As a former federal scientist and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy official, these losses are deeply personal to me. I’ve seen firsthand how science, data, and evidence help policymakers make informed decisions that improve people’s lives, which is why the erosion of the federal scientific workforce, agencies, and norms are so concerning as we grapple with extreme heat waves and danger season due to climate change, the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever recorded, nationwide cyclosporiasis infections from unsafe food and water, and an AI data center boom that is roiling communities across the country, among other things.

And beyond this loss of technical expertise of career federal employees, a less well-known path for science-informed government decision-making has also been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration: federal science advice from experts outside of government, who volunteer their time and expertise to inform government decisions through federal advisory committees.

The importance of federal science advice

More than 750 Federal Advisory Committees (FACs) currently exist across 51 U.S. government agencies, with 484 of these FACs specifically housed within 9 federal agencies with science-related missions—including the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and Department of Health and Human Services.

FACs were created to provide independent, unbiased, and up-to-date technical expertise to inform policy decisions across agencies and issue areas. Historically, they’ve been comprised of the nation’s best independent experts and scientists from academia, state and local government, industry, and nonprofits. Not every government scientist is an expert in every area that they’re expected to inform policies for, so bringing in outside expertise is crucial to their process.

Expert input is essential for science-based responses to complex challenges with global impacts: from the outbreaks of deadly diseases and flood or wildfire disasters to air pollution standards and appropriate pesticide use. And, as we’ve previously written, FACs also bring the public into the work of government, representing a vital form of public participation and civic engagement in a government of, by, and for the people.

How President Trump has kneecapped federal advisory committees and science-based policy

Since 2018, we’ve been tracking how the Trump administration has sidelined science advisory committees and outside scientific expertise in federal policymaking. To hold the administration accountable, we documented stalled and disbanded scientific advisory committees, cancelled meetings, and dismissed experts. Expert input was important then, but it’s arguably even more crucial now with the mass firings of federal scientists and decimation of in-house expertise by DOGE.

Now, in President Trump’s second administration, the federal science advice infrastructure has been disrupted, which is especially damaging in a corrupted misinformation-rich environment. After a flurry of executive orders, including one dissolving at least one-third of FACs across the government, it was clear that the administration was intent on disrupting federal science advice. In its first six months, the Trump administration terminated or disbanded 27 percent of active science FACs.

One year later, we have a much better picture of the rubble.

As of this writing, the FACA database—a government-run database that hosts information on past and current FACs—has not updated its data for terminated committees beyond 2024. So, we crunched these numbers.

The consequences of even a single disruption to these FACs can be far-reaching. For example:

• In February 2026, term limits expired for the EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC), who advise EPA on wide-ranging environmental issues (e.g., air and water pollution regulations, chemical safety programs, risk assessment policies) that impact children’s health. The EPA solicited nominations in August 2025 and claimed they would fill CHPAC vacancies by March 1, 2026, but as of this writing that has still not happened, and the committee has been inactive since its last meeting in August 2025. CHPAC is tasked with advancing research to implement Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, but it’s impossible to see how they will do that when they have failed to hold any meetings, and prioritized industry representatives in their call for member nominations.

• The US Preventive Services Task Force is a volunteer panel at HHS that reviews scientific evidence on tests and medications to help prevent conditions like cancer, diabetes, and HIV. This key health care panel has not met since March 2025 because it has been blocked from doing so four times—leaving important evidence reviews on hold, the public in the dark, and delayed recommendations to guide physicians’ clinical decisions and insurance coverage requirements for millions of Americans. Alarmingly, last year the US Supreme Court ruled that the HHS Administrator can remove members from this panel and override its decisions. This means that political appointees can exert extraordinary influence over an ostensibly independent, evidence-based committee, despite not having the public health expertise on which the panel’s credibility depends—which I assure you HHS Secretary RFK JR. also does not.

• In March 2026, the EPA finally announced its new selection of members, nearly a year after seeking nominations, for the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), a powerful panel that provides the agency with crucial scientific expertise to inform air pollution standards to protect public health. It is largely academics who have historically held these seats, but now it’s got the same conflicted and contrarian leader at the helm as during Trump 1.0, in addition to a steel industry official and a member of a fringe Koch-funded climate denial organization that advocates for more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Without independent science advice at EPA, we risk having fewer protections from air pollution, water pollution, toxic chemicals and more.

• In April 2026, in another blow to independent science, Trump fired of all 25 members of the National Science Board at NSF, which finances nearly $9 billion in basic science research in labs across the US that powers innovations like our smartphones. As of this writing, there has been no news of the administration reestablishing this board. But perhaps they intend to keep it that way, seeing that they’re trying to politicize all federal research funding through their recently proposed OMB rule.

• In April 2026, the EPA finally announced its new selection of Science Advisory Board (SAB) members. The SAB was another casualty of Trump’s war on independent science when he fired the entire board en masse just days before confirming his new EPA administrator. The SAB is responsible for providing independent scientific and technical advice to the EPA to help guide policies, and now it’s been slashed by 11 members (nearly a quarter). Looking at the professional backgrounds of its 2024 vs 2026 membership below, it’s clear this independent scientific body is not only being diminished but also politicized—with several of its members coming from the chemical industry.

How we’re fighting back: building an alliance for independent science

At UCS, we are building an alliance for independent science, a pillar of our Science Rising initiative, in response to Trump’s attacks on science and authoritarian efforts to remove facts, data, and evidence from policymaking.

To counter the Trump administration’s erosion of independent science and build the nation’s capacity to use science for the public good, scientists from several committees that were disbanded or terminated have independently convened to offer policy recommendations on important issues, a powerful and courageous response. Their doing so preserves a vital channel for scientific advice.

In collaboration with the Environmental Protection Network, we are providing strategic guidance, training, and coordination for independent scientists to provide their expertise and recommendations for evidence-based policies, starting with:  

• Protecting children’s health: We’re convening former Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC) members and subject matter experts in plastics, toxics, pesticides, and environmental health to ensure that science can keep our nation’s kids healthy and safe. Operating outside of the government, this group aims to bridge a current oversight gap by operating as an independent, parallel body to preserve scientific rigor and transparency while the formal committee remains inactive. Once it’s active again, the group will conduct oversight of EPA’s activities to ensure that the best available science is used and that the public interest and children’s health remain a priority.
• Protecting clean air: We’re convening a group of former Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) members and subject matter experts in air quality and public health to monitor and provide rapid response to current industry-friendly EPA actions and inactions that undermine science, public health, or the integrity of the regulatory process. Operating outside of the federal government, this group will develop reports and papers that can inform evidence-based policy for current decisionmakers and—hopefully—a more science-friendly administration in the future.

How you can protect independent science

It’s encouraging and energizing to see such a broad and clear response from the scientific community in defense of independent science. At a time when fear and reluctance to criticize the administration persist from pockets of the scientific community, this kind of solidarity and commitment to independent science are desperately needed for the public good. Current and former science advisors should speak out when they perceive that federal agencies and others in the government are sidelining important scientific work and findings.

We must draw on our expertise, our networks, and our collective resources to adapt our strategies and focus our efforts where they can have the greatest impact. Doing so will require rebuilding the infrastructure, institutions, and communities from outside government to preserve what’s being dismantled within it.

To find out whether there is an FAC in your field of research or interest that has been dismantled, use our guide to the FACA database. To continue the work of dismantled federal FACs, you can use our toolkit for running an independent science advisory committee.

And to help make issues of science and democracy more visible for members of Congress and advocate for hearings on the status of science advisory committees, and ensuring they are carrying out the Federal Advisory Committee Act appropriately, I invite you to join our Science Rising Action Corps.

Action is the antidote to despair, and these are important steps toward reimagining and building a better, stronger federal scientific enterprise.

I’ve been a UCS ally for decades—especially with my friends at the UCS Center for Science and Democracy, who are working to protect scientific integrity in the US government. That work includes pushing for Scientific Integrity Act legislation and drafting and implementing government-wide policies on scientific integrity. This summer, I’ve joined UCS as a Senior Advisor focused on countering the administration’s attacks on science and supporting the organization’s new Science Rising initiative. 

Today, I want to talk to you about the US National Science Foundation (NSF), why it’s so important for American science, engineering, technology, and innovation, and how its role in American science is now under threat. But working together, we can protect the national treasure that is NSF.  

Why the National Science Foundation matters

Although two dozen US federal agencies fund some form of research and development (R&D), NSF is the only federal agency charged in its original legislation with supporting research at the frontiers of knowledge across all science and engineering disciplines. Since 1950, NSF has been investing in research, research infrastructure, and STEM education across the nation—primarily through universities via research and education grants—with a mission “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purpose.” And it’s delivered many benefits to the American people, as my colleague Carlos Martinez recently described.  

NSF has built a merit review process for allocating nearly all of its funding to ensure “the proposals it receives are reviewed in a fair, competitive, transparent and in-depth manner.” This review process is the true gold standard of science and has been the inspiration and model for research funding agencies around the world. I know this because more than a dozen nations’ science policy professionals have visited me wanting to learn how NSF’s merit review process works, particularly its use of two criteria—intellectual merit and broader impacts—so that they can build similar gold-standard merit reviews for their nations.  

Several UCS colleagues have shared their stories of why NSF is important to them, so let me share mine: Early in my career, NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES, part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Directorate) supported my early work on government R&D funding and its impacts and helped me become an R&D budget nerd (which I still am today) and science policy practitioner.  

Without NSF, I would not have had the career in science and science policy I’ve had. That early support led to many years of contributing to NCSES’ federal R&D data and working with NSF and the National Science Board on its biennial Science and Engineering Indicators.  

“More than a dozen nations’ science policy professionals have visited me wanting to learn how NSF’s merit review process works.”

My experience with NSF led to one of my first assignments at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in 2009: implementing President Obama’s campaign pledge to double the number of NSF Graduate Research Fellowships (GRFs) awarded to 2000 from 1000 a year. Yes we did!  

Over the years, I’ve had the chance to meet many current and past GRFs, and through them I understand on a personal level the impacts GRF and NSF support can have on US science and engineering and on STEM careers. Indirectly, my experiences with NSF led me to become the chair of the NSF transition team for the incoming Biden administration in late 2020 and then a White House science official in the Biden OSTP working closely with NSF leadership and the National Science Board (NSB) to keep advancing US science and engineering.  

NSF under siege 

NSF is so critical for US science and engineering that UCS has written repeatedly about the agency, from making our position known on the latest nominee to be NSF Director to taking legal action to prevent NSF from closing its National Center for Atmospheric Research. We’ve sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to NSF to release the responses to its Dear Colleague Letters and its own internal decision-making for greater transparency in these proposals. We’ve sounded the alarm on proposals to restructure the agency and fire scores of scientists, and we recently called on the UCS community to comment on a government-wide rule that would politicize federal research funding, including NSF funding, in unprecedented ways. (Thank you to everyone who responded by the July 13 deadline!)  

Well, here we go again. NSF has just proposed major changes in its procedures for awarding research grants. Essentially, the proposed rules—which are now open for public comment— would codify within NSF the damaging changes OMB proposes to make government-wide. That would be destructive, not only to NSF’s merit review process, but also to the entire US science and engineering enterprise.  

Injecting politics into science

The prime example, NSF’s proposed Guide 25 (page 197), incorporates OMB’s proposal to allow agencies to terminate a grant or decline to issue an award for not being aligned with administration political priorities. It would even allow NSF to terminate already-awarded grants at any time for being inconsistent with an administration’s political priorities.  

The proposed rule would subject all NSF awards, meaning everything (not just research grants but also fellowships, training grants, center grants, undergraduate research opportunities, etc.) to review and approval by a politically appointed official before being issued through an unspecified process and under unspecified criteria, and thus contradicts everything NSF’s current merit-review process stands for.  

This could be even more problematic for NSF than other agencies: NSF currently has no political appointees since Director Panchanathan resigned last year and the entire presidentially appointed National Science Board was fired this spring. Who’s supposed to review NSF grants? Presumably OMB and OSTP officials. I know that when I was an OSTP official, I would have been appalled at even the idea of someone like me approving every single NSF award with a political litmus test. NSF’s merit-review process and NSF’s talented program managers and leaders need to retain that non-political responsibility.   

In another example, NSF’s proposed Guide 12 (page 128), would disallow NSF funds from supporting travel to scientific conferences or publication costs of research publications. I’ve always believed that if a federal agency determines that research is worthy of federal support with public dollars, they should support not only the experiment but also the publication and public presentation of the results of the research. Communicating research results is an integral part of research without which research can’t have impact because no one can learn from it or even read it.  

And my final example, Guide 6 Section G (page 84), deals with international collaborations. Recently, NSF issued a Dear Colleague letter (DCL) titled “Prohibition on Collaborations with Restricted Entities” which replaces the NSF’s carefully constructed policies and procedures for evaluating potential NSF-funded research collaborations to consider research-security concerns with lists of restricted entities. The letter says plainly, “NSF has determined research security risk mitigation for NSF-funded projects involving these restricted entities is not sufficient.” Accordingly, NSF plans to implement a new research security policy prohibiting collaboration on NSF-funded projects with the restricted entities listed. 

This article’s headline sums it up well: “New NSF policy would ban almost all collaborations with Chinese scientists.” I think it’s a bad idea to shut them down. US scientists are the best because they collaborate with the best scientists from around the world, including China, on areas where there is little to no risk for national security, especially for research that is intended to be published in the open literature. Putting aside thoughtful “research security risk mitigation” in favor of prohibiting any collaboration with entities on a list—even when no NSF funding supports foreign collaborators’ work, and even when results are openly available in publications—does great damage to US science.  

OMB’s regulation goes further, and by implication NSF would too, by prohibiting federally funded researchers from collaborating with any researchers from a covered country or entity, list or no list, starting with China (including US scientists at Chinese institutions and also US-trained Chinese scientists) but with ‘covered country’ or ‘covered entity’ so ill-defined that an administration could add, say, Spain at a moment’s notice. Although the Dear Colleague letter is not open for public comment, only questions, the NSF Guidance on international collaborations which will incorporate this DCL and the proposed OMB regulation is. 

Raise your voice for the National Science Foundation

I could go on. If you have thoughts on these and other proposals contained in the draft NSF Guidance for Financial Assistance, and I certainly do, then we have until August 24 to make our voices heard. I’ll be dusting off my OMB comments and sending some of them to NSF, as these OMB and NSF proposals both aim to do the same thing: change the US federal research enterprise as we know it, which has brought the United States so many benefits in scientific discovery, security, health, and economic opportunity, and replace it with a more isolated, more politicized, and less scientific research enterprise that no longer relies on merit review but rather political review.  

I think these changes would destroy what has made NSF great and therefore diminish the United States as the leading scientific superpower and leader in achieving impact from research. If NSF’s long tradition of supporting leading-edge scientific research based primarily on merit review is as important to you as it is to me, I hope you’ll join me in using your voice to speak up for NSF.  

Together, these events served as a reminder that during Danger Season—the period between May and October when North America is hit hardest by extreme weather, like heat, drought, wildfire, and hurricanes—electricity is about much more than keeping the lights on. Electricity is powering our air conditioners, fans, refrigerators for medication, and other essential services, all of which keep people safe during extreme heat. For older adults, young children, people with chronic illnesses, and many medically vulnerable individuals, access to cooling can mean the difference between remaining safe at home and experiencing serious heat-related illness.  

These events also illustrate a broader challenge. As the climate warms, households are increasingly relying on cooling to stay safe while electricity costs continue to rise. In other words, the need for cooling and the cost of cooling are increasing together.   

For many families, particularly those already facing high energy burdens, this creates a growing affordability challenge. Paying for electricity is no longer simply a question of comfort: it is increasingly a prerequisite for health and safety.  

Because no single dataset captures every dimension of affordability, the five figures below draw on multiple national datasets covering different time periods. Together, they illustrate long-term temperature trends, recent changes in household electricity costs, and the latest available evidence on energy burden and energy insecurity. They show how electricity spending during Danger Season has changed over time, how seasonal cooling needs have increased, how energy burdens remain concentrated among lower-income households, and how affordability is already affecting people’s ability to keep their homes at safe temperatures. 

Taken together, these figures suggest that affordability is becoming an increasingly important dimension of climate resilience. As extreme heat becomes more common, the challenge is not only whether households have access to cooling—but critically, whether they can afford to use it.  

The cost of cooling a home is increasing 

As summers become hotter across much of the country, electricity has become one of the most important tools for protecting health during periods of extreme heat. But staying cool comes at a cost. Since 2020, the average household’s electricity spending during Danger Season will have increased by more than 30 percent, projections suggest. This increase reflects more than inflation alone. According to research from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) and the Center for Energy Poverty and Climate (CEPC), higher household cooling costs are being driven by a combination of rising electricity demand, increasing retail electricity prices, continued investments in grid infrastructure, fuel costs, and broader changes in energy markets. What may once have appeared to be a temporary increase is increasingly becoming the new normal.  

