Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 18, 2024

Last week, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized updated regulations for certain facilities that emit ethylene oxide (EtO), a colorless, cancer-causing gas. These long-awaited rules will require facilities using EtO to sterilize medical devices and some food products—known as commercial sterilizers—to significantly reduce their emissions of EtO, install additional control equipment, and improve monitoring.

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Clean Air Act Air Pollution Regulations 2005 299

Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 18, 2024

Many of us remember watching “Schoolhouse Rock” as a kid and learning how a bill becomes law. But what does that process really look like—particularly when it comes to the bills that fund the US government? Congress recently wrapped up funding parts of the government for fiscal year 2024 (FY24). which began in October 2023. Yes, that’s correct—it’s taken the Senate and House of Representatives nearly six months since their official deadline to finish drafting appropriations bills, voting o

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 13, 2024

Electric car buyers have new options in 2024 to make it easier to purchase a new electric vehicle (EV) by using the federal EV tax credit. While the tax credit has been around for a while in various forms, the Inflation Reduction Act made substantial changes to the tax credit, with modifications to who is eligible to take the credit, new requirements on EV models, and also new ways for buyers to access the credit.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 13, 2024

Beneath the reputation of Los Angeles as a land of cars, palms, and sunshine lies a reality of stark inequalities—including access to trees and shade. Nearly 20% of L.A.’s urban forest is concentrated where only 1% of the city’s population lives , endangering lower-income communities and people of color with hotter-feeling summers and poor environmental quality.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 4, 2024

This blog post was cowritten with Dezaraye Bagalayos, Laurie Galvagna, Kayode Kadara, Kinah Hutson, and Jose Armando Munguia, and revised by other members of the Allensworth Progressive Association team and community leaders. Over the next 15 years, California will have to repurpose about 1 million acres of cropland, most of it out of the 5.5 million irrigated acres in the San Joaquin Valley.

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2023 Renewable Energy Natural Resources Clean Energy 257

Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 4, 2024

Este blog ha sido escrito en colaboración con Dezaraye Bagalayos, Laurie Galvagna, Kayode Kadara, Kinah Hutson, y José Armando Munguía, y revisado por miembros de la Allensworth Progressive Association y líderes comunitarios. En los próximos 15 años, California tendrá que reusar aproximadamente 1 millón de acres de tierras de cultivo, la mayoría en los 5,5 millones de acres irrigados (2.2 millones de hectáreas) en el Valle de San Joaquín.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 4, 2024

On Friday, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued long-awaited regulations to strengthen the Risk Management Program (RMP). The RMP requires roughly 12,000 industrial facilities that use or store extremely hazardous substances to develop Risk Management Plans that identify prevention and response measures for chemical releases. The new rule restores critical disaster planning and prevention protections under the program after it was gutted in 2019 under the Trump administration.

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Regulations Technology Technology 2021 200

Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 4, 2024

In the ever-evolving landscape of technological advancements, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a focal point in both personal and political discussions. Engineered to emulate human cognitive functions of learning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making, AI is advancing at an unprecedented pace. Amidst an escalating discourse surrounding AI and its rapid advancement, countries are working to regulate its uses.

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Regulations Technology Technology Government 193

Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

One year ago, UCS published a report on ethylene oxide (EtO), a colorless toxic gas that is emitted by chemical manufacturing and medical device sterilization facilities. We found that medical device sterilization facilities, known as “commercial sterilizers,” are scattered throughout residential communities nationwide, within five miles of nearly 13 million people in the United States and Puerto Rico.

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Clean Air Act Regulations 2005 Environmental Protection 220

Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Last November, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released an interdisciplinary study exploring the various pathways to meeting US goals to cut heat-trapping emissions economywide 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050. The good news? It’s doable —and the United States would reap significant health and economic benefits in the process.

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Clean Energy Renewable Energy Electricity 2030 279

Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

US policy-makers wonder why China is enlarging its nuclear arsenal. How they answer that question will influence US government decisions about the future size and readiness of US nuclear forces. There’s little doubt China is constructing hundreds of new missile silos. Satellite images provide compelling evidence we can evaluate objectively. Why they are constructing them is more difficult to know.

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Technology Technology Nuclear Power 2017 274

Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

It’s immediately clear how fully-electric battery electric vehicles (BEVs) can help reduce emissions; eliminating gasoline and tailpipes in favor of increasingly clean electricity helps limit both climate change and air pollution. Plug-in hybrids are a bit more complicated. A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (or PHEV) has both a gasoline engine and one or more battery-powered electric motors.

