~ Miami Herald//Barack Obama Op-Ed: We can no longer delay action on climate change

Last week I spent Earth Day in the Everglades, one of our nation’s greatest national treasures, and saw firsthand what makes its unique landscape so magical — what the poet Emma Lazarus called “the savage splendor of the swamp.” Plus, I got to hang out with Bill Nye the Science Guy. “There are no other Everglades in the world,” wrote Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who helped preserve it. But climate change is threatening this treasure and the communities that depend on it. That’s what my visit was all about.

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~ The Wall Street Journal //Gerald F. Seib ~ Obama Presses Case for Asia Trade Deal, Warns Failure Would Benefit China

President Obama and his negotiators are working to finish the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal among 12 Pacific nations that has come to be known as TPP, while also fighting to win “fast track” negotiating authority from Congress to expedite approval of the deal later this year.

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~ Reuters // Sharon Begley ~ Decline U.S. science spending threatens economy, security:MIT

Warning of an “innovation deficit,” scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say declining government spending on basic research is holding back potentially life-saving advances in 15 fields, from robotics and fusion energy to Alzheimer’s disease and agriculture.

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“We’ve had catastrophes, and it’s unfortunate that we’ve had to have catastrophes,” Foxx told POLITICO’s Mike Allen at a Playbook Lunch event, mentioning the 2007 Interstate 35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis that killed 13 people. “I think, frankly, the American public have to demand action in Washington.”

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~ The New York Times // Paul Krugman Op-Ed: Nobody Said That

Imagine yourself as a regular commentator on public affairs — maybe a paid pundit, maybe a supposed expert in some area, maybe just an opinionated billionaire. You weigh in on a major policy initiative that’s about to happen, making strong predictions of disaster. The Obama stimulus, you declare, will cause soaring interest rates; the Fed’s bond purchases will “debase the dollar” and cause high inflation; the Affordable Care Act will collapse in a vicious circle of declining enrollment and surging costs. But nothing you predicted actually comes to pass. What do you do?