My interest in science goes back to the years I spent at school. I remember one day in the science lab our teacher, Old Braddy, spied a student whose mind was obviously miles away from OB’s riveting monologue. He paused in his explanation of the circulatory system, to which the rest of us were at least pretending to listen, then switching effortlessly to Newton’s laws of motion, threw the blackboard eraser at the slumbering student.

The poor bloke sat bolt upright in a cloud of white dust with wide-eyed panic.

“Ah, you there boy,” boomed Braddy. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell us the name of a major artery in the chest.”

“Um, the fallopian tube, sir?” ventured the startled student.

When the chuckles died down, OB looked up, with just a hint of a smile cracking his usually dour demeanour.

“Well boy, it’s plain to see where your heart lies.”

All jokes aside, it is scientists, both those with the benefit of experience and newcomers with the intellectual innocence of youth, we should be supporting with funding and community kudos.

Electricity for instance, has brought the biggest benefit, as well as the greatest challenge, to our way of life. Benjamin Franklin with his kite in the lightning led to Alessandro Volta’s battery, and then Michael Faraday’s dynamo to power the light bulb that Tommy Edison invented. The alternating current devised by Nikola Tesla led to today’s massive power stations.

Large companies took over the electricity production business and science moved on to electronics. Sure, we need to know how to cram more music on an iPod and who wouldn’t want a phone that measures your blood pressure – but what about the basics of electricity?

Here we are in the twenty-first century, with the atmosphere going ballistic from carbon overload and we’re still making nearly all our electricity by boiling water. More than half of the fossil fuel’s energy is wasted by antiquated technology. What’s left is used to make electrons bump each other all the way along the jiggery-pokery transmission lines to our homes, so that thanks to clever circuitry in the TV we can watch our politicians spruiking for more power stations.

Yet the mighty electron has many secrets waiting to be discovered and utilized. Perhaps there is a way photosynthesis and electronics could be combined to make an organic solar power cell, who knows?

One thing is for sure. If the best scientific brains are siphoned off to ‘public-private-partnerships’ a significant chunk of research effort will be spent merely to mitigate the effects of fossil fuel combustion.

The coal companies are already complaining about public money going towards renewable energy development. We’re in a tussle over ideologies here. Clean coal is certainly better than dirty coal but less coal is best.

The atmosphere, like the future, belongs to all living creatures not just to the blokes down at the club sipping vintage cognac as they divvy up the spoils. The government needs and deserves our demonstrated support to adequately fund scientists and technologists to design a future that’s cleaner, quieter and less exhausting.