Alignments between industrialists, politicians, and some scientists have produced the current policies of the Bush administration on global warming. The latest move in this area involves a ten-year program with lots of research money for scientists to study whether global warming is really taking place. It appears to be aimed at delaying the inevitable need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It will be an ultimate irony if scientists use this money to bury the current self-centeredness of American foreign policy by expanding the moral horizon of Americans.
Politics and the Scientist
In South Africa, we do not have much of a pharmaceutical industry, but our Minister of Health--who claims to have a medical degree from an Eastern European institution--has been corrupted by political agendas from the president's office into a state of denial about HIV and AIDS. She prefers the views of dissident scientists and favours the African potato over anti-retroviral drugs. We should remember that the dreams of scientists may sometimes turn into nightmares. A letter written by Albert Einstein to president Franklin Roosevelt was instrumental in the development of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
