Deans' Forum

 on the Environment

MANAGING THE ENVIRONMENT: IS SCIENCE THE SOLUTION OR THE PROBLEM?

Paul Gilman,
Founding Director, Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies (ORCAS),
and Former Assistant Administrator for R&D at EPA

At the dawn of the modern era of environmental awareness, scientists and their science were viewed as barriers to meaningful progress. Either there wasn't "sufficient data" upon which to act, or there was an absence of consensus as to what the data meant. Today, scientists and engineers claim they have the keys to managing our environment in a sustainable fashion--and almost nobody believes it. How did we get to this point? How do we get beyond it?