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Electricity Air Pollution Regulations 2019 298

Union of Concerned Scientists

JANUARY 26, 2024

This post is part of a series of quarterly roundups on scientific integrity. In the fourth quarter of 2023, the Biden administration finalized updated procedures for conducting cost-benefit analysis and encouraging public participation in meetings about regulations. Advocates for scientific integrity commented on new draft scientific integrity policies.

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Regulations Clean Air Act Sea Level Politics 130

Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest non-state oil company, is a member of hundreds of trade associations around the globe working to promote the interests of the oil and gas industry. So why did its recent departure from a single trade association make news? The answer concerns the history of disinformation shared by many oil and gas trade associations, and shareholders’ recent success in exposing—and pushing back against—their tactics.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JANUARY 24, 2024

With the 2024 election just months away , it’s hard not to reflect on what’s at stake: addressing the climate crisis, upholding democratic electoral processes, and healing the cracks in our social safety nets exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, among other pressing issues. At the top of my mind are efforts to defend and advance environmental justice, the idea that all people have the right to equal protection under environmental laws and regulations, as defined by scholar and advocate Dr.

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Air Pollution Regulations Government Law 222

Union of Concerned Scientists

JANUARY 24, 2024

After months of delay, it appears possible (though far from guaranteed!) that the food and farm bill might finally begin moving forward in Congress. This critical legislation was originally expected to be signed into law by the fall of 2023, but a chaotic schedule—and an often dysfunctional Congress—got in the way. Instead of passing a new food and farm bill for the first time since 2018, Congress instead approved a one-year extension last fall and punted the task of crafting an updated bill to

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Climate Change 2024 Law 2014 228

Union of Concerned Scientists

JANUARY 16, 2024

I’m currently in Istanbul, Türkiye, with my colleague Adam Markham , for the opening session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seventh assessment cycle. While the global understanding of climate change is well-established, the world’s response remains sluggish. It’s essential that as policies and public awareness evolve, the science keeps pace, offering the latest policy-relevant insights to effectively combat climate change.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JANUARY 16, 2024

This fall, the United States will hold its first presidential election since a mob, egged on by then-President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud, stormed the Capitol to try to stop Congress from ratifying president-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. To this day, Trump and his allies continue to insist that the 2020 election was stolen, despite the fact that his own administration called it “the most secure in American history” and judges denied or dismissed more tha

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2024 2020 Law Politics 221

Union of Concerned Scientists

DECEMBER 19, 2023

Offshore wind has been getting a lot of attention lately—some good, some less good. As in other parts of the economy, high interest rates hit the offshore wind industry hard, given the billions of dollars required upfront to build a single project, and inflation didn’t help. Supply chain crunches also have hit, including with the supply of the special ships that help install these huge machines.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

DECEMBER 11, 2023

Last Christmas Eve, in the middle of an historic cold snap, the New England power grid came close to going dark. Thirty-six different power plants failed to deliver promised energy, and grid operator ISO-New England (ISO-NE) was forced to implement emergency operating procedures, stopping just a few steps short of asking the public to help by voluntarily cutting back on electricity use.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

DECEMBER 10, 2023

On the day before the 28 th United Nations annual climate talks began, I walked into a room with over a hundred people representing almost two thousand civil society organizations. I sat next to a guy who immediately introduced himself to me—he was my age and it was his first COP, too. When prompted by our facilitator, roughly a third of the people in the room raised their hands that it was their first COP.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

DECEMBER 10, 2023

Last week, I joined my colleagues at COP28 in Dubai , as negotiators and civil society push for a fossil fuel phaseout to meet climate goals. This year there has been a lot of attention on the more than 2,400 oil and gas lobbyists at the climate meetings. The industry is pushing a narrative that misleadingly calls out emissions , not fossil fuels as the problem.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Yesterday, at the opening plenary of COP28, the UN climate talks underway in Dubai, nations agreed to operationalize the Loss and Damage Fund that was established a year ago at COP27. The fund is aimed at helping low- and middle-income countries cope with extreme impacts of climate change that are already causing billions of dollars of damage and immense human suffering.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Communities and ecosystems continue to suffer the consequences of human-caused climate change , primarily from the burning of fossil fuels across our economy. The full lifecycle of fossil fuels, which includes exploration, extraction, processing, storage, transportation, combustion, and waste disposal, threatens the health of our planet and communities—with the burden disproportionately being borne by communities of color and low-income communities.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