The need for cooling is growing 

Rising electricity bills are only one part of the story. Households also need more cooling than they once did. One helpful data set for understanding this long-term change is the Cooling Degree Days (CDD) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA)—a standard measure used by climatologists and utilities to estimate how much cooling buildings require. Unlike measures that simply count extreme heat days, CDD captures the cumulative need for cooling over an entire season. Because climate trends are generally evaluated over periods of 30 years or more, this 50-year record provides a robust picture of long-term change. And despite the year-to-year variability, the overall trend is clear: people in the United States generally need more cooling today than they did five decades ago.  

Rising cooling demand does not necessarily translate into hardship for every household. But for families already facing high energy burdens, the need for more air conditioning can mean substantially higher summer electricity bills.  

Lower-income households were already struggling with costs

Higher electricity bills and greater cooling needs do not affect every household equally. Lower-income households were already spending a disproportionate share of their income on energy before this summer. That’s where an examination of energy burdens becomes important. Energy burden refers to the share of a household’s income spent on energy bills, and it is highest among lower-income households. In this analysis, lower-income households are defined as those earning 80% or less of their Area Median Income (AMI). AMI is the median income for a given metropolitan area or county. Because incomes and costs of living vary across the country, AMI provides a locally adjusted benchmark for comparing household incomes. 

The graph above, with data from the most recent annual estimates available from the US Department of Energy’s Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) Tool, shows that energy burden is dramatically higher among lower-income households. Families with lower incomes have less flexibility to absorb rising utility bills because energy already consumes a much larger share of their budgets. For these households, even modest increases in cooling costs can force difficult tradeoffs between paying utility bills and meeting other essential needs.  

Affordability is forcing difficult, unsafe choices

Energy burden isn’t just reflected in household budgets—it shapes everyday decisions. Responses collected by the Census Bureau in late summer 2024 about experiences during the previous 12 months show that lower-income households are substantially more likely to reduce spending on essentials, such as food or medicine, in order to pay their energy bills. They are also much more likely to report keeping their homes at temperatures that felt unsafe or unhealthy. Households earning less than $25,000 annually, more than one-quarter reported keeping their homes at temperatures that felt unsafe or unhealthy. As household income increases, both of these hardships become steadily less common, suggesting that affordability increasingly shapes who can safely cool their homes during periods of extreme heat. 

Affordability is driving increasing rates of energy insecurity 

These affordability challenges are becoming more widespread. Energy insecurity refers to the inability to adequately meet a household’s basic energy needs. It can include difficulty paying utility bills, keeping a home at safe indoor temperatures, or maintaining reliable electricity service.  

New data suggest that these challenges are affecting a growing share of households. Comparing the 2020 and 2024 Residential Energy Consumption Surveys from the US Energy Information Administration shows increases  across every major indicator measured, includingutility disconnection notices, reductions in spending on food or medicine, and an inability to adequately heat of cool the home. . Together, these findings suggest that energy affordability is becoming an increasingly important public health and climate resilience challenge. 

Addressing the climate and energy affordability challenge 

Fortunately, there are solutions. Reducing heat-trapping emissions remains essential to limiting how severe, and how costly, future summers become. Investments in weatherization and energy efficiency can reduce household energy needs before temperatures rise. Utility bill assistance and stronger protections against utility disconnections can help families stay safe during periods of extreme heat. Community solar, resilience hubs, and distributed energy resources can also help communities prepare for, withstand, and recover from increasingly dangerous summers.  

Just as important, policymakers and regulators can and should evaluate energy decisions through an affordability lens. As electricity demand grows and investments are made to modernize and strengthen the electric grid, ensuring that electricity remains affordable, particularly for households already facing high energy burdens, will be critical. Affordability is becoming an increasingly important component of climate resilience, alongside investments in grid reliability, energy efficiency, weatherization, and consumer protections.  

The figures in this analysis point us toward important questions. Which lower-income communities face the greatest combined risks from rising cooling needs, high electricity costs, and limited household resources? Where are households already struggling to stay safe during periods of extreme heat? And which policies can ensure affordability keeps pace with a warming climate? As the climate changes, our understanding—and our solutions—must continue evolving too. 

Because when temperatures become dangerous, access to cooling is no longer simply a matter of whether air conditioning exists. It is increasingly a matter of whether people can afford to use it. 

Earth is going to shatter global temperature records

A record-breaking super El Niño has a lot of implications for the world’s weather and climate system, and for the human systems that depend on them, like agriculture and food security. In a typical El Niño, the overall global average temperature is warmer than usual due mainly to warm ocean surface temperatures in the eastern Tropical Pacific. When ocean temperatures are warmer, they release a lot more heat into the atmosphere, warming up global air temperatures.

As I mentioned in my last blog, El Niño and fossil fuel-driven climate change together make a terrible team. While El Niño is a natural cycle in Earth’s climate system, fossil fuel-driven climate change is not. When you combine an El Niño event with the overall warming of Earth due to emissions from heat trapping fossil fuels, you get an exceptionally warm planet.

A super El Niño, which is a very strong El Niño event, would almost certainly push global temperatures into record territory. Check out the latest model forecast simulations from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME; below). The observed global surface temperature anomaly (compared with the 1850-1900 average) is on the left side of the graph. You can see that, so far this year, we’ve been above 1.0°C (1.8°F) warmer every single month compared with the same temperature values in the late 1800s.

Global surface temperatures from July 2025 to March 2027, showing observed temperatures up to July 2026 and projected temperatures after that. On the right, the thin orange lines show individual model projects, and the red line shows their average.  NOAA/University of Miami.

The right panel of the graph shows the forecast through March 2027: with a super El Niño, global average temperatures will skyrocket. Monthly temperature anomalies are expected to approach 2.0°C for January, February, and March 2027, with nearly half of the models forecasting well over 2.0°C values. A couple models are literally off the chart, over 2.5°C! That means there’s a possibility of reaching a monthly global average temperature anomaly of 2.5°C. This would be a shocking escalation of global warming, as we only just crossed the 1.5°C threshold (temporarily, in terms of yearly average) in 2024.

As a reminder, 1.5°C and 2°C are the internationally agreed targets, encoded in the Paris Climate Agreement, as the safer temperature limits that we should strive to remain below. Fossil fuel-driven climate change plus this Super El Niño could, at least temporarily, breach these targets.

Climate change and El Niño

So what’s up with this record-breaking super El Niño? Is it related to fossil fuel-caused climate change? I have two responses for you:

1) In today’s world, every part of our climate system (ocean, atmosphere, land, cryosphere) is fundamentally different due to climate change in some way. This isn’t the same climate system as the 1950s. Therefore, every meteorological or climatological phenomenon that occurs, even if it’s a natural cycle like El Niño, is being affected by our changing system.

2) There is evidence that fossil fuel-driven climate change is directly influencing El Niño. As I mentioned in my last blog, one study found in recent observations that El Niño and La Niña events are becoming more extreme. Another study found that the impact of El Niño events on our weather patterns is getting worse with climate change.

The oceans are blazing hot

One would think we wouldn’t reach record-breaking ocean surface temperatures in the eastern Tropical Pacific until the super El Niño is in full swing, but that’s not the case. Ocean surface temperatures in the main development region for El Niño events are already at record levels for the date (below). And not just barely breaking the record, we are nearly 0.5°C (0.9°F) warmer than the previous record for mid-July, and over 2.0°C (3.6°F) warmer than the 1991-2020 average.

Daily sea surface temperature in the Niño 3.4 region, which is an area in the eastern Tropical Pacific where El Niño typically develops. The red line is 2026 values, the orange line is 2025. The dashed lines are 1991-2020 (thicker dashed) and 1982-2010 (lighter dashed) averages. ClimateReanalyzer.

Globally, ocean surface temperatures are also in record territory for this time of year, driven not just by the El Niño region but by marine heat waves currently affecting nearly 40% of the ocean. According to the marine heatwave tracker from NOAA, abnormally hot ocean temperatures are being observed in every ocean basin around the world (below). There’s a huge bullseye in the Pacific Ocean where the super El Niño is developing, but look at the Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean north of the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. That patch of heat in the Mediterranean actually helped produce the heat dome leading to the record high temperatures Europe experienced last month, leading to over 20,000 excess deaths.

NOAA coral reef watch daily map for tracking marine heatwaves. The areas in yellow, orange, and red denote oceans currently experiencing a marine heatwave. NOAA.

It’s no surprise that the oceans are blazingly hot. They have absorbed over 90% of the heat added to the climate system from the additional heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels—a truly mind-boggling amount of excess heat. These marine heatwaves that we’re seeing covering 40% of the world’s oceans are yet another indicator of accelerating fossil fuel-driven climate change.

Climate change, El Niño and the heat dome in western US

What goes on in the ocean doesn’t stay in the ocean. If record ocean surface temperatures are occurring, whether it’s from El Niño or a marine heatwave, we’re going to feel those effects on land. Now, a heat dome has started in the western US which could last through the end of July for the west coast. And we’re seeing some unprecedented temperatures: both Salt Lake City, Utah and Helena, Montana have broken their all-time record high temperatures.

The fingerprints of fossil fuel-driven climate change are all over this heat dome. According to Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index, a broad swath of temperatures in the Mountain West (the day of the Salt Lake City and Helena record highs) were made 5x more likely due to climate change on Sunday, July 12.

The Climate Shift Index for Sunday, July 12, 2026. Places in dark red show areas that experienced temperatures made 5x more likely due to climate change. Climate Central.

You also might be thinking, “wait, are the developing super El Niño or the marine heatwaves related to this heat dome?” That is an excellent question, and most likely, yes. The weather of the western US is often directly influenced by ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific, as my own research showed in 2024. Another study released in 2024 found that anomalous storms/rainfall south of Hawaii, which develops from warmer ocean surface temperatures, influenced the Pacific Northwest heatwave in 2021. Record warm ocean surface temperatures as a result of climate change and the developing super El Niño are likely influencing the strength and duration of the current heat dome in the western US.

Earth’s climate has changed

We are now living in a dangerous new world thanks to the emissions of heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels. The climate of yesterday is no longer present. El Niños will look different, marine heatwaves will become more frequent and longer lasting, and heat domes that produce unprecedented heatwaves are here to stay. But there’s still hope. We know what to do to tackle the climate crisis we’ve brought onto ourselves. It’s time to take action.

Here are two things you can tell your Congressional representatives today.

• No immunity for big oil
• Protect FEMA and NOAA from budget cuts

Stay safe and fight on.

Correction: Fossil fuel-driven climate change plus this Super El Niño could, at least temporarily, breach 1.5°C and 2°C temperature targets. An earlier version of the story stated that the targets are already being breached.

The OMB rule would also:

• Deny grants that don’t align with the administration’s beliefs
• Allow grants to be terminated if the results are politically inconvenient
• Erect barriers to international scientific collaboration
• Base funding decisions on applicants’ history and organizational “affiliations”
• Require pre-approval for scientific conferences, society memberships and publications

As my colleague Alexa Dietrich, research director for Center for Science and Democracy writes, the OMB rule would “upend US science as we know it.” Political appointees without specific expertise or experience would be the loudest voice on who receives funding for vaccine development, water quality investigations, estimates of disparate impacts from air pollution, or advancing the state of the science on healthcare for LGBTQ+ people. The bureaucratic requirements in this rule would be a restrictive vice grip applied to the scientific community and institutions. What’s more, the proposed rule does not only apply to research funding—the same approach would impact all of the federal government’s discretionary funding, including funding for natural disaster relief programs.

We took a stand

The Union of Concerned Scientists strongly opposes these restrictions on and politicization of federal funding for research, and we laid out our opposition to this harmful rule in a public comment letter.

This policy, we contend, threatens scientific discovery and the scientific research system as a whole, beyond the federal government. Through a variety of agencies and programs, the U.S. distributes billions of dollars every year—and those funding decisions have broad power to shape the direction of science across the country and the world.

• Under this rule, today’s peer review panels—who have specific expertise, specific rules for declaring conflicts of interest, and a mission to advance the cause of science –would be sidelined, reduced to an advisory role for decisions made by political appointees whose primary incentive is to support an administration’s policies. The rule also requires restrictions on funding based on ideological standards that are simply not grounded in scientific evidence. While the administration has announced its intention to evaluate funding based on an insistence on a fundamentally binary concept of gender, we detail how this restriction denies the actual scientific evidence. The administration has also made it clear that they intend to disallow science that studies questions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion—but, as we point out, these limitations —would ignore clear facts and “degrade evidence-based policy in the United States, to the detriment of all Americans.” 
• The proposed rule is even inconsistent with its purported objectives of transparency and efficiency, as it requires many unobjective limitations and hurdles and creates uncertainty for the scientific community because of vague, subjective benchmarks. The administration’s deceptively-titled “Gold Standard Science” guidelines give political appointees an open-ended power to disallow research based on flimsy pretexts. The proposed rule isn’t just bad policy—it would also violate the constitutional separation of powers, by shifting spending and policymaking powers from the Legislative Branch to the Executive Branch. In other words, the proposed rule intrudes on Congress’s power of the purse. An administration is supposed to implement the law—not make it.
• Finally, the proposed rule would violate the First Amendment by impermissibly conditioning funding on alignment with the President’s viewpoints, which would create a chilling effect within the scientific community. Good science is driven by curiosity and a drive to understand the real world—not by fealty to a political leader’s whims.

In sum, we and our partners agree: “the proposed rule would violate the Administrative Procedure Act because it infringes on constitutional rights, exceeds OMB’s statutory authority, and is substantively arbitrary and capricious.”

The scientific community spoke up

After OMB published this rule, they posted it the Federal Register and allowed 45 days for the American public to comment. At UCS, we’ve been mobilizing our supporters to fight back, including and disseminating a public comment guide to help people advocate against this proposed rule.

We are not alone in our concern for how the proposed OMB rule upends science.

By the end of the public comment period, the rule had received nearly half a million public comments (public docket, OMB-2026-0034), a huge number and almost entirely in opposition to the proposal. The AAAS and many scientific and research societies from the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, and aerospace have posted their comments, comment guides, or blogs about their specific opposition to the rule. There are comments from associations for cancer researchers, people who study pharmacology, and from social scientists to mathematicians and astronomers. We found posted comments and articles stating concern from historians to people who study marine mammals.  And we are seeing concern and engagement from providers and scientists that study and care for the health of wildlife. And we’re hearing from experts who study human health, including the eyes, hearts, brains, and lungs. It’s a flood of public comments showing “overwhelming and lopsided” opposition to this proposal from tens of thousands of individuals who understand science best. Looking through these comments from a diverse group of scientific organizations and associations reminds me why I studied science and continue to ask questions and publish results. Science is about discovery, and it is more about learning than knowing. If we lose the ability to test hypotheses that may not align with a political agenda, or if we lose an ability to present results regardless of how politically inconvenient they might be, we close our eyes to the real world and poison our capacity to solve today’s problems as well as the problems of the future. If this rule were enacted, the administration could deny research grant applications related to life-saving issues like vaccine safety, climate science, and LGBTQ+ health, which have all been under attack by President Trump and his enablers.

Keep advocating for independent science

Many in the US Congress are also questioning and pushing back on the OMB rule, not least because it would represent yet more centralization of power in the hands of the President. That power grab violates the democratic principles of our Constitution. Just as science should be driven by a variety of perspectives, voices, and areas of expertise, government decision-making needs to be democratic, participatory, and accountable to the people.

A lot of people have engaged and pushed back on the OMB rule, but we have to continue standing up to this administration’s many attacks on science. We need to prevent further damage, but we also need long-term solutions.

That’s why we at UCS support the Scientific Integrity Act. This bill was recently re-introduced in the US Senate. It would establish stronger safeguards to protect federal scientists from political interference, require agencies to maintain scientific integrity policies, and ensure government decisions are informed by evidence rather than political agendas.

At a moment when independent science is under immense and increasing pressure, Congress must move swiftly to advance the Scientific Integrity Act and strengthen all available guardrails. This piece of legislation gives watchdogs, courts, and the public the tools to fight back against politicization of federal science. Please show your support for the Scientific Integrity Act. You can use this link to contact your Representatives in the House, and this link to contact your Senators.

The battle over election materials and election administration

President Trump is using the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate past elections based on debunked election fraud claims. So far, the FBI has seized 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, and dispatched over 200 analysts to the state to investigate the 2020 election; the FBI has also seized images of ballots from Maricopa County, Arizona; and the DOJ is currently seeking 2024 ballots and other election materials from Wayne County, Michigan. In Georgia, the federal government has also demanded the names, addresses, and other personal information of election administrators, poll workers, and volunteers.

This isn’t just about relitigating past elections, as bad as that would be on its own. These actions are also meant to intimidate voters and election officials, cast doubt on elections in general, and set the stage for challenges to future elections where President Trump and his allies lose. The more people that doubt the legitimacy of elections, the easier it is to for President Trump and his allies across the country to interfere with them. These fabricated claims are being used to justify passing disenfranchising election laws. At least nine states have passed fifteen restrictive voting laws this year. Of these fifteen laws, nine are set to be in effect for the midterm elections.

