Science and Policy Home
Adopted by Council May 2005
AGU calls for the U.S. Administration, Congress, and NASA to continue their commitment to innovative Earth and space science programs. This commitment has placed the U.S. in an international leadership position. It enables environmental stewardship, promotes economic vitality, engages the next generation of scientists and engineers, protects life and property, and fosters exploration. It is, however, threatened by new financial demands placed on NASA by the return to human space flight using the space shuttle, finishing the space station, and launching the Moon-Mars initiative.
For over a quarter century, NASA and its international partners have pioneered extraordinary scientific advances in understanding the Earth, the solar system, and the universe. NASA's science programs and observations from space have greatly expanded our knowledge of the chemistry, biology, and physics of the ocean, the land, and the atmosphere. Scientific exploration by NASA has transformed our understanding of the universe.
There are indications that Earth and space sciences have become a lower priority at NASA. NASA's proposed 2006 budget reduces science research by $1.2 billion over the next five years, a dramatic change. These cuts are almost equally distributed between the Earth and space sciences. They will decimate effective programs designed to promote innovation, research and development, and frequent, flexible access to space. For example, several inexpensive Earth System Pathfinder missions and Explorer class satellites for the space sciences have been eliminated or subjected to prolonged delays. These losses will degrade our weather forecasting, search and rescue, and life and property protection capabilities. They affect our ability to understand natural hazards, map changes in Earth's surface, forecast space weather, understand Earth-Sun connections, and explore the solar system.
NASA is being asked to do more than it can with the resources provided. Shifting financial resources from science threatens vital investments and capabilities that have taken decades and tens of billions of tax dollars to build. AGU believes that the nation must capitalize on the extraordinary scientific advances of the last few decades and asks the U.S. Administration, Congress, and NASA to renew their commitment to Earth and space science research.
Permissions: Members everywhere are encouraged to help inform the policy making process in their home locales with thoughtful presentation of scientific viewpoints. Council adoption of position statements is one way that the Union can assist in this process. Any member may use an AGU policy statement in discussions with local or national policy makers as an official statement of the Union. If you use excerpts from a statement, then you should not attribute those as a Union position. Societies anywhere may use an AGU position statement with or without attribution as a basis for developing their own statements.
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