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COMMENTARY The Geology of Capitol Hill
Paul K. Doss, GSA Visiting Scholar, Past Chair, GSA Geology
and Public Policy Committee
Spring “fieldwork” with Kasey White, GSA’s Geoscience
Policy Director, took us to more than 40 offices on Capitol Hill,
targeting members of congressional Appropriations Committees
and communicating the societal benefits of the geosciences.
What is geoscience on Capitol Hill today? It is largely per-
ceived as climate change research. Of course this is a generaliza-
tion; many legislators know the role of geoscience in natural
hazards, resources, and energy development, and a few even
respect the role of geoscience in understanding climate change.
But in today’s Congress, ignorance about the breadth of the
geosciences dominates.
Public lands are an important resource for many geologists.
For me, they’ve included Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore,
Everglades, Acadia, and Yellowstone National Parks, and
Manistee National Forest, where “Michigan water wars” pitted
resource advocates against bottled-water producers in courts and
protest lines. These, plus efforts in local government (Doss, 1994; does—it’s more than climate science; what NOAA does—it’s
Doss, 2000) provided my understanding that public policy must
be informed by Earth science. GSA leadership has recognized
GSA’s role in these efforts; GSA President Claudia Mora wrote in
support for the March for Science, “It is the role of GSA to
directly and positively engage policy makers across the political
spectrum and at national to local levels” (www.geosociety.org/
GSA/News/Releases/GSA/News/pr/2017/17-13.aspx).
Also, my two terms as member and chair of GSA’s Geology and
Public Policy Committee (GPPC) illuminated a persistent reality.
Geologists, largely, do not engage well in the policy process. If
we’ve improved, it’s clear from today’s policy “climate” we waited
too long.
In the 1990s, House Speaker Newt Gingrich crafted his
“Contract with America” that included abolishing the U.S.
Geological Survey. That proposal, introduced by Representative
John Kasich (R-OH), once came within six votes of passing. From
Kasich’s office, “We haven’t heard a single voice” speak for the
Survey, only media inquiries (www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/
morgue/cover/1995_Feb_1.USGS0001.html). In GPPC talking
points then were the importance of the USGS, the agencies it
served, and programs it fulfilled. For example, not a single con-
gressional staffer contacted knew that the USGS conducted
stream-gaging.
A quarter-century later, here we are with higher stakes. In
the U.S. alone, 50 million more people depend on fewer non-
renewable resources, more urbanized and fragmented land, an
aging water-supply infrastructure, more eroded soils, and an
increased international supply of necessary minerals. All while
natural systems are responding in unpredictable ways to global
climate change.
www.geosociety.org/gsatoday
In his 2011 GSA Presidential Address, John Geissman (2012,
p. 13) said, “We cannot deny that several activities and factors are
presently conspiring to make what we describe, and take for
granted, as life on our only home more and more unsustainable.”
Our nation’s need for what geoscience offers is at its highest.
I suggest that geology is under siege within the public-policy
sphere. Attempts in Congress to reduce funding for geosciences
due to its role in climate science research threatens the entire
spectrum of benefits our science provides.
Elected officials work for you and make impactful decisions on
your behalf. Although geologists differ on matters of resource use,
environmental protection, energy “policy,” or land use—that’s
OK. Any time an elected official hears “geology” with respect to
societal importance, everyone benefits. We must inform decision
makers and educate policy developers. They will make decisions;
it’s our responsibility to help them understand the data needed to
make informed decisions.
Your representatives must hear what NASA Earth Science
more than sea-level rise; what NSF geoscience funding provides
to their district; and what the Department of the Interior supports
(USGS, NPS, EPA, BLM).
The geoscience community knows Earth is in flux. Societies
also evolve. Demographics change, exposing populations to new,
previously unforeseen hazards. Technological advancement
demands new mineral resources. Energy consumption sustains
the search for non-renewable energy reserves. Infrastructure
degrades in response to earth movements and weathering agents.
Geoscience understands these things. Individual citizen geoscien-
tists must show our policy makers the elegance of that understand-
ing, over and over again.
REFERENCES CITED
Doss, P.K., 1994, Constructed wetlands: Can and will we engineer a viable
ecosystem?, in Fleming, J.R., and Gemery, H.A., eds., Science, Technology
and the Environment: Multidisciplinary Perspectives: Akron, Ohio, Univ. of
Akron Press, p. 173–196.
Doss, P.K., 2000, Geology and community planning: An Earth Scientist in City
Hall, in Schneiderman, J., ed., The Earth Around Us: Maintaining a Livable
Planet: New York, W.H. Freeman & Co., p. 244–253.
Geissman, J., 2012, The importance of the global professoriate in the
geosciences—The students we are teaching, and learn from, today may
represent the last great hope: GSA Today, v. 22, no. 1, p. 12–16.
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