This is a quick addendum to the previous post exploring what it would take for a president to pursue meaningful climate and energy policy in a multitasked world. One approach, hinted at by Senator Barack Obama off and on, is an Apollo-scale investment in advanced energy technology. The chances of a quick push of this sort are poor given the state of the economy, but what would a “Moon shot” for energy look like?

One way to consider the question is to look back at the gush of federal research and development dollars that underpinned the actual space race (and led to a string of innovations that NASA says have produced far greater economic benefits than the research cost). The graph above, generated a couple of years ago by Kei Koizumi at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, provides a hint. The yellow band in the graph is, in essence, a portrait of the space race as reflected in federal money for basic R&D related to going into orbit and to the Moon. (The purple band is essentially the war on cancer and similar health research. Military research, at $75 billion a year — click preceding link for 2006 graph — wouldn’t fit in the graph above.)

The green band is a half-century of federal investment in energy research. And that’s not just renewable energy like solar power, but research in all energy sectors. To me, the energy graph resembles an emaciated python that had one decent meal. The bulge in the 1970s reflects the burst of interest in new energy technologies triggered by the oil shocks in that decade. President Ronald Reagan has been widely blamed for eviscerating energy research, but you can see in the graph that no subsequent administration or Congress took energy innovation seriously (and private-sector research investments have dropped even more).

These data are compiled annually by Mr. Koizumi and the science group’s R&D budget and policy program. Tune in next year to see if that green line budges.