In Colorado and Missouri, Trump administration allies requested access to voting equipment, requests that were refused by officials in both states. In Colorado, a consultant who identified themselves as working with the White House contacted 10 Republican county clerks in the summer of 2025 to request to inspect voting equipment. In Missouri, also in the summer of 2025, a DOJ official requested equipment used in majority-Republican counties in the 2020 election. Importantly, the DOJ possesses no legal or constitutional authority over voting equipment and, as former DOJ attorney and current head of the Center for Election Innovation and Research David Becker argues, lacks the required expertise to properly review the machines.

Some states are preparing for the possibility that the federal government or local government law enforcement could try to seize ballots or other election materials. California just passed a law prohibiting the unlawful seizure of ballots, voter rolls, or other materials after Riverside County Sheriff and Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots from the 2025 redistricting referendum.

And not only is the Trump administration targeting election materials—it is also going after the hard-working administrators who run elections. President Trump and his allies have long unfairly targeted election officials and administrators, including their recent attempts to acquire the personal information of election workers who administered the 2020 Fulton County, Georgia election. This effort was blocked by a federal judge who described it as “unreasonable.” The DOJ also letters to top election officials in every state threatening criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting. Just last week, President Trump fired all members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), a body that is supposed to help states administer elections fairly and consistently.

The administration’s quest to grab voter data

In March, President Trump signed an Executive Order instructing the Department of Homeland Security to collaborate with the Social Security Administration to create lists of eligible voters in each state—“State Citizenship Lists.” The Constitution is clear that states and Congress, not the executive branch, have jurisdiction over elections—but this executive order poses considerable risks beyond the constitutional overreach.  

The Department of Justice has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia after they refused to share voter registration data. Eight federal courts have dismissed these lawsuits on merit (and one was dismissed for being filed in the wrong venue). At least 15 states have either provided these data or said they would provide full registration lists, which include personal information like Social Security numbers and driver license numbers. The agreement the DOJ demanded of states sharing these data reveals the insufficient security measures the federal government has taken to secure these sensitive, personal data. Alaska and Texas signed this agreement, while Mississippi, South Dakota, and Tennessee refused to sign despite providing the data.

The DOJ has also been shifty about its plans for sharing voter roll data, but the Acting Chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division said they planned to compare it to the DHS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (or SAVE database). Voting rights groups have argued that a national voter list would likely “lead to eligible voters having their registrations revoked and prevented from casting ballots.” The DHS told ProPublica that SAVE identified over 21,000 potential noncitizens but that list had “vast inaccuracies.” Non-citizen voting is already illegal, and the myth that it is widespread has been thoroughly debunked by federal and state-level Republican-led investigations. Despite the lack of any supporting evidence evidence, ICE agents were granted access to voter files in two counties in Texas and North Carolina.

While the EO is the subject of numerous lawsuits, a federal judge decided not to block it, claiming that, since it has not yet been implemented, the parties could not show they had been harmed by the policy (a court decision that is being appealed). Subsequently, the Postal Service has announced a new proposed rule wherein they would only deliver ballots to voters who are on the federal government’s dubious State Citizenship lists. However, a federal appeals panel has agreed to fast-track its review of a lawsuit against this order and should issue a ruling sometime this month. In late June, a federal judge in Massachusetts prevented federal agencies from implementing the EO, effectively blocking the Trump administration from creating a national voter list and the USPS from only delivering ballots to those on said list, stating that the order exceeded the president’s authority, violated separation of powers, and encroached on states’ power to administer elections.

An opening to abuses of power

As Kathy Broockvar (former Pennsylvania Secretary of State and member of our Election Science Task Force) and John Lindback write, at the heart of the Trump administration’s demands for state voter data is a dispute over who controls elections. Their actions raise concerns about data privacy and how these data can be used to disenfranchise voters: “…The Trump administration has offered no clear explanation of how it intends to use the data, who will have access to it, or what safeguards will protect it from misuse or breach,” they note.

It should also be said that these efforts are part of a larger authoritarian strategy to overturn past legitimate elections and further spread disproved allegations of election fraud. The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen—a lie that has resulted in violence, distrust, and anti-voting rights legislation and statutes—has been proven false time and time again. Still, President Trump and his allies refuse to admit he lost the 2020 election, continue to push conspiracy theories, and try to make the public doubt the legitimacy of past and future elections for their own political gain. For example, Vernon Jones, a failed candidate for the Republican nomination for Georgia Secretary of State, said that he would publicly release voters’ personal information to support the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Retroactively challenging the legitimacy of elections because you don’t like the result is an attack on democracy and a violation of the rights of voters who participated in those elections.

True transparency supports democracy

Elections should be transparent. But federal and local efforts to seize election materials aren’t about transparency, they’re about controlling the process and sowing doubt, and they could yield disastrous results. Voters could lose the secrecy of their ballots, a critical component of American democracy. The government should not be able to determine who voted for what candidate. Furthermore, if the government has access to ballots or ballot images, there is the possibility that that information could become public.

Election data transparency should be done responsibly and with the intent to improve elections, not interfere with the critical work of election officials, administrators, and workers. Done right, improved election data transparency can improve trust, not undermine it. Improved election data transparency can allow experts to examine where democracy can be strengthened and voting can be more secure and accessible. Done right, improved election data transparency can protect the voting rights of historically marginalized communities, rather than the Trump administration’s efforts to curtail them. Read our full report and see our election science recommendations designed to improve data transparency here.

As climate change is projected to increase severe thunderstorm activity across much of the Midwest, the power sector should heed this year’s pummeling as a wake-up call and reflect on whether it’s ready to withstand more of the same. This year offers an opportunity to imagine more concretely into a climate changed-world, to consider where system vulnerabilities lie, and where investments are needed to ensure our grid is resilient and able to reliably and equitably provide electricity for homes and businesses across the region. 

2026 weather extremes blow past 30-year averages

Taking stock of this year’s weather extremes in the Midwest is personal for me. And not to bury the lede: my family is fine, but we just barely avoided landing in the crosshairs of some of the most dangerous storms that have hit my home state of Wisconsin.

In mid-June, my husband and daughter were hunkered down in a barn in Belleville, Wisconsin, waiting out a severe thunderstorm that produced a tornado down the road. The storm destroyed two homes and severely damaged several more in Belleville. 

On another occasion, my daughter spent her last hour of the school year sheltered in place in her school’s basement as a severe thunderstorm roared through the area, producing 80+ MPH wind gusts. It was such a strong storm that it was eventually classified as a derecho— a particularly extreme class of severe thunderstorms. 

Looking out from the personal to the broader pattern, this has been an astounding year for Wisconsin. This April was the most tornadic on record in 76 years, with 27 tornados touching down across the state versus the more typical single April tornado. May was a relatively calm month, but there were 58 percent more severe storms in June than average. 

Wisconsin is certainly not alone. Most states in the Midwest had above average tornado counts in April. However, Illinois has been the hardest hit, experiencing the most tornados of any state in the US this year. Illinois has already seen 212 tornadoes form—more than three times its annual average of the last thirty years. To date, the National Weather Service has issued a whopping 812 severe thunderstorm warnings in Illinois.

Consequences for our power system

The deadly and damaging severe storms that have hit the Midwest this year have been incredibly consequential for power outages, and things are not slowing down yet. On Independence Day weekend, deadly, climate change-driven extreme heat and severe thunderstorms drove prolonged power outages for hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the Midwest, leaving many in dangerous, hot conditions. 

Nearly two million homes and businesses lost power as a result of a series of severe thunderstorms that hit the Midwest and Ohio Valley in mid-June, according to an analysis by PowerOutage.us. Thousands of homes and businesses lost their power for multiple days on end as a result of the storms, including in my hometown of Madison, where the storms downed power lines and broke power poles. Check out this incredible simulation of the power outages caused by some of the severe thunderstorms rolling through on June 10. 

Unfortunately, this year is unlikely to be an anomaly with respect to severe storms causing power outages in the Midwest. Important aspects of severe thunderstorm activity are already strengthening as a result of human-caused climate change. 

In addition, warmer temperatures—and with them, thunderstorms—are expected to occur earlier in the Midwest as they did this spring, lengthening the timeframe within which severe thunderstorms can form. And climate change is forecast to increase the likelihood of extreme heat that can co-occur with severe storms and strain the power system as happened on Independence Day weekend, leaving communities in harm’s way.

It is therefore critical that power sector actors heed the warning that this year is giving them. As my colleagues and I recommend in our report Power After the Storm, detailed climate risk assessments must be carried out to understand what the grid is going to be up against and how risks should be mitigated and addressed. 

We also urge the power sector to transition to electricity grids powered by clean energy so that we can prevent the worst impacts of climate change from manifesting. Finally, we encourage engagement with communities in order that investments and decisions reflect the needs of all customers that our electricity grids are meant to serve. 

By taking lived experiences from this year into account together with advances in climate science, we can make our electricity grid more resilient and ready to handle the more extreme weather that is headed our way.

The author would like to thank the Wisconsin State Climatology Office for their assistance with some of the statistics used in this blog.

In broad strokes, attribution science identifies and quantifies human contributions to climate change and its related impacts. Attribution research has provided foundational understanding about climate change for over 30 years and has been a cornerstone of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments, which serve as the global authority on consensus climate change science. These studies are retrospective and distinct from climate impact time series because they isolate the role of climate change and address questions of causation. Similarly, they are separate from projection studies that model the impacts of climate change into the future. 

Attribution science includes four interrelated subfields—trend, source, impact, and extreme event—which provide different kinds of insight into the consequences of climate change. This blog, however, will focus specifically on what extreme event attribution can tell us about our world and discuss strategies to communicate both its findings and its limitations.

A brief history of extreme event attribution

Did climate change make this heatwave more likely?

Did climate change make this downpour more intense?

Extreme event attribution (EEA) answers research questions like these. Like so many scientific disciplines, attribution research has evolved over time, allowing scientists to answer new questions about the impacts of fossil-fueled climate change.

The first EEA study focused on a devastating heatwave that occurred in Europe in 2003, that led to 35,000 excess deaths and the creation of extreme heat warning programs in countries across Europe. The study, published by Peter Stott and colleagues in 2004, found that human influence had more than doubled the likelihood of this event. While attribution methods had previously shown how climate change had contributed to trends like rising global average surface temperatures, this study represented a huge methodological advance by isolating the role of climate change in an individual event for the first time.

Over the past 20+ years, the field has evolved rapidly, increasing our understanding of how climate change is driving extreme weather. This type of research has shown that during Hurricane Harvey, climate change tripled the likelihood of extreme rainfall and increased total rainfall by at least 19%, with a best estimate of 37%. Similarly, research on extreme heat has shown that climate change made the 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave up to 3.6°F hotter.  

Sometimes this research finds that climate change did not play a role in a given extreme event. A study focused on May 2023 extreme rain in northern Italy, for instance, found that climate change didn’t affect the event’s likelihood or severity. Results like these affirm the rigor of this methodology, but are also rare given the fundamental changes to our atmosphere.

EEA studies have also become critical evidence in IPCC assessment reports, supporting key findings like:

“Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe” and “It is virtually certain that hot extremes (including heatwaves) have become more frequent and more intense across most land regions since the 1950s, with high confidence that human-induced climate change is the main driver of these changes.”

Each statement and figure included in the Summary for Policymakers section of IPCC reports (like those quoted above) are approved by every country that participates in the IPCC in collaboration with the report’s scientific authors. As a result, the inclusion of EEA research in IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policymakers underscores the robust methodology that underlies these studies as well as their role in shaping the consensus understanding of climate change.   

Innovative studies moved the field of EEA forward in 2025, with two high profile studies that addressed research questions about the contributions of emissions from the Carbon Majors, the largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers in the world, to extreme heatwaves.

One study attributed the economic costs of several extreme heatwaves to the emissions of the Carbon Majors, finding that the emissions of single emitter, Chevron, have led to between $791 billion to $3.6 trillion USD in heat related losses over a 31 year period.

Another study systematically attributed 231 heatwaves to emissions from the Carbon Majors, finding that their emissions contributed to half of the increase in heatwave intensity over the last 120 years, and that between 16 and 53 of these heatwaves would not have occurred without emissions traced to these entities. Like the Stott study in 2004, these studies highlight major developments in extreme event attribution and foreshadow the exciting research on the horizon.

Ease of attributing the role of climate change depends on event type and geography

Extreme event attribution research builds on decades of peer-reviewed science. The available data and methodology, however, mean that scientists can attribute some types of events with higher confidence and that the geographic spread of these studies skews heavily towards events in the Global North.

The events that can be attributed with the most confidence are those that are most closely tied to temperature increases, like heatwaves. Isolating the contribution of climate change can be more complicated for more complex events,  like convective storms that involve more complex processes. This translates to different levels of confidence in the attribution of certain types of events, which is reflected in the published literature about these topics. The IPCC is very clear about this while also affirming the confidence and rigor of studies and event types where scientists have stronger confidence in their conclusions.

Extreme event attribution research is also not well distributed geographically, with lots of studies focused on events in the Global North and far fewer studies on events in the Global South. Systemic issues can make bridging this gap difficult. For example, long term data sets required to establish a baseline in this type of research are often more readily available the Global North, which carries important equity implications as attribution science becomes important in the accountability and litigation spaces.

EEA research is one important tool among many for understanding climate change. However, remaining cognizant of its limitations and working to overcome them will be key as the field continues to develop.

Communicating about climate change and extreme events

Attribution science is a broad field of research, but EEA research has become its poster child, in part, due to the work of World Weather Attribution which conducts rapid attribution studies using peer reviewed methods, often resulting in broad media coverage. While these studies have increased awareness of fossil fueled extreme events, they have also led to confusion about what types of questions attribution science can and can’t answer. answer.

Attribution science answers questions like: did climate change make this event more frequent or intense?

It does not answer the question: was climate change the sole contributor to this event?  

Similarly, we’re never going to have an attribution study for every event. But even without one, climate science—particularly trend attribution research—can inform our thinking about how climate change may have played a role.

For example, hurricanes are super complex events, and tropical cyclone formation is notoriously hard to model. As a result, I’m not aware of any EEA studies that demonstrate how climate change contributed to the formation of a specific hurricane. As discussed above, much research has established the connection between climate change extreme precipitation associated with hurricanes.

However, we also have robust trend attribution research that shows the key role of climate change in rising sea surface temperatures, which can allow storms to rapidly intensify. Similarly, sea level rise attributed to climate change can exacerbate flooding from hurricanes. When talking about hurricanes in the absence of an EEA study, highlighting these key pieces of information is key in contextualizing how climate change may be contributing to these events. This distinction matters because scientific integrity requires us to be clear about what we know and what we don’t. We can state with confidence that climate change is warming oceans and raising sea levels (both of which worsen hurricane impacts) while acknowledging that other aspects remain less certain. Being precise about this strengthens, rather than weakens, the science.

Wildfires represent another example of this. As individual events, they are incredibly difficult to attribute to climate change due to the range of factors that play a role like historical banning of cultural burning practices by Indigenous communities, forest management, and ignition source. But we have amazing trend attribution science that can allow us to say a lot about the role of climate change in these events. A 2016 study, for example, showed that climate change via increased dryness nearly doubled burned area in forests of western North America between 1986 and 2015. This study looked at many wildfires in aggregate to understand the role of climate change.

Following the devastating January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles, one rapid attribution study found that climate change made the observed extreme fire weather—that drove the rapid spread of wildfires in the region—35% more likely. Together, this research shows that while event attribution studies allow us to quantify the specific contribution of climate change to a given event, we have a wide range of other science we can rely on to show how climate change is impacting our communities and ecosystems.

Moving forward: Five things to keep in mind when talking about attribution science

As attribution science continues to grow and find new applications—from IPCC assessments to courtroom evidence to help with city planning—how we talk about it matters. Here are key considerations for communicating about EEA and attribution science more broadly:

1. Be precise about the questions EEA can answer. Extreme event attribution tells us how climate change influenced an event’s likelihood or intensity, not whether climate change was the sole driver of an event. This distinction matters when framing EEA as answering “did climate change make this more likely or severe?” rather than “did climate change cause this?” and avoids overclaiming while still conveying meaningful information about climate change’s role.

2. Acknowledge varying confidence levels without undermining the science Confidence in attribution findings varies by event type. Heatwaves, which tie closely to temperature increases, can be attributed with high confidence. More complex events like extreme precipitation or hurricanes involve additional factors that complicate isolation of climate change’s contribution. Attribution science still has a lot to say about most event types, but communicating these differences transparently strengthens credibility while still affirming the robust methodology underlying the research. These methodological constraints represent opportunities for the research to further develop.

3. Absence of an attribution study doesn’t mean absence of a climate connection. Not every event will have a dedicated attribution study, and that’s okay. Trend attribution research can inform our understanding even when event-specific studies don’t exist. For hurricane formation and intensification, for example, we can point to robust science on rising sea surface temperatures and sea level rise to contextualize climate change’s role without needing a specific EEA study for each storm.

4. Extreme event attribution exists within the broader attribution science research field. Extreme event attribution is one of four interrelated subfields,alongside trend, source, and impact attribution. Communicating EEA as part of this broader toolkit helps highlight that multiple lines of evidence can inform conclusions about climate change’s contributions, even when one type of study isn’t available.

