Chemical Education Today
Editorial
Is America Subprime? If this editorial began, “All the oratory and publicity aside, the American public and government remain unwilling to face up squarely to the energy problems that are upon us, and to the resulting constraints on living and productivity that they portend.”, you might think it right up to date. That’s too bad, because these words were written in 1978 by Tom Lippincott, who was then editor of this Journal, in an editorial titled, “Energy Independence: The Pace Must Quicken” (1). Three decades later our nation has made only sporadic progress toward addressing energy issues, and the changing context of energy, including greenhouse emissions and climate change, seems to be negating much of the progress that has been made. Recently financial markets have been devastated by subprime mortgage lending, derivative securities that were insecure, and people who financed speculation by borrowing heavily. These economic excesses apply to all of us. We have been living on credit—spending other people’s money to maintain our current standard of living and to slake our ever-growing thirst for energy. As a frustrated industrial worker on “The Wire” complained, “We used to make [things] in this country, build [things]. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket.” (2) Our entire society seems to have become less and less cognizant of economic and scientific constraints and more and more willing to let others—especially future generations—foot the bills. Perhaps, like Wile E. Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon, we have run off a cliff. If we look down at reality, we will plummet. Perhaps we are in free fall, already subprime, with no chance of reversing an increasingly bad situation. This is being written just before the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The appetite for change is palpable. Let’s hope it is real, carefully thought-out change that will call upon everyone to help deal with the many serious problems we face. In a 2005 Time magazine article (3), Obama said that Abraham Lincoln, “reminded me of a larger, fundamental element of American life—the enduring belief that we can constantly remake ourselves to fit our larger dreams.” Note the allusion to remaking “ourselves”, not somebody else, and the implication that all of us need to participate in the remake. We can remake ourselves and our society. Will we? What can we, as science teachers, contribute to remaking our society? We should provide the best possible opportunities for our own students to learn science. We need to work toward the goal that all students will have equivalent learning opportunities. We need to help students learn the latest information on science and technology that may affect policies (for example, by reading articles such as the one by Frank Settle on p 316). Beyond that, we need to help students better appreciate how the fundamentals they are learning affect applications and even impinge on policy issues. For example, the efficiencies of coal-fired and nuclear electric power plants are inherently limited by the second law of thermodynamics. Nobody can remake that fact. We need to disabuse students of the fallacy that science and engineering can solve all of our problems. Although there will be no solutions without science, and funding for scientific research and science education are crucial, real solutions will
Is America subprime? I think not. We’ll have to work hard, sacrifice, and innovate. Now let’s go out and prove we can do it!
involve sacrifices on everyone’s part. Some of what needs to be done now would have been more palatable had we had a consistent, comprehensive energy policy during the past three decades. For example, higher taxes on gasoline could have funded lots of research and development. Instead requirements for automobile fuel economy were allowed to stagnate and U.S. auto companies are now saddled with inventories of vehicles nobody wants to buy. Consistent governmental support would likely have released the full force of the American economic engine to research, develop, and deploy new energy technologies that would likely have placed the U.S at the forefront of green energy today. But that did not happen. People are rightly becoming suspicious of politicians who propose solutions without sacrifice. We teachers should be preparing students to be receptive to those who tell it as it is: we won’t be able to continue as we have been, and now is the best possible time to start changing. Foreign investors already hold about $10 trillion of U.S. Treasury notes, with about $2 trillion of that in China. Gao Xiqing, a Communist Chinese official who handles a significant portion of that investment, was educated in the U.S. and for a time was an associate in Richard Nixon’s Wall Street law firm, so he knows the U.S. well. His advice about change is, “I have great admiration of American people. Creative, hard-working, trusting, and freedom-loving. But you have to have someone to tell you the truth. And then, start realizing it. And if you do…then you’ll be great again!” (4). Is America subprime? I think not. We’ll have to work hard, sacrifice, and innovate. Now let’s go out and prove we can do it! Literature Cited 1. Lippincott, W. T. J. Chem. Educ. 1978, 55, 275. 2. See http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0020620/quotes (accessed Jan 2009). 3. Obama, Barack. Time, Tuesday, June 28, 2005; http://www.cnn. com/2005/POLITICS/06/28/obama.lincoln.tm/ (accessed Jan 2009). 4. Xiqing, Gao, quoted by Fallows, James The Atlantic, December 2008, 302 (5), 62; http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/ fallows-chinese-banker (accessed Jan 2009)..
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© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 86 No. 3 March 2009 • Journal of Chemical Education
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