In the 21st Century Governments Can Be the Solution and Not the Problem

March 30, 2019 – When it comes to the biggest challenges humanity faces in this century, don’t look to private enterprise for solutions. It has become painfully obvious that profit and self-interest dominate the private sector. That’s why energy companies advertise sustainability while they invest in non-sustainable oil and gas projects.

Look at the greatest achievements of humanity in the last century and the early 21st and note the role government has played in every single one of them.

• Internet – a technology developed in university laboratories funded by United States Defense Research grants that today spans the entire world creating a repository of collective wisdom, and an avenue for exchange of new ideas.
• Imaging – whether we are talking about Earth-observation satellites and remote sensing, or advancements in diagnostic imaging such as magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, and computed tomography, all of these technologies were jump-started by government, the former by NASA, and the latter by the U.S. National Institute of Health.
• Space – the development of rockets, satellites, the International Space Station, the Apollo Program, the Grand Tour of the outer planets, New Horizons visit to Pluto, and landers and rovers on the Moon and Mars have come about not from private enterprise, but by the hand and public purse of governments.
• Global Telecommunications – from the laying of undersea cables to the development of mobile telecommunications infrastructure, it has been governments that have kickstarted the revolutionary changes that connect the world.
• Global Navigation – Global Positioning Systems or GPS originated from late 1950s defense and space research attempting to solve the problems of celestial navigation. Today we know where we are at anytime on the planet, or in space because of government-funded research in this area.
• Human Genome – the mapping of our DNA happened because of government-funded research leading to a new understanding of the role our genetic information plays in human health and giving us the means to tackle and cure a number of intractable diseases.
• Human longevity – government investment in social engineering infrastructure including health, housing, freshwater access, and food and product safety, has led to the doubling of average life expectancy since the beginning of the 20th century to today.
• Green revolution – government-funded research to improve farming methods, new farming technologies, improved seeds, genetic engineering, rural electrification, and understanding the disease and pathology of plants has yielded enormous gains in the amount of food we produce per hectare of land.
• Infectious Disease Controls and Vaccines – the increase in human longevity, mentioned above, has partially come about because of government investments in disease management and searching for preventions and cures.
• Laser and Fiber Optics – our modern telecommunications networks wouldn’t exist without the invention of both lasers and fiber optics, technology developed in government-funded laboratories and think tanks.
• Nuclear Energy – a peacetime application of the Manhattan Project, a wartime investment to create the atomic bomb, has given us fission nuclear reactors which can be found around the world providing carbon-pollution free electricity.
• Materials Science – there would be no computers on desktops, smartphones, other digital devices, lithium batteries, and more without government-funded research into new materials: no semiconductors, no MRIs, CT scans, lasers, fiber optics, and no new materials like Teflon, carbon-fiber, and graphene.

This list is far from complete because I can continue to espouse the risk-taking role that governments have taken where no private enterpriser would dare to tread. Without governments putting taxpayer money into the pursuit of overcoming big challenges, tackling big projects, and turning big ideas into reality, we would be much poorer as a civilization.

Sometimes governments bet on the wrong horse. For example, it is government with its investments in inventions, grants, and subsidies that has given the fossil fuel industry the ability to dominate the planet’s energy sector. Earth sciences technologies developed in government and university labs, with researchers often receiving government grants have, in studying earthquakes, and the Earth’s subsurface created the tools to turn oil and gas exploration and extraction upside down. As a result, governments have made it possible to extend the use of fossil fuels well beyond what was thought to be peak oil back in the 1970s.

As we tackle climate change and global warming, it is government that we look to, and not the private sector, to lead the charge. Government-funded research has been helping to identify the carbon problem. Government funding has made carbon capture and sequestration and use (CCS and CCUS) viable. The energy company carbon capture projects in use or being developed around the world today would not exist without governments footing a significant amount of the development and build costs. When they have not been involved, and even sometimes when they have, projects have gone belly up because of industry players unwillingness to recognize the big challenge and take on the big project.

So when President Ronald Reagan, in 1980, at his first inaugural address stated that “in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” he was seen by those who devalue government as a free enterprise champion. Reagan’s quote, which is often taken out of context, wasn’t referring to government overall, but to the economic crisis of the time, stagflation, a stagnant U.S. economy suffering from runaway inflation. Mind you, later in his presidency he often talked about government as a problem and not a solution.

The quote whether taken out of context or not has become the mantra for monetarists, neoclassical economic theorists, oil executives, and those who are situated on the conservative side of the political spectrum. These “experts” talk about “the market” as the instrument upon which humanity should rely to solve all outstanding problems. How wrong they are, and the evidence only recently shows just how much. Take the 2008 global financial meltdown that almost led to a worldwide depression. It was all about giving the market” a very long leash through deregulation, and little oversight. The post-meltdown world in which we live is still feeling the aftershocks.

What is so unfortunate even today is that so many in politics, and in business still embrace “the market” as the mechanism by which we can address 21st-century problems, even in the face of the most existential threat humans have encountered since World War II, the Cold War. and MAD (mutually assured destruction), namely climate change.