5. Attribution science is robust and continues to evolve. From the first 2004 European heatwave study to 2025 Carbon Majors research attributing economic costs and heatwave occurrence to specific emitters, EEA has rapidly expanded the questions it can answer. Pointing to these advances signals that attribution science is dynamic and continues to develop new tools for understanding climate impacts.

Attribution science has come a long way in two decades and continues to develop. By communicating its findings and its boundaries clearly and constructively, we can help ensure this research continues to inform the decisions, policies, and accountability efforts that shape our climate future.

AAS: California is on the front lines of climate change, with extreme weather intensified by fossil fuel use and weather whiplash causing frequent drought conditions. How can science and scientists support rural California communities, like Allensworth, incorporating resilience into their planning to protect long-term livability?

RANYEE CHIANG: We need to use science to help communities to build resilience, minimize the harmful impacts of climate change, and strengthen themselves. Specifically, UCS has supported communities in California’s Central Valley with data and analyses to inform and support their vision of repurposing the surrounding agricultural land. One example of this type of partnership is with the town of Allensworth, which for decades has advocated for a systemic transformation of their community into a new paradigm that works for everyone.

Like the rest of the Central Valley, water issues are front and center in Allensworth. That’s because water shortages are increasing, and California will have to transition a significant amount of irrigated cropland into less water-intensive uses. This rethinking is an opportunity for communities to shape their futures—with sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, and nature-based solutions to manage droughts and floods and increase ecological resilience, all while reducing pollution, addressing food and energy security, offering new economic opportunities, and achieving environmental justice. So there’s a natural nexus between rural communities and UCS because California’s water challenges have been a major focus of our science advocacy for years.

At UCS, we are working towards making California a place where families and communities can thrive.

AAS: Can you tell us more about nature-based solutions to climate change?

RANYEE CHIANG: Nature-based solutions offer a powerful approach to address these challenges by working with natural systems to increase climate resilience, create economic opportunities, improve water sustainability, and enhance public health. Some examples include capturing flood water to replenish groundwater, which reduces flood risk for communities. A second example is creating buffer zones, essentially pesticide-free areas that improve air quality and provide safe recreation spaces for the people who live in what were former agricultural areas. Another is the use of ecovoltaics which combines solar energy with native habitat restoration, generating clean electricity while supporting pollinators and wildlife. These solutions are typically less extractive and promote resilience to our changing climate as well as providing economic, public health, and environmental benefits.

AAS: For readers unfamiliar with this part of the country, what unique challenges have Allensworth and other rural California communities faced? What makes Allensworth’s transformation a model for communities around the country?

RANYEE CHIANG: Low-income, rural communities in California’s Central Valley, like Allensworth, are challenged by a host of compounding problems. Political underrepresentation, underinvestment, and social and economic inequities, rooted in a legacy of systemic oppression, have plagued community members for generations. Added to those burdens are the changing climate and the environmental issues caused by intensive industrial monoculture—a practice where single crop species are grown to maximize yield and efficiency. Decades of overuse have depleted groundwater, left residents with an unreliable drinking water supply, and worsened air quality. Economic gains from land use were not equitably shared with the community. A lack of fundamental infrastructure left residents particularly vulnerable to climate change.

In Allensworth, restoring native habitats; a transition to a farming system that is healthy, economically viable, and ecologically sustainable; and meaningful involvement from community members have helped the community chart a path towards increased food security, energy, and water sovereignty, and create a more enjoyable and healthier place where residents can thrive.

Because of the transformative future that community members of Allensworth are building, the town will be a model for other communities in the US facing similar challenges. A key part of this vision is agroecology.

AAS: What is agroecology?

RANYEE CHIANG: Agroecology is an approach to farming that promotes farmworker well-being, biodiversity, soil health, wildlife protection, climate resilience, and food independence. Thinking about how energy use intersects with farming is part of this approach. Allensworth plans to pursue energy independence through agrivoltaics, a practice where the land is used to grow food and generate solar power. This is especially critical since an unreliable, inconsistent energy supply currently threatens water access and vulnerable residents during extreme heat events that cause temperatures to soar above 110°F.

AAS: Zooming out from Allensworth and looking at the whole state, where does UCS see the greatest opportunities to make an impact in California?

RANYEE CHIANG: There are so many important issues that are deservedly getting a lot of attention, especially in a year when we have a governor’s race in California. Housing, jobs, affordability, public transportation, clean transportation, wildfires, AI, data centers. How can we address so many different massive issues without getting overwhelmed?

A good example of this is UCS’s efforts to sponsor and pass legislation to address gas prices and help low-income families access clean transportation options, while continuing the longer-term transition away from fossil fuels.

Another example is empowering other communities with analyses, tools, and funding to scale successful solutions, such as the ones implemented in Allensworth. This is where UCS brings the most value: using our scientific analyses to address complex problems systematically and holistically.

As my colleague Dr. Delta Merner explains, attribution science includes several connected areas of research. The first, “event attribution,” asks whether climate change made a particular weather event more likely or more intense. The second, “source attribution,” traces climate change and associated hazards back to emissions sources or sectors. And third, “impact attribution” examines the resulting harms, including damage to homes and infrastructure, lost livelihoods, health impacts, and deaths.

Attribution science utilizes a suite of tools to understand these connections: earth observations, statistical methods, emissions data, and climate models. Climate models are a central tool of attribution science through their ability to develop modeled counterfactuals—that is, simulations of what our world might have been without human-induced warming.

Climate models and attribution science have both advanced rapidly over recent decades, making both critical tools for understanding how climate change is progressing and fossil fuel companies’ responsibility for its worsening effects.

So, how exactly are climate models used in attribution science, and why can we have confidence in the conclusions they help produce?

What is a climate model, and why does it matter for attribution?

Climate models are among the main tools scientists use to simulate how Earth will respond to increasing concentrations of heat-trapping pollutants in the atmosphere. When scientists refer to climate models, they generally talk about a general circulation model, or GCM. These models simulate how the atmosphere, oceans, land, and cryosphere respond to changes in internal climate dynamics, such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and external drivers, including greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate models are some of the most reliable tools for understanding our earth-climate system because they have been improved, tested, and updated for decades. 

Modern climate models are made up of connected component models for the atmosphere, ocean, land surface, and cryosphere. An atmospheric model, for example, simulates circulation, radiation, clouds, and aerosols. Ocean models simulate circulation and heat uptake. Land models represent processes such as soil moisture, vegetation, snow cover, evapotranspiration, and carbon storage.

When these components are connected, or coupled, they exchange information with one another, allowing models to represent the feedbacks and interactions that shape the real-world climate system. These coupled models are often compared through coordinated international efforts such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, or CMIP, which allows scientists to evaluate results across many models, institutions, and experimental designs.

CMIP simulations are also a major source of evidence for national and international climate assessments, including reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where they help scientists assess past climate change, project future risks, and evaluate confidence across different concentration scenarios and model results.

At their core, climate models use well-established physical laws to calculate how energy, momentum, water, and other properties move through the climate system. They divide the planet into a three-dimensional grid and calculate how conditions such as temperature, moisture, winds, and rainfall change over time and from place to place.

Attribution science: Comparing what is with what could’ve been

For attribution science, knowing how each of these factors contributes to our climate matters enormously. Event attribution compares the climate in which an event occurred (usually today’s climate) with a counterfactual climate that is identical except for the added influence of human-caused warming. By running climate model simulations with—and without—observed human influences, researchers can quantify how greenhouse gas emissions changed the probability or intensity of an event.

For example, a heatwave may have occurred because of a particular weather pattern, but human-caused warming can raise the baseline temperature on which that weather pattern acts, making an extreme heat event more likely, hotter, longer lasting, or all three. The 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave illustrates this clearly: the region has already warmed by 1°-1.5°C, and event-specific attribution studies found that the heatwave would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change and was about 1°C hotter because of it. The relevant question is therefore how much climate change shifted the odds, intensity, or consequences of any given event.  

Climate models have a strong track record for simulating global warming

Climate models are some of the most reliable tools for understanding our earth-climate system because they have been improved, tested, and updated for decades. Their development spans generations of scientists and computational advances, and they continue to improve.

In fact, a recent study found that climate models that were developed over 50 years ago have correctly predicted the Earth’s warming. The fact that models developed decades ago broadly projected the warming trajectory we are now living through is strong evidence that they capture the core physics of global warming.

Furthermore, climate models have evolved in both scale and resolution, improving our ability to understand regional and localized changes to our earth-system. While global climate models are essential for understanding large-scale warming and circulation patterns, regional models can provide more detailed information about how those changes interact with local geography, land surfaces, coastlines, mountains, cities, and weather systems. This is especially useful when studying events such as convective storms, storm surge, flooding, and wildfires, where local and regional processes can strongly influence the severity of an event.

The advances by climate models and their proven record for simulating our earth system are important in the attribution of science. Climate models allow scientists to translate that physical understanding into quantitative estimates of how human-caused warming has changed the likelihood, intensity, or impacts of specific weather extremes.

Climate models address scientific uncertainty

Attribution scientists use multiple robust methods to test, constrain, and quantify uncertainty. One of the most important methods is the use of climate-model ensembles, which help scientists distinguish the role of natural variability from the influence of human-caused warming when assessing extreme weather events and their impacts.

First, scientists use initial-condition ensembles to understand internal climate variability. In these experiments, researchers run the same climate model many times with nearly identical conditions, changing only very small differences in the initial state of the atmosphere or ocean. Because the climate system is complex and chaotic, these tiny differences can lead to different weather patterns and different sequences of natural variability over time.

This allows attribution scientists to simulate the range of outcomes that could occur under the same external conditions. When researchers compare a world with human-caused emissions to a counterfactual world without them across many simulations for each scenario, they can see whether the climate-change signal consistently shifts the likelihood or severity of an event beyond the range expected from natural variability alone.

Second, scientists use multi-model ensembles to evaluate structural uncertainty, which originates in the scientific choices made by developers of each model. Different modeling centers make different scientific and technical choices about numerical schemes, parameterizations, spatial resolution, and how to represent processes such as clouds, aerosols, land-atmosphere interactions, and ocean circulation because the climate system is complex and no single model can perfectly capture every process at every scale. Comparing results across models helps scientists determine whether a finding is robust across multiple plausible representations of the climate system.

That said, some models can be similar in their representation of certain interactions in the climate system, mainly due to the fact that a few were developed using the same computer code and parameterizations. Regardless of the choice, researchers use methods that account for both model performance and model interdependence, giving less weight to structurally similar models or models that perform less well against observations.

The purpose of ensembles is to understand and constrain uncertainty in a transparent way. And what is clear is that, with both types of ensembles, there is greater confidence in the climate-change signals on a variety of weather extremes and impacts.

Bottom line: Climate models are important tools for attribution science

Climate models are essential tools for attribution science because they are grounded in well-established physics, tested against observations, and used alongside multiple lines of evidence. Attribution science brings together physical understanding, observations, statistical analysis, emissions data, and climate-model experiments to test how human-caused warming is changing the risks people face today. The use of multiple datasets, models and methods is what makes the field robust, allowing scientists to compare the world as it exists now to a counterfactual world without human-caused warming, quantify uncertainty, and assess how much climate change has shifted the likelihood, intensity, or impacts of specific events.

In May 2026, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands heard arguments in the landmark climate case of Milieudefensie v. Shell on whether Shell has a civil law obligation to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, including downstream emissions from the burning of the fossil fuels it sells (Scope 3 emissions). A few weeks later, the Paris Judicial Court ruled that TotalEnergies’ vigilance plan—in which companies must identify, prevent and mitigate environmental and other risks across their operations, under France’s Duty of Vigilance Act—must address Scope 3 emissions. Across the Atlantic, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed rolling back the Climate Risk Disclosure Rule that requires companies to report their climate-related financial risks to investors.

The legal arguments being weighed by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands and the Paris Judicial Court on the one side, and SEC’s proposal on the other, represent two fronts in the ongoing battle over whether and how companies must account for the full scope of their impacts on the world’s climate.

Our recent research, co-authored with colleagues at the Climate Social Science Network and published in Netherlands International Law Review, examines the evolution of these arguments in corporate climate change litigation. We analyzed twelve ‘corporate framework’ cases from around the world—legal cases and complaints seeking to hold companies accountable for their impacts on the climate through changes to corporate policies and governance. What we found is both encouraging and sobering.

Accountability for Scope 3 emissions

Our research shows that courts are increasingly recognizing that companies have some responsibility for their Scope 3 emissions, although there are differences in approaches across jurisdictions and courts. For fossil fuel companies, such as Shell and TotalEnergies, this matters enormously. Scope 3 emissions account for the overwhelming majority of their impact on the climate, primarily from customers’ use of their oil and gas products, which typically represent 80-90% of a fossil fuel company’s total carbon emissions.

But recognizing responsibility in principle is different from determining that an oil and gas company has a legal obligation to reduce these emissions, agreeing on what the reduction should be and then enforcing a legal obligation in practice. The cases of  Milieudefensie v. Shell and Notre Affaire à Tous et al. v. TotalEnergies illustrate this tension.

The case of Milieudefensie v. Shell was filed under tort law. In 2021, the District Court of The Hague issued a landmark ruling that Shell must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030, relative to 2019 levels, including its Scope 3 emissions. This is the first time any court in the world has ordered a company to cut its value-chain emissions. Shell appealed the decision.

In 2024, the Dutch Court of Appeal overturned the specific order for Shell to reduce its emissions by 45% by 2030. However, significantly the court did affirm that companies such as Shell have a duty of care to reduce their emissions, including downstream emissions. The problem, the court said, was translating that general duty into a specific percentage. According to the ruling, there was insufficient consensus on what percentage should apply to Shell specifically. In raising questions about the effectiveness of specific orders to reduce emissions, the court highlighted the challenge of addressing emissions through single-company obligations. Now, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands must decide if courts can order specific emissions reductions or whether they are limited to declaring that companies have a general responsibility to act.

The case of Notre Affaire à Tous et al. v. TotalEnergies, in turn, is based on France’s due diligence law. The Paris Judicial Court’s recent judgement is particularly significant for its treatment of Scope 3 emissions (paragraphs 151-170). By requiring emissions generated through the downstream use of TotalEnergies’ products to be addressed in the vigilance plan, the court extends the duty of vigilance to risks that are economically and causally linked to the company’s business model, even where the emissions are produced by third parties. As noted by researcher Marta Torre-Schaub, the vigilance plan therefore becomes a forward-looking due diligence instrument designed to anticipate climate-related harm throughout the value chain, not a simple reporting obligation.

The International Court of Justice’s 2025 advisory opinion on the climate obligations of states may provide useful guidance on causation and remedies for both the French and Dutch courts.

Key questions facing courts in relation to corporate emissions

Our analysis of twelve corporate framework cases across multiple jurisdictions reveals three recurring questions that courts grapple with in relation to corporate emissions. These are:

Do companies have a legal obligation to reduce their Scope 3 emissions?

Courts are increasingly taking the view that companies do. The Dutch Court of Appeal in Milieudefensie v. Shell confirmed that international soft law instruments (e.g. recommendations and guidelines), human rights frameworks and greenhouse gas accounting standards all pre-suppose corporate responsibility for Scope 3 emissions. The Philippines Human Rights Commission reached the same conclusion in its Carbon Majors inquiry in 2015. Australian and Dutch National Contact Points for Responsible Business Conduct, which implement the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Guidelines, have issued statements recognizing that financial institutions are responsible for indirect emissions in their value chains linked to their loans and other investments (see Australian Bushfire Victims and Friends of the Earth Australia v. ANZ Bank and BankTrack et al. v. ING Bank).

Can that obligation be translated into a specific reduction requirement?

This question has proved more challenging for courts, which have been reluctant to set specific percentages without clear sectoral standards. This is not only a scientific problem; it is also a litigation strategy problem. Our research confirms legal and governance specialist Phillip Paiement’s view that rather than relying on a single headline percentage for reducing a company’s Scope 3 emissions, future cases might present ‘bundles of duties’ that address, for example, transition-plan quality, production limits, rules on no new oil and gas fields, marketing constraints and transition plan requirements. This approach reflects a broader shift away from debating specific emissions targets towards scrutinizing corporate decisions that drive emissions.

Would such an order be effective?

Companies routinely argue that court orders to reduce their Scope 3 emissions will not reduce global emissions. Arguments include the ‘market substitution’ defense: if one company sells less oil and gas, another will sell more, and the ‘drop in the ocean’ defense: one company’s emissions are too small to matter globally. These arguments have had a mixed reception. In the Netherlands, the Court of Appeal found them persuasive, but the District Court did not. In New Zealand, the Supreme Court allowed Smith v. Fonterra, a case in which a Māori climate change spokesperson brought a case against seven high-emitting New Zealand companies in the agriculture and energy sectors, to proceed. This signals that these arguments are not necessarily fatal at the pleading stage of a case.

