Barbara Fike
DemocraticQ1 What advisory mechanisms will you implement to ensure that evidence and scientific findings play a crucial role in your policymaking process?
I would form partnerships with ASU and leading organizations for their expertise in may areas. I would call for hydrologist and climate scientists to be major players in the decisions we make about water for our future.
Q2 What initiatives will you take to support investment in innovation via federal science funding?
If federal science funding still exists when I am in office, I would partner with CAP, ASU, and any agencies looking at innovative solutions to our water problem. Likewise, with Data Centers and AI use, traffic control, land management, air, noise, and light pollution in our cities, and more.
Q3 Arizona faces many environmental issues, including extreme heat, mining extraction waste, and water scarcity, especially with the rise of AI data centers. What strategies, if any, do you support to tackle these issues?
I would ban or seriously curtail data centers, or at least require them to find and use alternative cooling and power systems. I would push for greater creation and use of reclaimed water, especially for agriculture, and seek experts to advise as to the merits of desalination, cisterns, or other solutions. Mining companies need to be held to a high standard of waste disposal, or they shouldn’t be mining.
Q4 Arizona saw the second-largest measles outbreak in the nation last November. Do you have any plans or support any policies to prevent future public health outbreaks?
We need to try to reclaim our sanity when it comes to vaccines. Individuals can choose exemptions only up to the number where it threatens herd immunity. I am a polio survivor and am so thankful to doctors and vaccines that there are not more people like me or worse. We can’t go back to those times.
Q5 Arizona youth regularly use social media. Given that social media profiles may spread information about science and policy matters, do you support any policies that regulate these platforms for younger audiences?
I believe in free speech, but free speech does carry limits. In the wild west, people sold “snake oil” until truth in advertising came about; radio and television had censors - social media is more pervasive than any of those, yet carries little to no restrictions. That is a problem for all of us, but especially younger audiences (and others who haven’t learned to discern mis- and dis-information) so I believe regulations are necessary.
Q6 According to Consumer Affairs and the National Education Association (NEA), Arizona is ranked last in public school education and has the lowest high school graduation rate in the nation. Arizona is also one of the US states with the least funding put into public schools. What are your opinions on the current state of public school funding in Arizona, and how do you view the role of science in K-12 education?
The lack of funding of schools, and the hemorrhaging of those funds to ESA’s, is a crime in Arizona that has been going on for decades, and must be stopped. The second problem in education is that parents and PACs decide what is taught, not professional educators, and one of the victims of that (along with history) is science. Our society and world are doomed to fail if we don’t educate our youth as to how it works, or to spark the interest of a future scientist who will save us.