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Union of Concerned Scientists
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class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; width: 20em; font-size: 90%;" cellspacing="3"> | | | | Slogan | Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions | | Established | 1969 | Exec.
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Encyclopedia
| | | Slogan | Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions | | Established | 1969 | | Exec. Dir. | Kathleen Rest | | President | Kevin Knobloch | | Headquarters | Cambridge, MA,
| | Membership | over 200,000 | | Founder | Kurt Gottfried | | Homepage | |
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Emeritus Professor Kurt Gottfried, a former senior staffer at CERN, currently chairs the UCS Board of Directors.
History
The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded in 1969 by faculty and students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Scientists formed the organization to "initiate a critical and continuing examination of governmental policy in areas where science and technology are of actual or potential significance" and "devise means for turning research applications away from the present emphasis on military technology toward the solution of pressing environmental and social problems." The organization employs scientists, economists, engineers engaged in environmental and security issues, as well as executive and support staff.
One of the co-founders was physicist and Nobel laureate Dr. Henry Kendall, who served for many years as chairman of the board of UCS. In 1977, the UCS sponsored a "Scientists' Declaration on the Nuclear Arms Race" calling for an end to nuclear weapons tests and deployments in the United States and Soviet Union . In response to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the UCS sponsored a petition entitled "An Appeal to Ban Space Weapons" .
In 1992, Kendall presided over the UCS' Warning to Humanity, which called for "fundamental change" to address a range of security and environmental issues. The document was signed by 1700 scientists, including a majority of the Nobel prize winners in the sciences.
According to the George C. Marshall Institute, the UCS was the fourth-largest recipient of foundation grants for climate studies in the period 2000-2002, a fourth of its $24M grant income being for that purpose.
According to Charity Navigator, an independent, non-profit organization that evaluates American charities, the UCS maintained $20,575,731 in assets, $5,514,946 in liabilities, $15,060,785 in net assets, and $14,112,057 in working capital, as well as $10,058,784 in program expenses, $813,335 in administrative expenses, and $1,703,907 in fundraising expenses in fiscal year 2006. In 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists received a four (out of four) star rating from Charity Navigator.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is member of the Sustainable Energy Coalition.
Issue stances
The group supports practical policy based solely on science. In the UCS-published book The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists, the authors attempt to give practical advice to consumers to "help...distinguish the critical from the trivial and make choices that are congruent with your values." The book identifies using a fuel-efficient car and driving less as the number one way most people can reduce their environmental impact. The authors say minor choices such as choosing between paper or plastic bags do not have that much overall impact.
The group supports an increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, as well as a reduction in smog pollution from construction equipment and diesel trucks. The UCS also supports the enactment of state laws to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, based on California's regulations. The UCS supports deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, as well as national and international action to combat climate change. The organization has also produced several reports on regional effects of climate change in the United States. The group supports increased taxes for polluters to discourage pollution and incentives for environmentally beneficial practices.
The UCS supports a national renewable electricity standard which would require utilities to produce a certain percentage of their energy from sources such as wind, solar and geothermal. The UCS also acknowledges that nuclear power can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but maintains that it must become much safer and cheaper before it can be considered a workable solution to global warming (see nuclear debate). They support increased safety enforcement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission among other steps to improve nuclear power. The group also supports a national energy efficiency standard for home appliances.
The UCS has also endorsed the Forests Now Declaration, which calls for new market based mechanism to protect forests, as the group has recognised the importance of curbing deforestation in order to tackle climate change. The group also supports governmental incentives for people who want to preserve undeveloped land instead of selling it to developers.
The Union of Concerned Scientists tracks instances of political interference in science and supports whistleblower protection, monetary incentives, and free speech rights for federal scientists. Its scientific integrity program has produced surveys of federal scientists at multiple agencies and a statement signed by more than 11,000 scientists condemning political interference in science.
The UCS supports the reduction of antibiotic use on livestock to prevent medical antibiotic resistance in humans who consume treated animals. It also opposes cloning animals for food, as well as forms of genetic engineering.
The group opposes the use of space weapons and supports the idea of an international treaty to regulate military uses of space. The group also works on reducing the number of nuclear weapons around the world and opposes the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. The group criticizes the technical feasibility of building a missile defense shield.
Press
In 1997, the UCS circulated a petition entitled "A Call to Action". The petition called for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, and was signed by 110 Nobel Prize laureates, including 104 Nobel Prize-winning scientists.