Strategies for responding to these corporate defenses

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands’ ruling, which is expected in early 2027, will send ripples through climate litigation worldwide. Twenty corporate framework cases were already pending when the Shell appeal was decided in 2024. Many of these cases drew inspiration from the original 2021 ruling imposing the 45% reduction order on Shell. A Supreme Court decision reinstating that reduction order would energize these cases. A decision upholding the appeal could force litigants to rethink their strategies.

Our research suggests several ways forward for holding companies to account through the courts:

• Sector-specific evidence: Rather than applying global reduction pathways uniformly, litigants can present evidence tailored to specific sectors and companies’ actual control over their value chains.
• Activity-linked obligations: Instead of (or in addition to) percentage targets for reducing emissions, corporate framework cases can seek constraints on specific activities, such as preventing new fossil fuel fields, restrictions on fossil fuel financing or marketing restrictions.
• Transition plan enforcement: The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive requires companies to adopt transition plans with time-bound targets. Courts can enforce the quality of these transition plans, even when they are reluctant to set specific targets.
• Precaution and intergenerational equity: These principles can help bridge evidentiary uncertainties, aligning private law duties with the protective logic already accepted in public law climate cases such as Urgenda Foundation v. State of the Netherlands, the world’s first climate case in which citizens successfully established that their government has a legal duty under human rights law to prevent dangerous climate change.

Corporations are fighting disclosure rules

The proposal by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to roll back requirements on companies to report their climate-related financial risks to investors connects directly to the fight to establish corporate liability through the courts. In short, it is not possible to hold companies accountable for emissions they do not disclose.

Companies already report their greenhouse gas emissions inconsistently, using different methods and varying levels of transparency. Some do not track their emissions at all. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol provides guidance, but is voluntary. This creates the uncertainty that courts point to when they decline to set specific reduction obligations.

The Climate Risk Disclosure Rule the SEC is now proposing to cancel could have standardized how companies report climate risks to investors, including Scope 3 emissions. But heavy lobbying by high-emitting industries and their trade associations succeeded in stripping Scope 3 disclosures from the final rule, revealing the litigation threat companies believe this information poses. However, opponents to this disclosure rule have won the battle not the war: dozens of jurisdictions around the world have adopted global standards that require Scope 3 disclosures, including California in the US.

As we can see, without transparent, standardized and mandatory reporting, claimants face uphill battles proving causation and foreseeability. And without the risk of legal liability, companies have less incentive to disclose accurately. These two dynamics reinforce each other.

Corporate climate litigation: the direction of travel

The cases of Milieudefensie v. Shell and Notre Affaire à Tous et al. v. TotalEnergies are about more than two companies. These cases are key tests of whether the legal system can hold major corporate emitters to account for the full scope of their impacts on the climate. They also highlight the vulnerability of corporate profit models in the oil and gas sector, because addressing emissions may require companies to sell less of the carbon-intensive products that drive their revenues. This is why corporate resistance is so fierce.

Both cases might still see developments in the near future. In early 2027, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands will decide whether Shell can be ordered to reduce their Scope 3 emissions by specific amounts. In France, TotalEnergies issued a statement expressing “satisfaction” that the court declined to ban new fossil fuel projects or impose production cuts and that it would “assess the next steps to be taken following the Court’s decision”.

Regardless of the outcome, the direction of travel is clear: major companies are increasingly being held accountable for their global warming emissions and the resulting impacts on the world’s climate. Our job as scientists and researchers is to make sure that the science applicable to these issues keeps pace with the law, and that both keep pace with the urgent action that we need to take to address the climate crisis.

Joana Setzer is an Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her main areas of expertise are climate litigation and global environmental governance.

Over a span of two decades, a federal scientific integrity apparatus was built, improved, and stress-tested to protect federal science activities from political interference, safeguard the freedom and independence of federal scientists, and allow the US science and technology enterprise to thrive. Federal agencies established scientific integrity policies, installed officials to oversee the application of these agency safeguards, and built a culture of scientific integrity through training, integration, process, and policy. But the second Trump administration has laid bare the vulnerability of that apparatus to a hostile administration uninterested in respecting law, process, and science in government. These past efforts on scientific integrity provide key insights for creating something not only more durable but also re-imagined to play a key role in protecting democratic principles and combating corruption.

Across recent decades, much has been learned about system vulnerabilities that can be exploited by political actors interested in weaponizing science for public harm or private gain. Several key challenges are apparent.

Authority versus politicization risk. Who should hold the authority on matters of scientific integrity and where should that person be positioned within agencies? Placing a scientific integrity officer in a research office places them close to the scientific activities they oversee and farther from political appointees who may seek to inappropriately influence science activities. But this positioning can be removed from policy matters and removed from the level of authority necessary to adequately oversee scientific integrity across an agency or department. By contrast, placing scientific integrity authority closer to the political level, such as designating scientific integrity authority to a politically appointed chief scientist will instill more authority for matters of scientific integrity, but relies on a good-faith actor in that role. In either case, what happens when it is the political heads of agencies who are accused of scientific integrity violations? A scientific integrity official may not feel empowered to act.

Blurred lines between science and policy decisions. While it is a clear violation of scientific integrity when a political appointee changes a number on a scientific report to achieve more politically convenient math, or when a scientist is muzzled from speaking about a politically sensitive finding, many scientific integrity challenges occur at the science and policy interface—places where it can be unclear what is a scientific decision and what can and should be a political decision. How can the public discern whether scientific integrity was compromised if this distinction is blurred? This lack of transparency in science policy processes can make it easier for political actors to interfere with science for political purposes. 

The challenge of durability. The second Trump administration has made abundantly clear the need for mechanisms and authorities that sustain scientific integrity across administrations, even in hostile environments. In a single executive order on May 23, 2025, the Trump administration erased much of the progress that was made under the Biden administration on scientific integrity. While some agencies have persisted, the president’s move made apparent how vulnerable the entire apparatus was to a president uninterested in the project of respecting science in government. 

Future scientific integrity efforts must be different. They must be stronger. They must be more integrated into federal activities and authorities. And we know the formula: Re-imagined scientific integrity infrastructure in the executive branch must have transparency, independence, and authority.

1. Transparency

First, there must be greater commitment to transparency in the process by which science informs decisions across the government. One opportunity is to allow the public to submit allegations of scientific integrity violations and for those submissions to be publicly posted. This would allow the public to see where challenges may exist and provides an avenue for public interest groups, watchdogs, and members of the public to raise concerns. Such a system would also create external support and political cover for scientific integrity officials to investigate matters of high public interest, even if these matters are politically inconvenient to agency leaders or involve senior agency leadership, because there would be public pressure and an opportunity for accountability.

We can also require public reporting on scientific integrity. This was a requirement under the Biden-era scientific integrity framework but could be made stronger by linking scientific integrity reporting to congressionally mandated reporting, requiring reporting in the context of agency budget requests, or other “built-in” processes. Such transparency and integration in public reporting requirements would allow for more cross-agency assessments and trend discernment that can inform future improvements. Seeing how agencies compare can allow for healthy competition and improvement across administrations, and provide additional scrutiny and support for underperforming agencies where scientific integrity issues persist. To facilitate such transparency and cross-agency coordination over future administrations, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Subcommittee on Scientific Integrity could be codified into law, the way some other subcomponents of NSTC are.

2. Independence

The independence of federal science activities is critical, both for the US science enterprise itself to thrive, and for science activities to play their critical role in our federal system of checks and balances. Government scientists collect and share data critical for the nation, speak out when scientific information is misused and ignored for public harm or private gain, counter disinformation from political leaders, and ensure scientific truth reaches the public. But those functions only happen when the independence of federal science is preserved and government scientists feel empowered to do their jobs freely.

This can be achieved when career civil servants’ jobs are protected and mechanisms for clear distinctions between science and policy are developed and enforced. In laws like the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act where provisions require decisions based on science, it is publicly known where the science ends and the policy decisions begin. But many decisions do not have this clear delineation either in agency structure or law, so scientific integrity must be safeguarded through other mechanisms of separation.

Federal statistical agencies, for example, have clear practices and protocols that buffer data collection and publication from political influence. These mechanisms could be expanded to other federal science activities and agencies, such that science and scientists are better protected from political influences, and federal employees are empowered to freely speak up, push back, and serve as guardians of the science and truth. Such measures to enhance the independence of federal science also combat corruption, because they allow federal science and scientists to share reliable data and scientific truth, even when political actors seek to obscure it. Federal scientists, in other words, keep the score.

3. Authority

For scientific integrity policies and practices to be recognized and enforced across the government, they must be governed by officials with a necessary weight of authority. One way to achieve this is to integrate scientific integrity infrastructure within other existing federal authorities and processes. Such integration would have several benefits. It would put the responsibility of shepherding scientific integrity into the hands of more senior officials. This would help sustain scientific integrity infrastructure across administrations, because the principles and practices would be ingrained across more people and processes throughout the government. Across the US science and technology landscape, there are several key actors that could have expanded roles on scientific integrity, such as the comptroller general; the Government Accountability Office; inspectors general; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; the National Academy of Public Administration; the National Archives and Records Administration; and the Office of Special Counsel.

Codifying such roles in federal law, such as the Scientific Integrity Act introduced in the 119th Congress, is a key strategy for achieving integration with aligned and authoritative institutions. The Scientific Integrity Act would require federal agencies that fund or conduct research to adopt and enforce scientific integrity policies, helping protect federal science from political interference and ensuring that research findings are not suppressed, distorted, or manipulated. Enacting legislation of this kind would be an important step toward building a more durable scientific integrity infrastructure that can withstand changes in administrations while strengthening transparency, accountability, and public trust in government science.

Creating and implementing mechanisms that adhere to this framework of transparency, independence, and authority across the executive branch will ensure not only that the US science and technology enterprise can thrive, but also that any scientific integrity infrastructure provides anti-corruption measures and bolsters the nation’s democratic processes and institutions.

California has been fighting vehicle pollution for 60 years

California’s first clean car standards were enacted in 1966, as the state took action to deal with pervasive smog and air pollution, especially in the Los Angeles Basin. In recognition of California’s leadership, when the federal Air Quality Act of 1967 was passed (later amended to be the Clean Air Act), it explicitly allowed California to continue to set stricter pollution standards for cars and trucks to address the state’s persistent and deadly poor air quality.

What is a Clean Air Act waiver?

California follows a two-step process to enforce vehicle pollution standards. First, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) carefully researches potential regulatory mechanisms and adopts standards for vehicle manufacturers that want to sell cars in the state. Second, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is directed by the Clean Air Act to issue a waiver of federal preemption to allow California to enforce those standards if they meet the Clean Air Act requirements, such as being at least as protective than the federal standards. Since the 1960s, California has received numerous waivers to enforce standards to protect public health and the environment.

How EPA and Congress attacked California’s clean car standards

Last year, Congress took the unprecedented step of mischaracterizing the waivers for California’s Advanced Clean Cars II, Advanced Clean Trucks, and Heavy-Duty Omnibus standards as “rules” subject to the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Despite the ruling of the nonpartisan Senate Parliamentarian that the waivers are not subject to the CRA because they are indeed not rules, Congress passed CRA resolutions and they were signed by the president. These actions have put the future of clean transportation in California at risk as the state sues to overturn these actions.

Not content with stopping future clean cars, the EPA is now asking Congress to use the same illegitimate mechanism to undo prior waivers, going all the way back to the greenhouse gas emission standards for model year 2009 cars and trucks, standards that have already been fully phased in.

California received a waiver in 2009 for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for cars and trucks (known as the Pavley standards). These standards were largely mirrored by Obama-era federal standards. In addition, CARB received a waiver in 2013 to establish the Advanced Clean Cars (ACC) standards. These standards included smog-forming pollution limits, caps on GHG emissions, and a sales requirement for zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), all of which steadily grew more stringent through model year 2025, with an electric vehicle sales requirement of about 8 percent of new cars. The auto industry complied with the standards, resulting in new gasoline, hybrid, and electric cars that are cleaner than ever. From 2012 to 2024, global warming emissions from new passenger vehicles dropped over 25 percent. And drivers are also benefiting from thousands of dollars in fuel savings as they switch from less efficient gasoline cars to electric vehicles.

EPA is now attacking the remaining clean car standards

Why is the EPA interested in getting rid of standards for vehicles that were sold over 15 years ago? The answer lies in CARB’s response to last year’s CRA action on clean car waivers. When Congress and the president used the CRA against the waivers, in addition to the legal response, CARB started an emergency regulatory process to clarify that certain prior clean car standards were still valid if the new standards could not be enforced. Specifically, CARB signaled that it would enforce the standards on smog-forming pollution and GHG emissions at the 2025 levels for cars and trucks until new standards are enacted, or a court reinstates the Advanced Clean Cars II standards currently on pause. Notably, CARB is not seeking to enforce the 2025 ZEV sales requirements, so there is no California requirement for electric vehicle sales if the Advanced Clean Cars II standards are not reinstated.

These existing state-level vehicle standards are already being met by automakers. The Trump administration has already rolled back federal greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, and is in the process of rolling back criteria pollution standards for vehicles in a two-part rulemaking. If these deregulatory actions are successful, California could have no protection against automakers reverting to the dirtier cars and trucks from decades ago.

Strong standards needed for clean air and slowing climate change

California’s clean car authority has delivered cleaner air for decades, and weakening it now would mean more pollution, higher emissions, and fewer protections for public health. Erasing standards that automakers are already meeting will only have negative effects, and will significantly set back efforts to clean the air. With these actions, Californians will have to rely on federal vehicle standards, a losing proposition given the strong anti-science stance of current EPA leadership. The EPA has already claimed that global warming pollution shouldn’t be regulated, via the repeal of the Endangerment Finding, and has signaled that health-protecting tailpipe emissions standards will be rolled back.

California has the worst air quality in the nation and has failed to meet the federal standards for several pollutants, including ground level ozone and particulate matter pollution. The state’s plans to achieve compliance with these standards relies on the ability to require cleaner vehicles. Without the authority to regulate pollution from mobile sources, the state will have to significantly revise its plan to comply, and may force more significant emissions reductions from other sources.

Rolling back California’s standards would not just increase pollution; it would also cause significant regulatory uncertainty for an auto industry that has already made investments to develop cleaner cars to meet state and federal standards. The way forward is to maintain the standards that are already working to protect public health and put us on a path to slow climate change. Congress should reject Congressional Review Act resolutions that violate its authority to protect its residents from pollution.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the Western US has been stunned almost annually by destructive and often deadly wildland fires. It has become increasingly clear that we are in a new era of destructive megafires, due a combination of climate change, vegetation changes from widespread fire suppression, and development at the wildland-urban interface. In this post, I’ll touch briefly on the history of wildland fire and human response in the West, on some climate metrics that are related to the trends in wildland megafires, and identify possible mitigation and adaptation measures to respond to the fire-climate crises.

The first era of megafires

As the timber industry pushed west and north in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, large and destructive forest fires followed, since logging and land clearing for agriculture left large accumulation of debris. Some of the notorious and destructive fires included:

• The 2,400 square-mile Peshtigo fire in Wisconsin, October 1871, which killed over 2,000 people;
• The 3-million acre Big Blowup in Washington, Idaho and Montana, 1910, which killed 85 people. The story of that fire is told in Timothy Eagan’s book, The Big Burn.  It marked a turning point for staff of the young US Forest Service, who went from pariahs who were trying to control illegal logging and grazing against strong resistance, to local heroes in the fight to stop the fire; and
• The Tillamook Burn, Oregon, was a series of four fires that burned between 1933 and 1958, consuming 350,000 acres of mostly old-growth Douglas-fir.

Fire prevention and suppression techniques put in place

For generations, Indigenous peoples used fire management techniques such as controlled burns, harnessing the power of fire to shape the landscape for their survival. European colonizers banned and criminalized many of these practices when they arrived in the Americas.

During the 1930s and after World War II, under the New Deal, the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, relying on Civilian Conservation Corps workers, built a network of fire lookouts in the West. Fire stations were built and staffed at the district level. An aggressive educational campaign was launched, using slogans like Smokey the Bear’s famous “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Smokejumpers were trained to parachute into otherwise inaccessible terrain to fight forest fires that mostly originated from lightning strikes.

The anti-fire campaign was successful for a time, but was marred by an incident in 1949, when 13 smokejumpers died fighting the Mann Gulch fire in west Montana. That tragic accident, memorialized in Norman Maclean’s book Young Men and Fire,  provided the impetus for the US Forest Service to establish a program of research on fire behavior, with Fire Science Laboratories now at Missoula, MT, Riverside, CA, and Seattle, WA, as well as projects at research stations throughout the US. Research was directed, for example, on understanding how local topography and microclimates could cause sudden and dangerous shifts in fire behavior.

Unfortunately, this March, the US Forest Service announced that it will close the majority of its research stations in 31 states, and consolidate its research division in a centralized office in Fort Collins, Colorado. When the Bureau of Land Management imposed a similar relocation plan during the first Trump administration, more than 87 percent of the Bureau of Land Management employees in the main Washington, DC, office resigned.

