Jim Lehrer with Ralph J. Cicerone

Piece Description

Laurence Léveillé | Staff Writer

Rather than worrying about whether the country would exist after the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and the United States Congress made the effort to provide for the country’s future.

During the war, Lincoln and Congress signed the Morrill Act, which created all the country’s public universities and the National Academy of Sciences, said Ralph Cicerone, current president of the academy.

“Even in tough times, you’ve got to be thinking ahead,” Cicerone said. “Show some ambition and get on with it.”

Cicerone and retired “PBS NewsHour” anchor Jim Lehrer had a conversation about the lack of goals and ambition and about science’s role in society during Thursday’s morning lecture as part of Week Two’s theme, “The Lehrer Report: What Voters Need to Know.”

Though several members of Congress and the U.S. Senate understand the importance of science, Cicerone said, there is a general lack of goals and ambition in government. He used the Lincoln example to show what the government had done despite the issues it faced.

Interest groups throughout the country and political leaders with an issue in mind try to do the right thing, but the common goals are missing, Cicerone said.

Lehrer added, “When things are rough for individuals or for our society, that’s when everything should be mounted and everything should be organized, and everything, as you say, should go to common goals. But we’re not doing that right now.”

Finding those common goals requires leadership, Cicerone said.

“In our country, some of our best potential leaders have found that when they take too many risks, they get shot down,” he said.

Instead, people should back timely ideas or ambitious leaders who can push their ideas forward.

Cicerone also discussed the importance of science in today’s society. Without science, there would be no way to sustain the population, he said.

“I’m pretty convinced that we’re much more dependent on science today than we ever have been before,” Cicerone said. “We’re taking it for granted, which is not good.”

But Earth, he said, has limitations.

Today, there are 7 billion people on the planet. When Cicerone calculated how much land each person could have, he discovered it would be about two football fields.

That means a person would have to include everything he or she and family would need in that space: food, energy, drinking water, buildings, roads, educational facilities, waste disposal and more — components needed to sustain a population.

With the application of science and trade, so far the amount of land we have now is sustainable for 7 billion people, Cicerone said.

“All of these things have to happen,” he said. “And there’s no way to sustain this population without science. It’s just that simple.”

When it became evident the human population was expanding faster than food production, scientists and others looked into crop-breeding techniques. More crop fields led to increased food production.

Though problems with world hunger and famine continue, Cicerone said, it is not because of food production. Hunger and famine persist because of incompetent or poorly motivated political leaders, he said.

Under the George W. Bush administration, Cicerone led a climate-change study. He said the climate-change issue has played out differently in the U.S. than in other countries, and he did not expect the political division that exists.

“I saw pieces of it, but I didn’t see this phenomenon that we have now where the issue has become one of political separation,” Cicerone said.

Though it has been frustrating, scientists are confident they will find the answers in the long run, Cicerone said. The key to science is repetition. Scientists carefully repeat observations and record data to see if the same results occur.

“Eventually, the truth comes out,” Cicerone said. “That’s the beauty of science, so in the long run, I’m not worried. But in the long run, it’s a long time.”