This is an excerpt of my opinion essay published in the Washington Post yesterday. You can read the entirety of the essay HERE.
One of the great ironies of the first Trump administration was that amid all the talk of bleach, horse dewormers, mask mandates and school closures, most people didn’t pay attention to the policy that essentially ended the pandemic: Operation Warp Speed.
A president whose pandemic response was viewed by many as incompetent at best and brazen denial at worst spearheaded the development of the coronavirus vaccine, an accomplishment that Donald Trump hardly talks about lest he alienate his MAHA wing. Meanwhile, many in the public health establishment, which today recoils in horror at the current administration’s anti-vax posture, were skeptical of Trump’s ambitious timeline for a vaccine.
One year into the second Trump administration, a similar dynamic could be underway around climate change. Trump has described it as a Chinese hoax. His administration has withdrawn the United States from the Paris climate agreement, slashed funding for climate research and laid waste to greenhouse gas regulations, all to the consternation of environmentalists and Democrats.
But the administration has also launched the most ambitious effort to commercialize new nuclear energy technology since the Eisenhower administration’s Atoms for Peace initiative. The goal is to develop smaller and more nimble reactors to help meet a growing demand for energy, which is partly driven by an explosion of data centers for the artificial intelligence boom.