This relocation and downsizing of the Forest Service research program will have a devastating effect on ongoing and well-established research programs that are addressing the impacts of climate change on wildfires and forest health. It is hard to see this move by the Trump administration as anything but an ideological attack on science; it will likely take years for the research program to recover.

Megafires in the era of climate change

Records since the mid-1980s show marked increases in both the number of large wildland fires (“large” defined as >400 hectares) and total area that they burned. The increases are sharpest in the northern Rocky Mountains, and are attributable to the earlier onset of spring and increasing summer moisture deficit (or vapor pressure deficit). Historic moisture deficit data are based on climate records, and future projections of vapor pressure deficit are derived from general circulation models. The evidence is very strong that increasing summer temperatures and atmospheric water deficit are the primary cause of the upward trend in megafires.

In addition to moisture (or vapor pressure deficit), climatic variables that have been related to changes in longer fire seasons and greater overall burned areas include:

• The percent of annual water-year precipitation falling as snow
• The maximum annual snowpack, in inches of stored water
• The snowpack water storage on April 1, the date of an important snow survey
• The onset date of spring snowmelt
• The center timing of snowmelt—that is, the date by which half the annual water-year snowmelt has passed a stream gage
• The Palmer Drought Severity Index
• The Forest Drought Severity Index

Mitigation and adaptation

For people who live in a wildlife-urban interface area—that is, is an area where homes and businesses are located that are adjacent to undeveloped land, forests and grasslands—adaptation to extreme forest fire might mean keeping a “go bag” close at hand in the short term. For decision-makers thinking about the longer term, modifying design standards will help make buildings more fire resistant.  

Mitigation might mean reducing forest fuel loads with prescribed burning, or cutting and removing vegetation. This approach often focuses on “ladder fuels,” small trees and shrubs that can conduct flame from the ground into the higher tree canopy. Fuel load reduction—or eliminating the vegetation most likely to burn—can help firefighters to protect certain assets, but it can be expensive. Average costs for prescribed burning in California range from to $140 to $170 per acre, and for cutting and removing vegetation, from $6,500 to $8,500 per acre.

To date, more than 100,000 acres in California’s Lake Tahoe region have been treated for fuel load reduction. Of course, these treatments will have to be repeated as vegetation re-grows.

Unfortunately, climate change is closing the window on opportunities for safely using prescribed fire—controlled burns—as a vegetation management strategy. This point was driven home in 2022 when a prescribed fire in New Mexico escaped control to become the 345,000-acre Hermit’s Peak Fire.

Recent and accurate information on forest conditions is essential for planning and implementing fuel load reduction and prescribed burning. From the 1970s until last year, the US Forest Service’s Aerial Detection Survey mapped areas of forest mortality in California associated with insects, disease, drought and wildfire using low-elevation flights with trained observers. Last year, the Trump administration ended funding for the survey, and the US Forest Service was forced to lay off key staff and terminate the program. 

Widening cooperation to address the megafire crisis

Ecologists have long known that many Indigenous Tribes/nations have been using fire for millennia, managing vegetation to enhance forage for deer, keeping forests relatively open to facilitate hunting, and to promote the growth of plants useful for food, dye, medicine, ceremonies and weaving. Finally, staff at public agencies have begun to realize the value of this Indigenous knowledge and to seek opportunities for collaboration.

Although the forest management vocabularies of Tribes and agency staff are quite different, and distrust on the Tribal side is deep (with good reason), both sides are discovering the benefits of working together. The experience of the Yurok and Karuk tribes in working with the US Forest Service using prescribed fire as a vegetation management tool is a good example.

Of course, the best ways to address wildfires are to stop burning fossil fuels, hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the damages their products have caused, restore funding and create new investments into wildfire research and prevention, and allow the US to proceed on a trajectory toward clean, renewable energy and sustainable land management. With the Trump administration working against these goals, we’re in for a long summer of dangerous wildfires. You can help by asking your member of Congress to prevent the restructuring of the US Forest Service, to keep intact this agency’s crucial insights on wildfire prevention. And follow the advice of your local agencies and officials if you live in a wildfire-prone area.

Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a new, interactive tool that shows the number of attacks on science and potential scientific integrity violations committed by the second Trump administration. UCS has documented a shocking 576 attacks and 188 potential scientific integrity violations between January 20, 2025 and June 29, 2026.

The Attacks on Science Tracker is a transparent, fully accessible analytical platform backed by a rigorous methodology. It acts as a public record of elected officials politicizing federal science, from the start of the second Trump administration into perpetuity. And it vividly illustrates not just how elected and political officials attack federal science, but how it affects all of us—undermining the science, including climate science and medical information, that we need to stay safe and healthy.  It also shows how many of these attacks could be prevented by passing the Scientific Integrity Act.

Introducing the Attacks on Science Tracker

The UCS Attacks on Science Tracker is the culmination of an effort I’ve led over the past several months (with the help from an entire village worth of people!) to evolve the Center for Science and Democracy’s methodology to track attacks on science. We undertook this effort in response to the second Trump administration’s ferocious and systemic attack on federal scientific systems and on our democracy. 

The Center has been tracking attacks on science and advocating for scientific integrity protections since 2001, and this work continues more than two decades later through research, community organizing and outreach, and policy advocacy. The Tracker and its methodology were created to support all these avenues of work within and outside of UCS.

This means that anyone who cares about science can take advantage of the tool’s interactive features, robust data, and transparent methodology to hold elected officials accountable, document harms from the past into the future, and advocate for evidence-informed policy and scientific integrity protections. These are all necessary for a healthy and functioning democracy, one that exists to protect all its people.

We need the Scientific Integrity Act

Scientific integrity protections, in particular, are critical, because they help keep science independent from political, corporate, and financial influence. These policies help federal scientists conduct and communicate their scientific work about toxic chemicals, vaccine safety, climate change, and other topics free from the threat of alteration, suppression, or censorship. With independent science, all of us—the public and decisionmakers—can hear the full story, and can make both policy and personal decisions based on the best available science.

A major feature of the new Attacks on Science Tracker and its methodology is that it identifies which of the documented attacks constitute potential scientific integrity violations. Anybody can use this data and interactive visualizations to advocate for scientific integrity protections and the passing of the Scientific Integrity Act.

Not every attack on science is a scientific integrity violation, but these concepts are inherently linked. Think of “attacks on science” as a broader umbrella term that encompasses all the various ways that elected and political officials politicize science.

In the recently released Attacks on Science Tracker, we categorize attacks on science into 11 differenttypes of attacks to contextualize how officials politically interfere with science.

Passing and enforcing the Scientific Integrity Act would have helped to prevent about a third of the total number of attacks on science we’ve documented since January 20, 2025. That’s almost 190 instances of political interference that have implicated climate science, equity, the environment, and health and safety.

How we categorize attacks

In our data, potential scientific integrity violations are specific types of attacks on science. We chose these types of attacks on science based on the most current text of the Scientific Integrity Act. The bill doesn’t explicitly define scientific integrity violations, but does list several examples of the types of political interference (like censorship) the bill would help prevent.

We use the bill text as a metric for which attack types to classify as potential scientific integrity violations. However, there may be potential discrepancies between our attack type definitions and what is considered a scientific integrity violation based on current bill text. Thus, our potential scientific integrity violation data should be used for informational purposes, not treated as the final determination of the presence of a scientific integrity violation.

Based on the most current bill text, we classify the following five (out of 11) of our attack on science types as potential scientific integrity violations. We’ve seen the Trump administration commit many examples of each since inauguration, and these attacks come at the expense of all of us, by undermining the science and science-based policies we depend on.

Altering Study Results: This variable captures when elected or political officials edit, misrepresent, or manipulate a federal (or federally funded) scientific study. Between January 20, 2025 and June 29, 2026, the Attacks on Science Tracker has documented 38 of these types of potential scientific integrity violations. As an example, the Trump administration altered over 100 federal datasets related to public health and safety to align with its anti-science and anti-trans executive orders. In another incident, a political official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence urged analysts to redo an analysis because its results conflicted with the White House’s policy priorities.

Changing the results of a study or the data that informs them is blatant politicization and could ultimately call the reliability and accuracy of the study into question. Trusting this information and making informed personal and policy decisions becomes much harder to do in the short term. In the long term, this can change the scientific record on many different topics and sideline the ability for future researchers to assess the best-available science when conducting new studies.

Censorship: This represents when elected or political officials stop or control federal scientists’ public communication. There are 26 censorship attacks recorded in the Attacks on Science Tracker, encompassing various instances when federal agencies and officials have instituted additional political review of projects before they’re published in peer-reviewed journals, stymied communication and materials related to the administration’s prohibited topics, and halted all external health agency communication shortly after President Trump’s second inauguration.

When their communications and messaging are restricted or halted, federal scientists may not be able to relay accurate and important scientific information, either in a timely manner or at all. This interference is especially concerning when the restricted information is about public health, like emerging infectious diseases or cancer treatments and diagnoses.

Data Accessibility: This variable captures when elected or political officials eliminate federal data or scientifically informed information or make it less accessible to the public. We documented 58 data accessibility attacks in the Tracker as of June 29, 2026. The administration’s efforts to scrub federal websites and scientific guidance that includes any mention of transgender, non-binary, and intersex people is a prime example of this type of attack. But there have been several others that have unfolded since, including when the Environmental Protection Agency removed materials from their website that drew connections between human actions and climate change.

Removing taxpayer-funded scientific information from federal websites like this alters the critical information researchers, decision-makers, and entire communities need. And suppressing the availability of information that goes against the administration’s priorities can sow doubt in established scientific facts.

Data Collection: This encompasses instances where elected or political officials interfere with or stop the data collection of a scientific study. There are 87 such attacks in the Attacks on Science Tracker, including an incident where the Trump administration, using explicit political language, canceled ongoing research that would help determine the safety of pipelines that transport hazardous materials to the environment and nearby communities. In another incident, the administration canceled an annual survey that helped assess the state of food insecurity in the US, claiming it had become “politicized”.

Looking at this type of attack, I often think of the popular adage: “only what gets measured gets managed.” Halting data collection makes it difficult for the government to assess the true scope of any given topic and provide the necessary resources and support in response. Refusing to see a problem can be an excuse for simply declining to address it at all. And in the case of canceling ongoing studies—or studies that have already used federal resources and compiled data—it’s simply wasteful.

Restrictions from Professional Engagement: This refers to incidents where elected or political officials cancel federally sponsored research events, bar federal scientists from attending such events, or investigate scientists for their involvement in such events. 20 of these types of attacks are documented in the Attacks on Science Tracker. As soon as the first week after President Trump returned to office in January 2025, all travel and grant review panels were paused indefinitely in federal health agencies and at the National Science Foundation. And during a time of increased bird flu infections and uncertainty of how it could spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered the National Academy of Sciences to cancel a workshop that was meant to provide guidance to medical professionals and farmers on best practices for protecting themselves against infection.

This type of attack has far-reaching and, perhaps, less visible consequences. Pausing grant review panels indefinitely halted the ability for federal agencies to review and disseminate federal research grant applications, throwing people’s projects, jobs, and entire careers into jeopardy. And preventing federal involvement in conferences and workshops can prevent collaboration among resources or undermine the timely dissemination of critical information needed to help communities navigate natural disasters and keep people safe from emerging diseases.

We’re not just watching—we’re pushing back

The Attacks on Science Tracker provides unique and robust documentation of political interference in federal science and presents many opportunities for people to advocate for evidence-informed policies and scientific integrity protections. This is the type of advocacy that recently brought the Scientific Integrity Act back to the Senate for the first time in seven years. You can help us keep the momentum going by:

• Getting acquainted with the Attacks on Science Tracker and its many interactive features. UCS is hosting a webinar tomorrow, on July 1 (4-5p ET), in support of efforts to protect federal science. During the webinar, I’ll introduce the audience to the Tracker and walk through some examples of how it can be used to advocate for scientific integrity protections, and my colleagues will provide an update on the Scientific Integrity Act. Join us!
• Urge your Congresspeople to co-sponsor the Scientific Integrity Act, which can help prevent the very types of attacks I laid out here. Use this easy link to contact your Representatives in the House, and this link to contact your Senators.
• Spread the word about the Tracker by sharing our posts on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
• And stay up to date on UCS’s other advocacy actions by regularly checking our website.

Unfortunately, the FEMA Review Council report misses the moment we’re in. We’re facing triple crises: the fossil-fueled impacts of climate change are worsening disasters, which are colliding with the affordable housing shortage and day-to-day affordability challenges people are facing, as well as the harms caused by Trump’s authoritarian government.

Admittedly, this version of the council’s report is an improvement to the disastrous draft leaked back in December, led by former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem. However, if implemented, this report’s recommendations would make drastic changes to disaster aid (both public and individual assistance) leaving communities, especially lower income disaster survivors, with fewer resources to recover. The recommendations also would: push the privatization of federal flood insurance, place more responsibilities—such as trainings—onto state, local, tribal and territorial governments (SLTTs) and “rebalance” FEMA’s workforce, ultimately reducing staff even more. Most of the recommendations in the report would require congressional action to be implemented—and Congress should make sure that never happens!

UCS opposes FEMA Review Council report’s ten recommendations which, if implemented, would continue the Trump administration’s harmful plan to place the extraordinary burden of responding to disasters onto the shoulders of SLTTs while leaving the most vulnerable more exposed to harms from disasters with fewer resources. FEMA was established to coordinate and support SLTTs, not to recreate 56 different response and training entities.

As written, the recommendations have numerous flaws and contradictions and would exacerbate inequities faced by households and communities with fewer resources, including many communities of color and Tribal communities.  

I submitted a letter to the council on behalf of UCS, criticizing the council’s omission of critical science-based context like climate change which heightens dangers facing the US. You can read UCS’s full set of comments here, and below is a brief summary.

Climate change risk, administration’s FEMA cuts ignored

The first problem with the report is its failure to acknowledge climate change-related risks and impacts or the need to invest in pre-disaster mitigation and adaptation. This year (as of March 31, 2026), there have been 5 extreme weather and climate disasters that each met or exceeded one billion dollars with a loss of 176 lives and a total economic cost of $12.4 billion. These losses come on the heels of years of record-breaking climate impacts that fossil-fueled climate change had a role in worsening. Climate change:

• Increased the strength of Hurricane Erin (August of 2025) from a category 4 to a category 5 storm, increased windspeed by 10mph, and warmed the water temperature in the path of the hurricane by 1.2°C.  
• Increased Hurricane Helene’s (September 2025) windspeed by 10 mph, made the waters over which it passed 1.2°C warmer and made the 20-30 inches of rainfall at least 10% heavier.
• Made the heatwave in mid-July of 2025 at least three times more likely for nearly half of the US population and the extensive mid-March heat wave this year three to five times more likely.
• Increased the Fire Weather Index an estimated 6% for the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires (Palisades and Eaton wildfires) and made the wildfires 35% more probable.

The council members wrote the final recommendations without regard to these harsh realities or the Trump Administration’s ongoing dismantling of FEMA. The chaos and consequences of the last eighteen months should have informed the final recommendations on the future of FEMA given the implications of the numerous destructive actions by President Trump, former DHS Secretary Noem, and three former Senior Officials Performing the Duties of the Administrator (SOPDA).

These destructive actions have included:

• Reducing FEMA’s workforce by one-third, including a significant loss of senior expertise
• Delaying and politicizing disaster assistance
• Cancelling grant programs (only to have them brought back through litigation)
• Canceling FEMA’s national and technical advisory committees
• Establishing a work environment based on fear and retaliation, and
• Slow-walking or withholding of Congressionally appropriated funds, among others.

Trump’s hand-picked council embraced disinformation

You may recall that President Trump established the 12-member FEMA Review Council in January of last year by executive order to develop this final report. The council held three publicly noticed meetings and had a series of drama filled moments and delays, including the leaked December 11, 2025 draft, last-minute cancellation of a key meeting, and the President’s extension of the council (until ten days after the final report is submitted to the president or May 29, whichever came first).

The council released the final report at their last public meeting on May 7. True to form, the council only opened the Federal Register for public comments just one week prior to the final FEMA Review Council meeting, again allowing insufficient time for meaningful input. There were 148 public comments submitted by the June 8, 2026 deadline.

There were many logistical issues regarding the council that ensured its insular vision and lack of policy specifics including the fact that:

1. The small ten-member board (not counting the board chairs DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth) lacked diversity;
2. It disincentivized meaningful public input by misaligned timelines;
3. The council violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act which requires all meetings to be publicly noticed and the proceedings documented; and
4. It embraced disinformation in the final report multiple times.

Specifically, the council spoke to how the recommendations and report messaging aligned with its own survey results, but a review of that survey in the report’s addendum demonstrates respondents’ support for a strong FEMA that supports SLTTs, the need to invest in pre-disaster mitigation, and the need for funding to help SLTTs, among others. This is not simply a contradiction between recommendations and survey results, it’s a misrepresentation of the survey results.

FEMA, Congress shouldn’t implement council’s recommendations

The next steps regarding the implementation of the FEMA Review Council report are unclear. As mentioned above, one key thing to recognize is that most of the report recommendations require congressional action.

