Courtesy: Medill Reports Chicago
For more than 40 years, the Union of Concerned Scientists is fighting for cleaner air, energy and transportation, to ensure food is produced in a safe and sustainable manner,and to build a future free from the threats of global warming and nuclear war.
“The Union of Concerned Scientists speaks upon a variety issues,” said Michael Halpern, project manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Nuclear power, food safety and climate change are a few of the issues that the organization is proposing and fighting to implement into governmental legislation, he continued.
The Union of Concerned Scientists was formed in 1969 by faculty and students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The scientists formed the organization as a watchdog to monitor the government and to make sure the public had a general and critical understanding of how the governmental policies of science and technology affected lives.
The Climate 2030 model is an example of the initiatives the Union of Concern Scientists advocates.
“The Climate 2030 blueprint, the idea was to model the whole U.S. economy,” said Claudio J. Martinez, risk analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists in his downtown Chicago office. The idea of the Climate 2030 plan was to create a roadmap to transition to a clean environment and avoid some of the worst effects of global warming by the year 2030.
The Climate 2030 blueprint replicates the entire United States economy and how policies can affect the direction of the country. “In an ideal world, this is what we would like to see policy wise, and this is what we can achieve,” said Martinez.
The Union of Concerned Scientists wants to lower America’s dependency on fossil fuels and promote the benefits of energy efficiency according to Martinez.
He wants the national Climate 2030 model to not only help change policies in Congress but to also help the public understand the importance of conserving energy for the earth’s future.
He said a policy of a strong energy resource standard would help avoid the worst effects of global warming.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is currently revising its national Climate 2030 plan to one specifically for the Midwest which should be released later this year.
“What we do individually is what matters most,” said Martinez.
Environmental policy and awareness is not the exclusive concern of the Union of Concern Scientists. It also wants to create more transparency in the government for policy decisions that affect science.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is fighting to increase transparency in policy decisions. Halpern believes that scientific agencies and the American public need to know the scientific research behind policy decisions, who conducted the research and why research was approved or disregarded.
“I think they need to develop communication policies that force them to share what they know,” he said.
Halpern believes that a lot of the communication policies are vague and hard to enforce. He believes agencies need to be informed of why and how Congress passes legislation relating to science.
He favors this legislation because he believes scientific policies are crucial to the well-being of life and the future of earth.
“We need more transparency on how policies are made,” he said.
- Thomas Forrest
