Things like the proposed tech tax are actually a very good idea. The specific form of it is debatable, but the idea is that five companies are worth … - Jeffrey Sachs

Here is my recommendation for President Trump and the new Congress. Turn immediately to our glorious national institutions, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, for a report to the nation on the key areas for science and technology investments in the coming generation. Ask them to recommend an organizational strategy for a science-based scaling up of national and global R&D efforts. Call on America’s research universities to add their own brainstorming to the work of the national academies. Later in 2017, the president and Congress should then meet in a joint session of Congress to set forth a new technology vision for the nation and an R&D strategy to achieve it.

We need the United Nations as the core and central institution of our world. The only way we’re going to have a peaceful, civilized world is through a strong UN. It’s absurd that the UN core budget is a mere $3 billion per year, when New York City’s budget is around $100 billion. We chronically underfund the UN system and then ask, “Why don’t things work well?”

We are in the process of utterly wrecking the planet by burning fossil fuels and thereby raising Earth’s temperature. We are now experiencing higher temperatures than in any decade of the past 10,000 years, and the temperature continues to rise. As a result, humanity faces the risk of a catastrophic multimeter sea level rise at the current or slightly warmer temperature.