a massive artificial island southeast of Lantau – four months before an expert government task force was due to report findings on how best to tackle our land supply challenges.




Trump’s wilful assault on the scientific research needed to underpin sound evidence-based policymaking is appalling, but in no way isolated. It is important nevertheless because ignorant policymaking by a country as powerful and important as the US puts us all – not just US citizens – at risk.
The fact that the Silencing Science Tracker is being driven by researchers in the US at Columbia Law School, should nevertheless be a source of encouragement. So deep are the US’ historic commitments to rigorous science-based policymaking that the battle in its defence is likely to be strong. After all, can you name any other country that has created such a tracker to ensure we continue to learn truth from facts?
David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view


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Inside Out & Outside In

Donald Trump’s war on climate science, Brexit and Hong Kong’s housing disaster are what happens when governments disregard evidence

After Donald Trump’s election as president in November 2016, Columbia Law School’s “Silencing Science Tracker” began compiling reports of federal, state, and local government efforts to suppress scientific research, and has documented hundreds of such incidents, largely the suppression of information about climate change. Photo: Greenpeace

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attends the Arctic Council summit at the Lappi Areena in Rovaniemi, Finland May 7, 2019. Mandel Ngan/Pool via REUTERS

As melting ice opens up Arctic routes, can the US set aside China and Russia rivalry for climate’s sake?

A helicopter from the Swedish icebreaker Oden lands on an ice floe to pick up crew members retrieving a data recorder on Arctic marine life movements, in the Canadian Arctic on July 25. Sweden is one of the eight members of the Arctic Council, whose mission is cooperation on environmental protection, sustainable development, and avoidance of military or strategic matters. Photo: Inner Space Centre via Reuters

(180126) -- BEIJING, Jan. 26, 2018 (Xinhua) -- File photo taken on Aug. 18, 2016 shows members of China's research team setting up an ocean profiling float at a short-term data acquisition location near the icebreaker Xuelong, or "Snow Dragon", in the Arctic Ocean. China pledged peaceful utilization of the Arctic and committed itself to maintaining peace and stability in the region, said a white paper issued by the State Council Information Office Friday. (Xinhua/Wu Yue)(mcg)

Donald Trump’s bizarre theatrics are a brilliant tactic to distract Americans from the climate crisis

US President Donald Trump applauds during the “Salute to America” event in Washington on July 4. Photo: Bloomberg

Climate change and Chinese tourists – Russia’s Lake Baikal faces twin existential threats

Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake by volume, located in southern Siberia, faces a number of threats, including overtourism and climate change. Photo: Shutterstock

Despite suffering a downturn in Chinese arrivals, 15,000 additional hotel rooms are expected to open on the Thai island of Phuket over the next five years, which could prove bad for business and the environment. Photo: Shutterstock

A handout picture taken on September 20, 2015 and provided by Oleg Timoshkin, biologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Limnological Institute in Irkutsk, shows Spirogyra algae in the waters of Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal is undergoing its gravest crisis in recent history, experts say, as the government bans the catching of a signature fish that has lived in the world's deepest lake for centuries but is now under threat. / AFP PHOTO / Russian Academy of Sciences' Limnological Institute / Oleg TIMOSHKIN / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / Russian Academy of Sciences' Limnological Institute in Irkutsk / Oleg Timoshkin" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

Traditional wooden buildings in Listvyanka, also known as the Baikal Riviera, a resort town on the edge of the lake. Photo: Shutterstock

The route between Hong Kong and Taiwan's capital Taipei is the second busiest in the world, according to a recent IATA report, with 28,447 flights annually. Photo: Shutterstock

Opinion

Business


Western societies, which once prided themselves on reason and respect for science, have become overrun with populists who reject both
Hong Kong has shown a similar malady when it comes to addressing the city’s major issues



Western societies, which once prided themselves on reason and respect for science, have become overrun with populists who reject both. Hong Kong has shown a similar malady when it comes to addressing the city’s major issues.


Donald Trump

US Politics

Trade

Climate change

Brexit

Hong Kong housing

Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor

Britain

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

Inside Out