The twenty-eighth annual United Nations climate summit—or COP28 —has begun here in Dubai, UAE, where I’m joining the UCS delegation for another round of international discussions on how we can turn the global temperature down as fast as possible on our rapidly heating planet. Eight years after the 2015 COP that produced the Paris Agreement , in which the world’s nations agreed to stick to a strict schedule to cut global warming emissions, I’m balancing my hope that humanity can come together to

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Fossil Fuels Climate Change Paris Agreement Sea Level 214

Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 20, 2023

On the busy agenda for the COP28 United Nations climate negotiations this year are continuing efforts to implement the Global Methane Pledge , which was agreed to two years ago at COP26. The pledge is a voluntary agreement to reduce global methane emissions by 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030; however, methane levels keep going up and we are woefully off track for meeting this goal.

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Fossil Fuels Paris Agreement Climate Change 2030 259

Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 20, 2023

The annual UN climate conference, COP28 , is slated to take place from November 30-December 12 in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As the climate crisis continues to deepen, the stakes at these annual negotiations are acutely high. This year, they take place against the backdrop of relentlessly rising heat-trapping emissions , record-breaking temperatures , extreme climate impacts in the United States and around the world —and yet, unbelievably, there has been a continued expansion in foss

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Fossil Fuels Paris Agreement Climate Change 2030 212

Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 20, 2023

The 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) is set to begin in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, next week. One of the most crucial indicators of success will be whether the nations of the world reach agreement on a fast and fair phaseout of fossil fuels. Progress on this front depends on protecting the negotiations—and national and subnational policies based on them—from fossil fuel industry interference.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Electricity is necessary for reading this blog, phoning your family, and buying milk at the store. Most every modern public health, safety and security system we rely on also depends on the electric grid. To expand and modernize the nation’s electric infrastructure, the federal government recently announced new funding. This continues a 100-year-old tradition of government shaping the electric grid.

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Electricity Government Nuclear Power Renewable Energy 225

Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

The biggest success of the United Nations climate convening (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, last year was the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund, intended to provide resources to climate-vulnerable, low-income countries to help them cope with the extreme impacts of climate change. The establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund was the result of a 30-year battle led by small island nations, developing states, and civil society.

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Paris Agreement Climate Change Government 2017 225

Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Humanity’s relationship to time is notoriously myopic. We tend to perceive things as permanent and immutable only because their rate of change is imperceptible on the timescales of our own experience. When it comes to geologic time, the disconnect between our lived experience and the magnitude of Earth history is almost irreconcilable. How we mark time, therefore, depends a lot on perspective.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

This week, the White House released a robust executive order on the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The sweeping order includes plans to create guidance to label and watermark AI-generated content, and to enforce safety testing of new AI technologies under the Defense Production Act. It also asks agencies to set standards to make sure AI technologies do not exacerbate discriminatory practices such as in housing and mortgage applications, for example.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

As a member and leader of March for Science NYC I have helped organize initiatives designed to enhance how science is communicated during elections and ways to increase scientists’ civic engagement. Why? Because science and democracy are both iterative processes that require the participants to be informed in order to engage in a way that strengthens the collective effort of each.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

In the summer of 2003 , a culmination of seemingly small failures by the power grid, its monitoring software, and human operators quickly cascaded into the largest blackout to ever occur in North America. Power outages spread throughout the Northeast and Midwest United States, as well as into Ontario, Canada, with an estimated 50 million people losing power.

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Electricity Fossil Fuels 2003 Clean Energy 212

Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

Last month, the fourth meeting of the United Nations Transitional Committee on Loss and Damage ended in an impasse , largely due to unhelpful positions taken by the United States and other wealthy nations. A fifth meeting (TC5) has been hastily called and will take place on November 3-4 in Abu Dhabi. This meeting must deliver clear recommendations for operationalizing the loss and damage fund at COP28, the upcoming UN climate talks in Dubai starting at the end of November.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

OCTOBER 12, 2023

As part of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS’s) work to address racial equity in the food and farm system, I have had the privilege of working with Dãnia Davy, former director of land access and advocacy at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Access Fund, where she led the organization’s Regional Heirs’ Property and Mediation Center as well as their federal advocacy work.

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Law Government 2018 2023 185

Union of Concerned Scientists

OCTOBER 12, 2023

My commute now mostly consists of the distance from my bedroom to the laptop in my home office (with a short detour to the kitchen for coffee) because I’m fortunate enough to have a job and employer that allows me to work from home. But pre-COVID, most days I used an electric bike to handle the 11-mile round trip to and from the Oakland UCS office. And while I miss seeing my colleagues in person, at times I also miss my commute!

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