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An Antidote to the Ongoing Suicide of a Superpower

  • OxCAN Blog Editor
  • Sep 8
  • 6 min read

Updated: Oct 1


Dr Daniel M Kammen


The Blog Series on a Just Climate Transition by the University of Oxford Climate Alumni Network (OxCAN) delves into the complexities and challenges of the issue, while proffering tangible solutions and pathways. In this post, Dr Daniel M Kammen, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Energy and Climate Justice at Johns Hopkins University and Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), argues for the centrality of science, research, and innovation in the public sphere to uphold climate and social justice [1].


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Perhaps the most frightening policy assessment I have seen since Mr Trump’s second administration has taken shape has not been the horrific levels of contempt and ignorance of the value and respect for immigrants, climate change, and civil dialogue both among and within nations, but it has it has been the outright hostility to – simply put – knowledge and social justice.

Let’s put this into the stark terms that the current crisis demands.

Economies and societies advance through innovation. The Hydraulic Hypothesis from Ancient Mesopotamia was the widely discussed, debated, and at least partially correct view that the technology to collect, manage, and distribute water for agriculture was the first great leap forward. Arabic mathematics and astronomy facilitated navigation. The Chinese chemistry of gunpowder and biochemistry of active compounds led to rapid advances in medicine. US-led progress in computing technology produced a great step forward (and many new perils) of the data-savvy and AI-developing society we are now navigating. The work of Rachel Carson on the rights of nature, and of Robert Bullard on the rights of minorities – and in each case how everyone benefits from a just society – are further examples of innovation that led, however slowly and problematically, to a more equitable society. To get specific, MIT Economist Robert Solow received the 1987 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics [2] for his work on economic growth, where he found overwhelming theoretical and empirical evidence that 90% or more of economic growth is due to new innovations. There was before, and has been since 1987, a great deal of important work in this area, but the Solow growth model put the sharpest point on the centrality of innovation (notably in science), technology, and what we would now call interdisciplinary problem-solving, to show that, without both an ecosystem of innovators and support for ideas, economies can wither and die.

Decades of my own work has shown that, in the energy and climate arena, the Solow perspective on the need to nurture and invest in innovations is vital. Work using patents to show the multiplicative returns on investing in research and development (R&D) [3] and efforts to study the pathways and communities of innovators in the US [4] and in Africa [5] both support this finding.

It is for this reason that the current self-harm that the US is doing to its research base – the current and the future research community – is such short-sighted stupidity. In terms of current research capacity, the new administration has already cancelled hundreds of National Science Foundation [6] and National Institutes of Health [7] grants, and grants for science in the armed forces [8], and is engaged in highly indiscriminate mass layoffs of staff with specialised skills across government [8]. There is simply no other way to understand these cuts than to invoke the poorest of short-sighted, self-destructive urges we have witnessed before, which have been immortalised in the famously haunting Martin Niemöller poem:

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist 

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

 

That is just a taste of the current self-harm that the current administration, and by extension the members of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate who are not aggressively working to block these damages, are doing. Currently, there is no organised or coordinated opposition to this effort, where the administration seems to think that the best financial and political diet to follow is one of removing several ounces of brain matter.

Then there is the future harm: an intellectual bonsai operation of striking reach. Efforts are ongoing to close or to entirely restrict the actions of the Department of Education and of the Environmental Protection Agency (environmental quality actually used to be a core ‘Republican value’). The crackdown on immigrants, the mass-cancelling of student visas, and the deportation of law-abiding citizens – and those in the process of becoming citizens – has ushered in a new era of bright international students looking elsewhere. They are abandoning plans to enrich, contribute, and enliven US science and technology – to say nothing of culture and community.

What is so shocking from a science and innovation perspective is that all of those who do science recognise that, while the social institutions may be flawed, they are a parliament of ideas. We do not vote on the speed of light, or on evolution, or on quantum computing, or on a myriad of other innovations. Ideas may be suppressed or opposed, but the ideal is that eventually they win out and, if correct, create converts.

The data is all around us, but today all is politically polarised. California spends more on research than any other US state, and in part as a result recently moved from fifth- to fourth-largest economy on the planet. An investment in openness and research works.

This federal administration, and the Project 2025 playbook of hate, creation of enemies, and division, seems to think science, innovation, and progress are little more than political footballs to be passed back and forth, without any recognition that our health, housing, economy, and environment are all areas of discovery and creativity that need to be nurtured as an ecosystem, not balkanised and isolated, or even starved.

So, what to do? Creativity may or may not be continuous, but key recent events such as the Clean Air Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, and older iconic events – the decisions to explore the ‘New World,’ to commit to travelling to the Moon, or to invest in genetic sequencing – all produced unforeseen and (to some) dangerous democracies of ideas. Watching one administration turn away from thoughtful exploration and criminalising the creators of new concepts can only be seen as the selfish greed, or fear, of a cult.

Pushback is never easy or fun for the first actor – just ask Greta Thunberg – but it pays you back when movements start. The US science community needs to spend some privilege and political capital on defending the marginalised student researchers – be they from Boston or Belize, Georgia or Guangzhou – and show their elected officials that science is not at the bottom of the priority list.

At this point, it is not about left-right politics, but it is instead about investing in society, not tearing it apart [9].

 

Dr Daniel M Kammen is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Energy and Climate Justice at Johns Hopkins University. As a Coordinating Lead Author, he contributed to the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has served as Chief Technical Specialist for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency at the World Bank, and as Science Envoy in the US Department of State. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the US National Academy of Sciences. At UC Berkeley, he co-chaired the Roundtable on Climate and Environmental Justice. He is presently a Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) at the Oxford Martin School, and a Member of the University of Oxford Climate Alumni Network (OxCAN).


References

[1] Boot, Max (2025) “We are witnessing the suicide of a superpower,” The Washington Post, June 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/02/trump-science-cuts/

[3] Margolis, R. and Kammen, D. M. (1999) “Underinvestment: The energy technology and R&D policy challenge,” Science, 285, 690–692. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2898477

[4] Kammen, D. M. and Nemet, G. (2007) “Energy Myth #11 – Energy R&D Investment Takes Decades to Reach the Market,” Energy and American Society - Thirteen Energy Myths, Marilyn Brown and Benjamin Sovacool, editors (Springer, The Netherlands), pages 289–309. ISBN1402055633. And see also: Nemet, G. F. and Kammen, D. M. (2007) “U.S. energy research and development: Declining investment, increasing need, and the feasibility of expansion,” Energy Policy, 35(1), 746–755. DOI:10.1016/j.enpol.2005.12.012

[5] Mulugetta, Y., Sokona, Y., Trotter, P.A., Kammen, D.M. et al. (2022) "Africa needs context-relevant evidence to shape its clean energy future," Nature Energy. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01152-0

[6] NSF cancels hundreds of grants https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01098-9. Table of cancelled NSF grants: https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO 

[9] Kammen, D.M. (2023) “Why what happened to Oppenheimer then is relevant now,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 79(4), 267–271. https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2023.2223087


Blogs are the opinions of their authors and do not represent the official views of OxCAN.

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