Karl S. Pister
Board Chair
Charles F. Kennel
Council Chair
Miriam E. John
Council Vice-chair |
The past year has been challenging for California. The state's record budget
deficits forced it to slash many important programs. Our hopes for addressing
California's serious problems with its physical, social, and economic
infrastructure- science and math education, healthcare, water and energy supplyhave
been deferred. Science and technology are at the core of California's
economic strength, and the state must use them to remedy the growing
shortcomings in our infrastructure.
If we could have gone ahead, we would have discovered how fragmented
our planning is. During the past year, the California Council on Science and
Technology (CCST) focused on integration of planning as a way of creating
future efficiencies. The first step was to develop better understanding of the
present situation. We found some novel linkages between what appear to be
separate systems. For example, California's water and energy uses are tightly
linked; many people do not realize that power generation consumes as much
freshwater as agricultural irrigation. They will both be affected by climate
change, and our strategy for coping with climate change will have to take this
linkage into account. Similarly, integration of the recent advances in healthcare
information technology with personalized medicine promises significant savings
through error reduction and more efficient procedures. But best of all, it makes
for better healthcare.
In such times, it seems counterintuitive to try to go beyond the status quo to
an ambitious vision for the future, but that is what we must do. We must start
by doing more with less. The key to doing more with less is to coordinate our
resources in a systematic, rather than fragmented, approach. CCST is ready and
able to advise California policymakers as they navigate these troubled times: it
is our mandate to forge connections, to make the best science and technology
expertise available to state leaders, to get the right information to the right
people at the right time. There are no easy fixes for California's economic woes,
but if we combine knowledge and expertise with political leadership, California
will continue to be the Golden State.
Karl S. Pister, Board Chair
Charles F. Kennel, Council Chair
Miriam E. John, Council Vice Chair
