About the Center
The RAND Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy
and the Future Human Condition was established in 2001 through a generous
$5 million pledge from RAND alumnus Frederick S. Pardee. The RAND Pardee
Center pursues ambitious objectives: to improve our ability to think
about the longer-range future--from 35 to as far as 200 years ahead--and
to develop new methods of analyzing potential long-range, global effects
of today's policy options in order to design sound policies that are
sensitive to those effects.
The pledge for this Center is consistent with the donor's longtime commitment to philanthropy. Mr. Pardee's vision of investing today to enhance the quality of life tomorrow is supported by an equally ardent belief that progress in this endeavor will come only with serious, sustained effort. There has been no dearth of attempts to think globally about the human condition or the long-range future. What has been missing, however, is a means of tying those efforts systematically and analytically to today's policy decisions. This is the gap that the RAND Pardee Center seeks to address.
Why the Success of the RAND Pardee Center Is Important
We know that decisions we make today can have surprisingly long-term and global effects. Take the example of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs were developed in the 1930s as a safe alternative to ammonia for use in cooling systems such as refrigerators and air conditioners. By 1974, scientists had discovered that CFCs were detectable in the atmosphere and were causing a weakening of the earth's protective ozone layer. By 1984, the "ozone hole" over Antarctica had become a worldwide concern. But what to do? Immediate banning of CFCs could deny developing countries inexpensive refrigerants and a chance to improve their nations' health and quality of life. Within 50 years, a chemical compound came to have significant long-term, global, scientific, and social consequences.
Increasingly, we are confronted by issues the effects of which will not be clear for decades or by cases where actions we take (or do not take) today could have important consequences for the future. Such areas of concern include:
- Global warming
- Genetic engineering
- The Internet
- Nuclear waste disposal
- Potable water
- Population growth
- Sustainable use of natural resources
We cannot afford to wait 35 or more years to take action. However, what we decide to do should take into account what we can say now about longer-range consequences.
There are several approaches for thinking about the longer-range future, including classical means such as historical analogies, more recent means such as statistical inference, and evolving means such as exploratory modeling--a RAND-developed technique that uses ever-increasing computer power to impose computational discipline on speculation about the future.
Historical research strands at RAND mesh well with the Center's goals. RAND has pioneered both policy analysis itself and a variety of ways to think about the longer-range future. In addition, RAND has researched problems of the human condition from health to education, governance, and security for individual countries and entire regions of the world. The RAND Pardee Center will be able to draw on this historical legacy and on current research, as well as on the expertise of RAND scholars and researchers who advance these traditions.
The Donor's Vision
Frederick Pardee ardently believes that enhancing the quality of life for future generations on a global level requires an immediate, serious, and dedicated effort to chart new ground. Mr. Pardee first became involved with long-range technological and economic projections, quality-of-life issues, and their policy implications while working as a RAND systems analyst from 1957 to 1971. He has pledged $5 million toward the establishment of The RAND Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition, as well as the Frederick S. Pardee Professorship of Long-Term Policy Analysis in the Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS).
The Director
Dr. Robert Lempert, senior scientist at RAND, directs the Center. He is an expert in science and technology policy, with a special focus in climate change, energy, and the environment. An internationally-known scholar in the field of decisionmaking under conditions of deep uncertainty, Dr. Lempert is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Science’s Climate Research Committee, a member of the National Academy’s National Transportation Research Board’s Committee on Climate Change and U.S. Transportation, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Lempert is leading an NSF-funded study on the use of scientific and other information for climate change decisionmaking under conditions of uncertainty. He has led studies on climate change policy; long-term policy analysis, and science and technology investment strategies for clients such as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and a variety of multinational firms. A Professor of Policy Analysis in the RAND Graduate School, Dr. Lempert is an author of the recent book “Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Longer-Term Policy Analysis.”
See the press release on the center's establishment.
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