2016 Election Night

It’s not all politics today at FiveThirtyEight. Or maybe it is. … I called Walter Engelund of NASA’s Langley Research Center this afternoon to talk about a piece I’m writing about the technical challenges of sending humans to Mars. He told me that the U.S. space program is a politically charged topic. “Almost without exception, whenever a new administration comes in, we get a change in priorities,” he said. Sending humans to Mars will require sustained support, and that means politicians who are willing to fully fund NASA and prioritize its Mars program. Both Clinton and Trump have expressed enthusiasm for the space program, but they’re vague on details. Trump has given at least one speech promising not to cut space funding, but he also told a town hall rally in New Hampshire back in August that he wants to “rebuild our infrastructure” before sending people to Mars. Clinton has called herself an “enthusiastic supporter of human space flight” and indicated that going to Mars is a “consensus horizon goal,” whatever that means.

The Paris Climate Agreement went into effect this week, and although the presidential campaign paid scant attention to climate change, there’s a relatively straightforward approach to the issue — one backed by most economists — that’s being offered to voters in Washington state. It’s a carbon tax, and if Initiative 732 passes, it will make Washington the first state to impose a tax on carbon emissions. The new carbon tax would start at $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide in 2017, climb to $25 per ton in 2018 and then automatically rise 3.5 percent plus inflation every year after that until it reaches $100 per ton (as measured in 2016 dollars). Proponents estimate that the measure would boost the price of gas by about 25 cents per gallon and raise the price of electricity from coal-fired plants by about 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. The tax is intended to be “revenue neutral” by swapping it for reductions in other taxes, such as state sales tax and certain business taxes. Ironically, the the legislation would give an inadvertent tax break to Boeing for its sale of commercial aircraft, an important contributor to climate change. Recent polls show a tight vote. While economists generally favor a carbon tax, the devil is always in the details, and the details are what are being disputed. The measure is backed by more than 50 University of Washington climate scientists, climatologist and activist James Hansen, former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Leonardo DiCaprio, who say the law puts a necessary price on carbon emissions. But some environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, oppose the initiative, saying that doesn’t do enough to help low-income people who might be hurt by the tax, it doesn’t shift enough money to clean energy and that the tax swap could lead to a state budget deficit. Interests funding the opposition campaign include the fossil fuel and manufacturing industries and local utility Puget Sound Energy.

When it comes to funding for science, Clinton’s priorities look a lot like Obama’s. But Trump’s are very different. (SPOILER ALERT for those of you who didn’t see that coming.) In particular, there are a couple of big changes that a Trump presidency would likely bring to the federal science budget. First is NASA. Trump digs space exploration, and while it would be inaccurate to say Obama has been anti-astronaut or something, he has definitely de-prioritized NASA’s space-travel mission in favor of its earth-science mission (i.e., studying climate change). Over the course of the Obama presidency, the budget for NASA earth science research increased by 70 percent. His disinterest in returning to the moon, in particular, has been critiqued on both sides of the aisle. If a President Trump wanted to build bipartisan scientific goodwill, a moon mission would be a good way to do it. The second thing is the Department of Energy, where funding has been heavily weighted toward research on and support for renewables. For instance, the DOE’s budget for energy-efficiency and renewable-energy programs grew by 40 percent between Obama’s 2016 and proposed 2017 budget — while funding for fossil fuel programs (think R&D and clean coal tech) fell by 27 percent, and it was lower than the clean-energy budget to begin with. It’s likely that a Trump administration would reverse these trends.