Many of us who attended the Association of State Floodplain Managers conference think FEMA will try to implement as much as it can under its likely new administrator, Cameron Hamilton (yes, the same person President Trump fired last year, now nominated to lead the agency). During the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs confirmation hearing, Senators grilled Cameron Hamilton on the politicization of disaster assistance among other issues. Nevertheless, by all estimates he will be confirmed as the first FEMA administrator after President Trump’s 16 months in office and four SOPDA’s or temporary administrators.

It’ll be bad news for the nation and FEMA if Cameron Hamilton moves forward with implementing the parts of the report he thinks he can without Congressional action. It’ll mean:

• Fewer disaster declarations even as the harms of extreme weather and climate-fueled disasters mount;
• Less disaster assistance for disaster survivors with fewer resources and more assistance to wealthier communities;
• More unfunded responsibilities shifted to SLTTs for training, response, and recovery;
• Gutted FEMA workforce; and
• Fewer resources directed to pre-disaster mitigation.

As disaster and emergency management expert Dr. Samantha Montano summarized, sadly the report is a political exercise, gets many things wrong and is not a vision for a more “effective, efficient, and equitable” emergency management system. If you really want to dig into the details of why this is, check out her excellent FEMA Review Council Report Analysis.

Legitimate ways get your voice heard to modernize FEMA

The FEMA Review Council was not a legitimate process for public input, and its recommendations are a far cry from what the nation needs. My hope is that the report will be completely ignored by the likely future FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton and Congress.

Speaking of Congress, the House passed out of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure the “Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act of 2025” or the FEMA Act on September 3, 2025, by an overwhelming vote of 57 to 3. The bill now has 83 co-sponsors. While this bill isn’t perfect (no bill really is), it has many good pieces for example it would:

• Return FEMA to a cabinet level agency;
• Increase length of assistance available to disaster survivors;
• Improve accessibility to disaster assistance by requiring the development of a unified disaster assistance application; and
• Advance transparency by requiring the development of an Individual Assistance dashboard.

The Senate has yet to introduce a companion bill.

Additionally, we need to keep track of FEMA’s budget and ensure Congress is supplementing the Disaster Relief Fund. We’re also in Danger Season, the time of year between May and October when extreme weather in North America becomes most intense and frequent, with heat, flooding, wildfires, drought, and hurricanes posing the highest risk. While it’s projected to be a slightly lower than normal Atlantic Hurricane season, just one hurricane making landfall would be disastrous, especially after a year and a half long assault on FEMA and unqualified leadership at the helm.

You can take action now and: Tell Congress: Stop Trump’s Dismantling of FEMA and Disaster Relief.

The August congressional recess is an excellent opportunity to speak to your members of Congress when they are back in state or in district on the need to fortify FEMA and assistance to disaster survivors, not knock them down. UCS has a great August Congressional Resource Action Toolkit to assist you with how to reach out to your legislators.

Reflecting on 250 years

As I prepare for the trip to this famed American tourist destination and as we approach the 250^th anniversary of American independence, I’ve been thinking about our country’s experiment with democracy and how to articulate it to my kids. The founders didn’t know how the bold new project they started would turn out. Democracy, separating church and state, insisting on the equality of all—these weren’t what most nations were based on in 1776. (Although, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in what’s now called upstate New York is recognized as one of the earliest participatory democracies on Earth and its constitution is believed to have been the model for the American Constitution.) And the founders didn’t get it all right, of course: inequality of women, enslaved people, and subjugation of Indigenous Peoples, for starters.

While we’ve made significant progress since the days of our nation’s founders, many societal inequities persist, and indeed, we are now backsliding on democracy, science, civil rights, and more, as we stare down elevated threats to our long-celebrated system of government from a president with no interest in respecting it. The Trump administration has been making a mockery of our Constitution, disregarding the rule of law, and dismantling the critical checks and balances we all rely on.

Science and democracy are interconnected

The US science enterprise is a critical part of those checks and balances and a foundation of our democratic system. It is federal statistical agencies that collect and share reliable data and analysis on our economy, our health and our safety; it is federal scientists that help ensure science and research is conducted and used with integrity, and speak up when it is misused; and it is federal agencies that hold true to their missions to use science to advance public health, safety, security, and opportunity. 

Unfortunately, science—and the critical role it plays in our democracy—has not been spared from the administration’s path of destruction. In a new tool released this week from the Union of Concerned Scientists, we find that between January 20, 2025, and May 30, 2026, the Trump administration carried out a staggering 574 attacks on science, including efforts to politicize research funding, fire or sideline federal scientific experts, censor scientific communications, weaken scientific integrity protections, and place political appointees and advisors with records of promoting misinformation or anti-science views into decision-making positions.

These attacks on science undermine the government’s ability to make evidence-based decisions that protect our health and safety. They reduce transparency and make it more difficult to hold the administration accountable for its actions. And they represent a dire threat to the future progress of our democracy.

A future for all of us

So how should we mark the nation’s 250^th in all its complexity? And what should I tell my kids about how they should feel about it? I think back to my scientific training. Scientists don’t start research projects with the outcomes in mind (at least, they shouldn’t), and when they make errors in their process, or end up with unexpected results, they don’t give up. Likewise, the US is a grand experiment well worth our blood, sweat, and tears to keep refining and keep improving.

Next month, I want my kids to stare in awe at Niagara Falls. I want them to understand our nation’s history in all its messiness. As they grow older, I want them to use their talents to help make our country and the world better.

The American project has never been perfect but we must all commit to keep it moving forward. To stand up for what’s right. To help those in need. To continue to strive for something more. This is the America all our kids deserve and I won’t stop fighting for it.

It’s been one year since the White House’s Office of Science Technology and Policy (OSTP) published guidelines for agencies to institute President Trump’s “Restoring Gold Standard Science” executive order. In the past year, federal agencies have invoked this amorphous and highly discretionary “gold standard” as justification for removing scientific information from public access, sowing doubt in established science, and using political preference to dictate the fate of research findings. Agencies have also leaned on “gold standard science” to dismiss scientific expertise, disband federal science offices and advisory boards, and consolidate research under political appointees, all of which is likely to accelerate the suppression and misrepresentation of science to the public. 

The Trump administration has also engaged in unprecedented information suppression across taxpayer-funded federal websites. These sites are the primary means of communication between the federal government and the public, and the information they present influences peoples’ understanding and actions. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), where we work, has documented over 1,000 instances of information suppression by the second Trump administration, spanning information on environmental justice, climate change, public health, clean energy, and more. Here, we trace the administration’s use of “gold standard science” across agency websites to remove, undermine, and manipulate scientific information for the public, and to commandeer scientific oversight in service of an unbridled deregulatory agenda.

Scaling back and censoring science

For 15 years, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s flagship climate science communication platform, climate.gov, provided authoritative, accurate, and accessible information about climate change to the public and policymakers. However, in June 2025 NOAA abruptly discontinued climate.gov and redirected users to noaa.gov/climate, with a banner stating: “In compliance with Executive Order 14303 (“Restoring Gold Standard Science”)… you have been redirected to NOAA.gov.”

The Trump administration hasn’t provided any information about how or what part of “gold standard science” climate.gov violated. Science integrity scholar Jacob Carter details how climate.gov actually epitomized the longstanding scientific values of transparency, reproducibility, and peer review that are cited in the executive order. Rather than encouraging high quality science, the Trump administration is disingenuously invoking “gold standard science” as a means to suppress it.

Sowing doubt in science

Under the guise of scientific rigor, the Trump administration is pushing the false narrative that the “gold standard” for science is absolute certainty, which not only dismisses the care and specificity scientists use to interpret their findings, but also holds scientific research to unattainable standards. Comparing real scientific findings to unrealistic expectations of certainty would allow the administration to rebuke nearly every scientific conclusion ever made. 

A striking example of the Trump administration invoking “gold standard science” to decrease confidence in rigorous research can be found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. Since at least 2024, the CDC’s webpage for “Autism and Vaccines” has stated clearly that vaccines do not cause autism, and prior to being sworn in as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS, which contains CDC), Robert F Kennedy, Jr. committed to not remove this language. However, since November 2025, the page’s header “Vaccines do not Cause Autism” has been surrounded by statements that undermine it. The page reads, “…the statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim. Scientific studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines contribute to the development of autism.” The page goes on to call into question epidemiological evidence because it “cannot prove causality.” 

These statements are all egregiously misleading; the conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism is based on decades of rigorous scientific research. Because actual high-quality research requires measured and nuanced hypothesis testing and interpretation, studies do not definitively “prove” or “rule out the possibility” of all possible factors; they build a body of evidence and carefully discern findings. For more than half a century, epidemiologists have agreed on and iteratively refined guidelines for how to evaluate evidence to infer causation, which is at the heart of epidemiology as a field of study. To claim that it is not “evidence-based” to state that “vaccines do not cause autism” is a gross misrepresentation of the scientific record.

Political determinants of science

The Trump administration also has used “gold standard science” as a means to select which science to lift up, and which to dismiss. For example, in March 2026 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed to significantly weaken ethylene oxide (EtO) regulations “to ensure consistency with the law and gold standard science.” In a fact sheet about proposed EtO regulation changes, the EPA describes the scientific evidence showing the highly toxic nature of EtO as “outdated,” and in a section titled “Trump EPA’s Commitment to Gold Standard Science,” it implies that new epidemiological studies discredit the studies underpinning the Biden EPA’s strict regulations on EtO. 

However, what goes unsaid is that the handful of newer studies that suggest EtO is less toxic were conducted by chemical industry consultants and funded by the American Chemistry Council, Vantage Specialty Chemicals, and the opaquely funded Center for Truth in Science. Many other recent studies affirm EtO as a carcinogen, and still more shed light on its mechanisms of toxicity. This misrepresentation of the scientific record on EtO coincided with pervasive information suppression about the issue. EDGI documented the removal of more than 60 federal webpages related to EtO, which housed information about its toxicity, its risk to communities, EPA’s regulation of the chemical, and more. 

The Trump administration’s EPA again espoused “gold standard science” to dismiss scientific findings about the toxicity of formaldehyde, and hand-pick statements and industry-funded studies to weaken formaldehyde regulations. In a hypocritical move, the EPA describes its efforts to consider the peer review record of the existing formaldehyde risk evaluation to conclude that it needed to develop a new risk calculation, while simultaneously asserting that peer review is not necessary for its new draft risk calculation.The Trump administration is leveraging its uncurtailed discretion to dismiss and discount valid research and usher in politically motivated science.

Instituting political interference

These patterns of suppressing and manipulating scientific information are likely to escalate as the Trump administration’s extensive reorganization of federal science offices and boards take effect. In February 2026, the EPA dissolved its Office of Research and Development (ORD), the agency’s main research arm. EPA spokesperson Carolyn Holran stated it was a “science-centered decision” that was “based on gold-standard science.” This doublespeak betrays the reality of a move that undermines the EPA’s role as an independent scientific authority. ORD was replaced with the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES), with roughly 1,200 fewer employees than ORD. While ORD was an independent office, OASES is housed under political appointees, within the Office of the Administrator. An EPA memo about OASES’ “Science Actions and Deliverables” states that scientific research and projects “must be supported by appropriate political leadership,” a statement that corroborates many experts’ concerns about an uptick in political interference in agency science under the banner of “gold standard science.” 

The Trump administration has significantly reduced independent scientific oversight at federal agencies as well. An analysis by Nature reveals that the administration has dissolved over 100 science advisory committees, groups of independent subject matter experts tasked with supporting agency decision-making with the best available science. The administration has also reduced the transparency and independence of the committees that remain. The Department of Energy (DOE) has been significantly targeted, for example, through shuttering its subject-area scientific advisory committees and centralizing them into a single Science Advisory Committee. A news release by the agency cites “gold standard science” as the impetus for the change and frames it as a stride toward evidence-based decisionmaking. However, the move in fact weakens scientific oversight by transferring specific expertise-based input to a more general board and reducing scientific advisory board members from around 150 to 22. Gesturing to “gold standard science,” the DOE is reducing critical oversight on the science the agency produces and relies upon for its work.

The entrenchment of ignorance

By removing scientific research findings, sowing doubt in established science, and manipulating the scientific record in accordance with its political agenda, the administration is weaponizing “gold standard science” to undermine credible science now and into the future. While these methods have largely been discretionary, piecemeal, and inconsistent, the problem becomes more deeply embedded in our governance systems as the administration dismisses and disbands scientific expertise and establishes political approval as a prerequisite for science across the government. 

Perhaps most concerning of all, a recent proposed rule by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) threatens to codify attacks on science by granting political appointees power to reject science not in line with the administration’s priorities.

We are all producers and consumers of evidence-based scientific information, and we all lose when it’s deprioritized and politicized. This proposed rule is open for public comment until July 13, and we encourage you to write a comment to help defend high-quality, independent science and research. The Trump administration’s “gold standard science” undermines and suppresses the real, robust science that forms the foundation of our lives. It is imperative to protect the science that protects us. 

Unfortunately, things got worse. Much, much worse.

In April, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Louisiana v. Callais. Constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky described the ruling as making Section 2 of the VRA “all but a dead letter.” Over 60 years of voter protection were stripped away. This was not a sudden decision but the result of decades of cases slowly dismantling voting protections. Let’s talk about what this means and what comes next.

What happened to the VRA

Let’s start by looking at Shelby County v. Holder, which I discussed in detail in my initial blog post. After that ruling, states could change voting laws without federal preclearance, opening the door to a wave of laws targeting communities in states with histories of Jim Crow-era discrimination. Callais delivered the final blow. Louisiana v Callais revolved around a Louisiana congressional map drawn to give Black voters meaningful representation (a map that itself was the result from a previous VRA-related court case, Robinson v Landry). In his Callais majority opinion, Justice Alito held that states cannot use race as the main factor in drawing districts, even when doing so is required to comply with Section 2 of the VRA. The court ruled that only proof of intentional racial discrimination, not disparate impact, would be a violation. It should be noted, as Justice Kagan noted in her dissent, proving discriminatory intent is “almost always impossible” since lawmakers rarely state their motives so explicitly. In fact, Congress amended the VRA in 1982 to clarify that discriminatory results, not just intent, should be considered.

The consequences of this ruling will be severe.

The history that led us here

Some state legislatures have already begun to redraw district maps and eliminate majority-minority districts free of the need for federal approval. Black voters’ influence can be reduced by breaking up communities and spreading their votes across multiple districts. Combined with the Court’s 2019 ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause, which put partisan gerrymandering beyond federal court review, state legislatures now have nearly unlimited freedom to redraw maps for electoral advantage. Justice Alito’s decision actually encourages this, with his claims that states have the “prerogative to draw districts…to achieve partisan advantage,” and that maps designed for partisan outcomes are “constitutionally permissible” and “legitimate goals.” As Chemerinsky wrote, “If any one of these cases had come out differently, Louisiana v. Callais would not matter.”

The Callais ruling is not a case of the system failing to work as intended. Our nation was founded on unequal access, and while the VRA still exists, the Callais decision reduced what was once a beacon of hope to a shadow of its former self, realigning our voter laws with the US’s long history of disenfranchisement. Our winner-take-all voting system was always prone to this type of manipulation. This was merely the event that sent an already teetering system over the edge.

In our current system, the candidate winning the most votes wins 100% of that district. All others receive nothing. If your preferred candidate loses, you will have no one you voted for representing you, even if your candidate received 49% of the vote. This structural flaw is what makes gerrymandering so devastating. By breaking up majority-minority districts and spreading those voters across multiple districts, their votes and voice are effectively silenced. After Callais, partisan actors in the states can carry out this effort with almost no legal risk.

There is a systemic solution: Proportional Representation

In my career, I have spent years working on voting rights and democracy issues. More often than not, we were playing defense against the latest attack, relying on the VRA to protect multi-racial democracy. That status quo is gone. The Callais decision demands bigger thinking.

That bigger thinking should include adopting proportional representation (PR), which has been proposed for years by organizations like FairVote, Protect Democracy, and New America. Under PR, districts would have several seats and parties would obtain seats based on their share of the vote. If Republicans received a third of the votes, they get a third of the seats. Voters would generally end up with at least one representative who actually shares their values. PR is already being used in a few parts of the U.S., including Portland, Oregon for all city officials; Cambridge, Massachusetts for its city council; and Minneapolis, Minnesota and Eastpointe, Michigan for local offices. By electing multiple officials from a district, PR is a system that increases fairness and makes it far more difficult, if not impossible, to gerrymander voters out of their voice.

It is worth noting that, across the globe, PR is the dominant electoral system, while the US’s “first past the post,” winner-take-all system has long been the exception. Our democratic process once made our nation unique, but the structures we operate within have instead led to deep and entrenched in inequality across racial and economic levels.

Protect Democracy found that, with lower thresholds to win each seat, the tactics that make gerrymandering effective under the winner-take-all system stop working. And as Eastpointe, Michigan and Newburgh, New York found, minority representation improves too, without requiring race-conscious line-drawing that Justice Alito claimed, in his Callais opinion, made the Louisiana map unconstitutional. Research also shows PR reduces polarization by producing multi-party coalitions and increases community engagement by making more elections genuinely competitive. It’s also worth noting that PR tends to encourage more political parties and greater competition, ultimately leading to less two-sided polarization and more opportunity for compromise.

