The New Era of Environmental Science — Milton Muldrow — TEDxDover

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: All right, well, the world is changing rapidly. That's no secret, from issues of mass extinction to the threat of extinction of entire ecosystems within our lifetime. No longer may ecologists and environmental scientists have the relative luxury to spend a lifetime or career in the forest as it's cut down around them, or scuba diving over a reef as it recedes beneath them. This new crop of environmental scientists will be required to have excellent communication skills. They're going to have to have the ability to effectively communicate their science because the public often funds them. This will require new skills as well as new culture in the field. In this new era of environmental science, we will have to decide as a scientific community on our ecological baselines and goals. What do we truly believe we can achieve and maintain in terms of ecosystem quality? You know, the oceans are getting warmer and more acidic. What do we realistically think we can achieve in terms of coral reef restoration as an example? Do we stubbornly shoot for some glorious phantom ecosystem despite changing physical conditions, armed with innovation, or do we concede the fact that the earth has changed and adapt our expectations accordingly? Either way, we as a community will have to start making some decisions. Ethics and biotechnology. We should start to explore more explicitly the role of biotechnology and genetics in solving our environmental problems. We also need to grapple with the ethics of biotechnology, but we're going to have to start making some decisions, right? Ideas involving biotech range to the extreme, you know, in terms of cloning and de-extinction, you know, a process in which we bring, you know, species back from the dead, so to speak. My son back there, William, he wants to be a dinosaur scientist, right? And his lifelong goal, he's only seven, but he wants to bring dinosaurs back. So, you know, far-fetched, but, you know, I haven't seen William yet, so he's coming. There have been few advances regarding the use of genetics in conservation. You know, we have made some steps, but I don't sense a tremendous drive or momentum in this area. Should man genetically engineer reefs through new advances? I don't know, although I suspect our future environmental sciences can increase their value in the job market if they attain some of these skills. Science and policy are becoming ever more important in environmental science, right? Creating our science to the general public and our policy makers. Our scientists must become skilled communicators and willing to engage anyone, and that means anyone. What we see in the White House today as it pertains to science is all of our fault, right? That's not a political statement, not necessarily. So, many solutions to environmental problems involve convincing people to change their behavior, as well as convincing governments to change the way they do business. No matter how tremendous our scientific advances, no matter how brilliant they are, if we don't communicate them, and if people don't trust what we do, they fall flat. Let's take climate change as a case study. Much of the world is operating as if climate change is true, because it is, right? As an example, you know, China is racing to be the, you know, dominant in the space of solar panel production while we're still trying to figure out if this stuff is real. But I must say that we as scientists, you know, we must communicate to the general public even what it takes to be a scientist. You know, someone, you know, watching the news, right, watching a cable news segment about climate change may not even understand how to, you know, evaluate the qualifications of the panelists. A lot of people don't know what it takes to become a scientist, let's say a research scientist at a university. A lot of people don't know, believe it or not, that it takes four or five years of undergraduate work, usually five, right, in a basic science. They don't know it takes another two or three to get a master's degree. Two years is what it says in the brochure, but we know, we know better, right? You know, when I was working on my master's in the Florida Keys, I had set up all my plots in the subtropical forests in Upper Key Largo, and then Hurricane Katrina came right back down and a little right back down, so I had to go back. Another excuse to go to paradise, right? But then after that, right, it's another four or five years to a PhD often, okay? Same issues, organisms die, experiments fail, it takes time. After that, you're often, you know, spending two years as a post-doc, okay? That's roughly 13 years plus I just outlined in trying to become a scientist, usually willfully being in poverty, right? All because you love your field, right? There's not a lot of money at that stage, the general public doesn't understand that. What they also don't understand, oftentimes, is that scientists aren't driven to agree, right? They're not driven to agree on climate change. I used to work for the federal government, the National Science Foundation, and one of the most enjoyable aspects of that job was going to panels, right? Because you could see scientists arguing over, you know, proposals and ideas, okay? If I could be the smarty pants to debunk climate change, it's probably going to be good for my career, wouldn't you say, right? Scientists aren't driven to agree, though we know no field is perfect. That's right. Although environmental science has always been interdisciplinary, the collection of skills the next generation of environmental sciences may need may be vastly different than the former. An immense amount of data is being collected by our universities, by our scientific agencies, and very little is being analyzed. In this new era of environmental science, it has a big seat at the table for people with great quantitative skills, even programming skills. As an example, coral surveys were typically done using SCUBA and transects, right? Although NASA has just deployed new technology, new imaging technology, that, you know, straps onto an airplane, and thereby they can cover a much larger expanse in a relatively shorter period of time. Whether it's counting whales from space, crunching ocean data using artificial intelligence, software, finding patterns in unexplored data sets, some of the most impactful environmental sciences sources of the future may never leave their desks. Diversity. Uh-oh. Here we go. So when a student goes to a school, right, they shouldn't feel like the world's in that page alone, okay? Not in this great melting plot with all these resources, but even more than being alone with that word represents is a lack of distribution of resources, okay? I hear a lot of my colleagues in academia, you know, discussing the current administration's lack of diversity initiatives, and I would agree with a lot of that, right? But then I think, hold on now. I remember walking in those hallways alone. I remember being told I can't or I won't, right? You see, reaching out to everyone is not just a moral decision, it's also a practical one. You know, if we don't discuss our way of thinking with everybody, then our way of thinking may not be around anymore. Remember the scientific enterprise is dependent on public funding, okay? So if the public is not part of your way of life or thinking, then your way of life may cease to exist. We must engage everyone. There's a picture of Appalachia there. Why are the sciences branded so strongly liberal? Remember the biggest, you know, spokesperson for climate change was Al Gore, and I'm not saying he didn't do great work, but I think we should be careful with the way we brand ourselves, right? We can't be seen on one side or the other. Today, I believe we pay for our own failure to relate some of our policies, you know, across the spectrum. For example, as environmental sciences, we need to admit a few things to the general public. Right? We need to admit to them, us eco dudes, that we drive. Right? We need to admit that, you know, my iPhone has the same deleterious compounds as yours. I probably fly more than you do. My lab uses a tremendous amount of water. Right? And we can also explain to the general public why we do some of these things, but count ourselves as part of the problem as well, as we work together as part of the solution, rather than making the general public feel like we're pointing fingers. Okay? We need to be more inclusive, because no matter how smart we think we are, evidently we can't do it alone. So, the decline of the Great Eastern Forest represent that. The decline of reefs all around the world represent that. Now, Dr. King spoke, obviously, about the plight of African Americans. Okay? But he also spoke about the poverty in Appalachia. Appalachia is one of the world's oldest mountain ranges and has a different and diverse culture, but today has been reduced to a punchline. Right? How many of us told some of those West Virginia jokes? Well, West Virginia helped put those scientific policies in office, as did Pennsylvania and Ohio and so on and so forth. Okay? So, time to prove it. Right? Time to prove it. Lastly, in the environmental sciences, we need to establish an insatiable Silicon Valley-like fervor to solve problems. Okay? I included this picture here of a footprint on the moon from one of the Apollo missions, because America's desire in reaching a goal like that must be matched by our desire to save the Amazon, save the great eastern forests of the United States, save the reef. We must establish clear goals, capture the public's imagination, and, you know, after all, this is the only planet we call home. Thank you.