Dash Kochhar: Environmental research should be apolitical

Regarding the Aug. 27 news article “UNC leader speaks about collaboratory”: As a student at N.C. State studying environmental science, I was intrigued when I heard that the North Carolina state legislature had created a policy initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill designed to give it a direct line into environmental research.

On paper, the policy initiative seems like it could make a significant contribution to environmental research; however, it seems as if the motives were not so straightforward.

There is reason to believe that there might be some bias when it comes to the selection of group members, causing the integrity of the operation to come into question.

Environmental research and political partisanship should be independent from each other. The establishment of this policy initiative violates regulations at UNC because it doesn’t originate from faculty at the university, and this situation illustrates the need to keep politics and environmental science separated.

Climate change is an issue that cares not for political affiliation and continues to grow worse while debates rage as to the best way to fix it. Only by keeping politics out of environmental research can we hope to get a clear picture of the right choices for the future.

This story was originally published September 13, 2016 at 4:30 PM with the headline "Dash Kochhar: Environmental research should be apolitical."