In February 2004, the Union received press attention for its publication "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking". The report criticized the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for "politicizing" science. Some of the allegations include altering information in global warming reports by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and choosing members of scientific advisory panels based on their business interests rather than scientific experience. In July 2004, the Union released an addendum to the report in which they criticize the Bush administration and allege that reports on West Virginia strip mining had been improperly altered, and that "well-qualified" nominees for government posts, such as Nobel laureate Torsten Wiesel were rejected because of political differences. On April 2, 2004, Dr. John Marburger, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a statement claiming that incident descriptions in the UCS report are "false," "wrong," or "a distortion", and dismissed the report as "biased". . UCS rebutted the White House document by saying that Marburger's claims were unjustified. UCS later wrote that since that time, the Bush administration has been virtually silent on the issue.
On October 30, 2006, the Union issued a press release claiming that high-ranking members of the U.S. Department of the Interior, including Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Julie MacDonald, systematically tampered with scientific data in an effort to undermine the protection of endangered species and the Endangered Species Act.
On December 11, 2006, the UCS issued a statement signed by 10,600 leading scientists including Nobel laureates. The statement calls for the restoration of scientific integrity to federal policy-making. The announcement came as the group that documents suspected censorship and political interference in federal science.
On May 23, 2007, the UCS cited a joint-study with MIT and issued a press release claiming that "any test of the U.S. missile defense system that does not show whether an interceptor missile can distinguish between real warheads and decoys is irrelevant" and "contrived," and called for an end to the taxpayer-funded program until the system can show an ability to actually address "real world threats."
On June 21, 2007, a UCS report charged the EPA with political manipulation of scientific data to influence updated US ozone regulations: "The law says use the science, the science says lower the standard to safe levels," said Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Scientific Integrity Program. "In disregarding its own scientists' analysis, the EPA is risking the health of millions of Americans."
In August 2008, the UCS purchased billboards at the airports in Denver, Colorado and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota where the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions are to be held. The two nearly identical billboards showed the downtown areas of each convention city in a cross hairs, with the message that “when only one nuclear bomb could destroy a city” like Minneapolis or Denver, “we don’t need 6,000.” The name of Senator John McCain or Senator Barack Obama follows, with this admonition: “It’s time to get serious about reducing the nuclear threat.” The billboards were removed after a complaint from Northwest Airlines, the official airline of the Republican convention. The UCS has accused Northwest, whose headquarters are in Minnesota, of “taking on a new role as censor” and of having acted because it regarded the Minneapolis advertisement as “scary” and “anti-McCain.”
Criticism
Physicists Gerald E. Marsh and George S. Stanford have criticized the UCS for opposing a United States-run nuclear waste reprocessing program. The UCS had claimed that the separation of weapons-usable plutonium from spent nuclear fuel could "make it easier for terrorists to acquire the material for making a nuclear bomb," but Marsh and Stanford argued that "reactor fuel is going to be recycled, whether we like it or not."
Capitalism and free market-advocacy groups have also criticized the UCS for its stance on environmental and other regulatory issues. TimesWatch.org, a project of Media Research Center (MRC), has called the UCS an "unlabeled left-wing activist group". L. Brent Bozell, founder of the MRC, which catalogs what it asserts is liberal bias in the United States mass media, has claimed that the UCS is "a left-wing activist organization...trying to position itself as being some kind of objective, centrist, moderate, apolitical entity when it is nothing of the sort." Capital Research Center, a conservative non-profit that studies left-political organizations, criticized the UCS as having "policy positions that are predictably those of a far-left pressure group".
S. Fred Singer, physicist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, NewsMax science advisor, and founder of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, a group that disputes the prevailing scientific views of climate change, ozone depletion, and secondhand smoke, has said that the UCS has "zero credibility as a scientific organization." Singer has been labeled a "climate contrarian" by the UCS.
In a 2005 article for Jewish World Review, consumer reporter, author, and co-anchor for the television newsmagazine 20/20 John Stossel commented, "The key word in 'Union of Concerned Scientists' isn't 'Scientists' — you don't need any particular degree or experience to join — but 'Concerned,' and the concerns in question are decidedly left wing."
On the website WorldNetDaily, televangelist Jerry Falwell accused the UCS of distracting Evangelicals from their true calling: "There's no need for the church of Jesus Christ to be wasting its time gullibly falling for all of this global warming hocus-pocus. We need to give our total focus to the business of reaching this world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and stop running down meaningless rabbit trails that get our focus off of our heavenly purpose."
Publications
External links
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