Science, facts, and electoral reform

In 2022, over 200 political scientists wrote in a letter to Congress that our winner-take-all system “is fundamentally broken.” Political sociologist Larry Diamond wrote that winner-take-all systems are particularly ill-suited to countries with “deep ethnic, regional, religious, or other emotional and polarizing divisions.” Those observations describe where we are today. Despite what Justice Alito insists, race and partisanship are closely connected in the U.S.

Research has found that countries that use proportional representation tend to elect legislatures that better reflect their constituencies’ values, and are more likely to adopt policies that the majority of citizens want. Additionally, studies show that these governments are more likely to adopt stronger environmental protections and to invest more in education and infrastructure, as summarized by Fair Vote Canada in their review of research on proportional representation’s outcomes.

None of those arguments are partisan. In fact, they point to structural problems that, if addressed, would benefit all Americans. I have sat through enough meetings about how to patch the VRA after another protection is stripped away. The real question we should be asking is how to build a voting system that works for everyone.

What we can do

I won’t sugar coat the situation. All of this is bad.

The names behind the VRA’s passage—including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Clarence Mitchell Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Hosea Williams, along with other known and unknown names—worked countless hours and risked their lives for those protections. The disproportionate racial impact of this decision will be real and lasting. But this is not the time to be or feel hopeless. Now more than ever is the time for what the late, great John Lewis called “good trouble.”

First, efforts to restore the Voting Rights Act must continue with renewed intensity. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 14) must stay on the agenda, pass both chambers, and be enacted.

Second, we should support state and local proportional representation efforts. As I noted earlier, several cities have already implemented ranked-choice voting and other reforms. These efforts deserve renewed attention in the wake of the Callais decision.

Third, scientists and researchers need to stay engaged. Data, evidence, and public analysis of how maps and electoral rules affect real communities are essential accountability tools. Even when courts won’t act, the public needs to understand what is happening and why. Science also has a role to play in supporting the transition to proportional representation. There are different approaches that can advance a more proportional system, and communities deserve to have a say in which system is adopted. That is why UCS is doing this work in collaboration and partnership with democracy experts and local communities. Through statistical modeling and other research methods, scientists can demonstrate the effectiveness of different approaches that communities can consider based on their local values and needs.

This week marks Juneteenth, a long-running celebration of Black liberation and Black participation in public life. We can’t let the shadow of decisions like Callais halt the progress we’ve made.

This road forward will not be easy, but protecting democracy, working for civil rights and fighting against authoritarianism never is. The VRA’s passage in 1965 because millions of Americans refused to accept an inequitable and unequal democracy. That is still the standard we are fighting for, and it is still worth fighting for.

It feels like every time I check the news, there’s another hindrance to the fight for climate justice. Policy rollbacks, hard won protections quietly being dismantled, fossil fuel executives sliding into key government positions, clean energy projects stalled—sometimes it’s hard not to wonder if we’re moving backward when we so desperately need to move forward.  

And it’s easy to believe these problems are too big to fix—which is exactly how doomerism takes hold. Doomerism, or the belief that we’re past the point of no return, has gained traction in recent years as people grapple with the scale of the climate crisis. But as environmental researcher and data scientist Dr. Hannah Ritchie reminds us, it’s not the full picture. 

In her Big Think video, Ritchie reflects on how she, too, once felt a sense of hopelessness. But after stepping back and examining the data, she realized something powerful: humanity has tackled and solved massive environmental challenges.

Take the ozone layer, for instance—once on the brink of collapse due to harmful CFCs, it was saved through global cooperation under the Montreal Protocol. Acid rain in the 1970s and 80s? Tackled by reducing sulfur dioxide emissions through policies like the Clean Air Act, which allowed ecosystems to recover. Even leaded gasoline, once a major pollutant, got phased out—globally—improving air quality and reduced health risks, especially for children. The throughline to these stories is clear: when people refuse to look away from a crisis—and instead organize, cooperate, and demand action—real change becomes possible. 

Lessons from history: humanity’s energy transitions 

These achievements are part of a long history of humanity adapting to and solving existential environmental challenge. One of the most profound examples lies in our energy transitions. Across centuries, humanity has responded to environmental, economic, and societal pressures by reimagining how we power ourselves. These transitions weren’t smooth, fast, or universally embraced—but they happened. And they hold lessons for us today. 

For much of human history, wood was our primary energy source. It was accessible, familiar, and deeply tied to daily life. But as populations grew and forests became depleted, societies were forced to innovate. By the 18^th century, coal emerged, not because it was preferred, but because it became necessary.  

Coal’s rise wasn’t instant. The transition began in the early 1700s, but coal didn’t surpass wood as the dominant fuel until around 1900. Over those two centuries it reshaped economies and infrastructure, powering the Industrial Revolution amid fierce debates about labor, pollution, and the proper role of government in managing public resources.  

Those debates weren’t abstract. In 1902, over 140,000 coal miners walked off the job, demanding safer conditions and fair pay, bringing the nation’s energy supply to the brink during winter. The strike became a turning point—forcing the federal government to intervene not to break the workers, but to broker a resolution, signaling a shift in how power, labor, and public need would be negotiated in the energy system. 

Then, in the 20th century, oil and natural gas began to overtake coal. This shift unfolded against a backdrop of global political change: wars, globalization, the rise of consumerism, and Cold War energy politics. Though oil was commercially produced in the 1800s, it wasn’t until the 1960s that it officially surpassed coal as the world’s primary energy source, a transition that took nearly a century.  

None of these shifts were purely technical. Over time, they became shaped by waves of public pressure, like miners demanding safer conditions, communities pushing back against pollution, and reformers calling for government oversight of powerful industries. Energy systems didn’t change simply because new fuels appeared. They change because people kept demanding something better than what existed.  

Today, we stand in the midst of another energy revolution: the global shift from fossil fuels to clean energy. And this time, the stakes are even higher.  

Because unlike past transitions, this one isn’t just about resource depletion, human health impacts, and economic advantage: it’s about survival. The science is unequivocal: burning fossil fuels is destabilizing our climate, intensifying wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, and floods. Communities on the frontlines–especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities—are bearing the brunt of these impacts, from respiratory illness to displacement to energy insecurity.  

We need this transition not only because renewable energy options like wind and solar are affordable and abundant, but because the continued use of fossil fuels is incompatible with a livable future. And we’re already seeing momentum.  In many ways, we’re only a few decades into this transition—but already, wind and solar have become some of the cheapest sources of electricity in the world. Electric vehicles are gaining market share rapidly across many countries. Investment is shifting and momentum is building.  

Like the transitions before it, this one is messy. It’s marked by inequity in who continues to bear the burdens of older energy systems, corporate pushback, policy rollbacks, and deep uncertainty. Change always brings anxiety—that’s human. But what we often forget is how that anxiety can be shaped, amplified, even manipulated by those with a stake in keeping things the same. The question isn’t whether change feels unsettling. It’s who gets to define what that change means—and who it’s for.  

In moments like this, despair can feel like a natural response. But it’s also a useful one for those invested in maintaining the status quo. When people believe change is impossible, they’re less likely to demand it. 

Because this transition, like those before it, is being driven by necessity and by communities refusing to be left behind.  

Energy revolutions don’t happen in a moment, they are rarely linear, never perfect, and always political. But they are possible. And they stretch across generations. And if history tells us anything, it’s that change happens not just through innovation, but through insistence—through people fighting for systems that better reflects the values and needs.  

The shifts weren’t clean arcs; they were uneven, messy, full of protest and debate and, ultimately, progress. This one will be no different. But it can be faster, fairer, and more just—if we demand it.  

The lesson and the reality 

Again and again, it wasn’t just new technologies that led the way—it was people demanding something better. 

Take the fight against acid rain. In the 1970s and ’80s, forests, lakes, and wildlife were being decimated by sulfur dioxide emissions. Grassroots groups—especially in the Northeast—raised the alarm, documented the damage, and pressured lawmakers to act. Their advocacy transformed a scientific concern into a national priority. The result? The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which created the first-ever cap-and-trade system to cut emissions. Thanks to those efforts, ecosystems that once seemed lost have rebounded. 

Or consider Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982. When officials tried to dump toxic PCB-contaminated soil in a predominantly Black, rural community, residents said no. They laid in the streets, staged nonviolent protests, and sparked a national reckoning. While the landfill went through, their resistance ignited the modern environmental justice movement and revealed—through research and lived experience—how environmental harm is too often racially and economically targeted. 

That fight echoed forward. In the 1990s, farmworkers and advocates successfully pushed to ban pesticides poisoning agricultural workers. In Flint, Michigan, residents forced a national spotlight on a water crisis that exposed deep governmental negligence and systemic racism. 

Each of these moments reinforces a deeper truth: meaningful change is rarely top-down. It starts with people—especially those most impacted—organizing, resisting, and refusing to settle for systems that harm them. 

Today’s energy transition is no different. 

What needs to be reiterated 

Each of these victories wasn’t just about government action—it was about people demanding better. These changes didn’t happen because industries or policymakers suddenly saw the light. They happened because communities organized, fought back, and refused to accept toxic air, poisoned water, or a deteriorating planet as inevitable. 

In my work at the Union of Concerned Scientists, through partnerships with community-based groups like Soulardarity in Michigan and GreenRoots in Massachusetts, we’ve worked alongside communities actively shaping the transition in real-time—pushing for policies that don’t just shift where energy comes from but also who benefits, who holds power, and who gets to decide what a sustainable future looks like. In our Let Communities Choose project, for example, we worked together to analyze what a just transition means in real economic terms—navigating tough questions around affordability, ownership, and long-term stability.  

Together, these elements can help us envision not just surviving climate change, but actively building a future that works for all of us. 

Progress doesn’t trickle down. It grows from the grassroots up. 

So, what if we get it right? 

What if in this moment—fueled by crisis, but also by care—is our chance to build something better? A future where clean energy is not only abundant, but accessible, but within reach. Where climate policy doesn’t just lower emissions, but redistributes power. Where frontline communities–often Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income—are not afterthoughts, but architects.  

As Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist, policy expert, and writer, highlights in her work What If We Get It Right?, the transition to a sustainable world needs to be rooted in justice, equity, and collective progress. It asks more of us than reducing emissions—it asks us to reimagine how society functions, and who it works for.  

Wherever you are reading this, there is an opportunity to help shape that future—one grounded not just in cleaner energy, but in fairer systems. A future where communities long burdened by pollution and disinvestment are not just included, but leading—bringing the vision, experience, and knowledge needed to build energy systems that are resilient, accountable, and rooted in care.  

However, achieving this vision requires addressing not only environmental injustices but also the economic realities of a just transition for workers in fossil fuel industries. History shows that when transitions leave workers behind, they create long-lasting social and economic scars. 

And we’re seeing this tension play out in real time. While political narratives promise a revival of industries like coal, the same communities are often facing cuts to health protections and losing critical investments meant to support their transition. What’s being offered is not a pathway forward, but the illusion of one—while the hard, necessary work of building new economic opportunities is abandoned. 

Any economic transition is difficult. It takes real investment, long-term commitment, and trust. That’s why investing in retraining, creating good jobs, and protecting workers’ rights must be central—not optional—to these transitions. By doing so, we can ensure this transition uplifts all communities. Lessons from past energy transitions remind us that while change brings opportunity, it demands careful planning and inclusive leadership to ensure no one is left behind. 

Progress doesn’t happen in silos: it’s a collective effort, supported by data, guided by community voices, and focused on equity.  

Where we are now 

The fires are growing. But so is the movement. That’s the paradox—we are living through destruction, yes, but also through determination. But this is not a story where hardship was necessary for growth. It didn’t have to be this way. The scale of loss we’re witnessing is the result of choices—made, delayed, avoided. 

The solutions aren’t future tense. They’re already being built, block by block, policy by policy, neighborhood by neighborhood. You just have to look closely. It’s your community that still shows up. That gives you reason to continue showing up, and that will show up when you’re tired. 

Which is why now, more than ever, we need storytellers and systems thinkers, data scientists and dancers, builders and believers—people who refuse to accept that change is impossible. 

Hope is a discipline 

And that’s what doomerism misses. It flattens the fight into a foregone conclusion when, in reality, the future is still being shaped by those refusing to accept the status quo. History is being made, every single day. The communities most impacted by environmental harm aren’t waiting for permission to act; they are leading, as they always have, whether or not the world is watching.  

Doomerism tells us the arc of history is fixed. But history tells us otherwise. Every community-led solar project, every climate justice bill, every story shared, and every system challenged says otherwise.  

Change doesn’t always announce itself with grand speeches or breaking news alerts. It happens in the quiet power of a courtroom victory against polluters. In neighborhoods where solar panels rise on rooftops. In workers fighting for—and winning—better wages and a just transition. Policymakers are forced to listen because the voices demanding justice are too loud to ignore.  

This revolution is rarely televised. But it’s happening. And has been occurring behind the scenes, moving us all forward.  

Doomerism tells us there’s nothing left to fight for. But that kind of resignation has never been neutral. It creates the conditions for inaction—for systems to continue unchanged, unchallenged, and unaccountable. 

The solutions to climate change are within our reach. The question is, will we allow the illusion of inevitable doom to prevail—or will we seize those solutions and build something better, together? 

People and businesses nationwide are reckoning with rapidly rising electricity costs. Last year, 80 million people struggled to afford their utility bills. At the same time, electricity demand is newly surging from the AI-driven buildout of massive data centers, threatening even higher electricity costs to come.

The need for change is clear, and so is the solution: boosting investments to deliver an affordable, reliable and clean electricity system.

By repeatedly using taxpayer dollars to bail out the coal industry, the Trump administration is instead pursuing a reckless and costly gambit that fails on all three counts. This is not the path to a better future; this is a short-sighted attempt to yoke the nation to faltering relics of the past. For this failure in vision, we all will pay the price, in higher costs, less reliable power, and a worse climate and health.

In this newest action, the administration announced plans to sink another round of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to prop up over a dozen expensive and unreliable coal plants; support the speculative development of several more; and facilitate the construction of a highly contested coal export terminal.

This comes on the heels of already attempting to force the nation’s military to run on coal-fired electricity generation, spending hundreds of millions of additional taxpayer dollars on prior subsidies for coal plant repairs,  requiring ratepayers to pay hundreds of millions of dollars and counting to keep online a handful of would-be-retired coal plants, and slashing safeguards around harmful coal plant pollution, including mercury, toxic wastewater, coal ash and carbon dioxide.

Given how much the Trump administration is asking “we the people” to pay to bail out the coal industry, it’s worth interrogating what we the people are really getting in return.

We are not getting a more affordable electricity system. Coal-fired power plants are expensive, so much so that they are routinely more costly to continue running compared to building new renewables, the overwhelmingly most cost-effective resource available. If we want a more affordable electricity system, we should be doubling down on supporting the buildout of renewable resources. By forcing the perpetuation of coal-fired power plants instead, the Trump administration is driving electricity costs up, not down.

We are not getting a more reliable electricity system. Coal-fired power plants are now the least reliable resource in our electricity system. Despite the towering cost, the administration’s subsidization of plant repairs will amount to little more than bubble gum and string. The nation’s coal fleet is old, outdated, and increasingly unsuited for a modern grid—meaning hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars sunk into propping up power plants that are doomed to obsolescence.

We are not getting a cleaner electricity system. Coal-fired power plants are heavily polluting, full stop. Repeatedly invoking “beautiful, clean coal” won’t make it so: from harmful air pollution, to toxic wastewater discharged into local waterways, to hazardous coal ash, the consequences of coal use on public health, worker health and the environment are severe. Worse, the administration is slashing even the most basic of existing polluter accountability safeguards, meaning long-fought-for gains are rapidly being erased.

So neither affordable, nor reliable, nor clean—and in reality, the full picture is even more damaging. That’s because the Trump administration is attempting to hardwire coal into the nation’s electricity system; it’s also doing everything it can to block the construction of solar and wind projects nationwide.

These resources are overwhelmingly the fastest and cheapest resources to bring online. When coupled with investments in energy efficiency, energy storage and a strategic expansion of the electricity grid, the pieces are in place to chart a real and true forward course to an affordable, reliable and cleaner electricity system.

Meanwhile, in the one way coal workers and coal communities most need support—through policies that actually reckon with the individual- and community-level implications of a rapidly evolving energy future—the Trump administration is leaving them out in the cold, abandoning worker health protections, abandoning forward-looking investments, abandoning commitments to reality in favor of cynical, empty promises of a future that will never come.

In this moment, people need leaders to provide real solutions to real challenges. This reckless, costly coal bailout, which will enrich a handful of coal executives at the expense of everyone else, unequivocally isn’t it.

Esto es particularmente importante ya que los costos de la energía se han convertido en un tema de discusión cotidiano para las familias, las empresas y los responsables de las políticas energéticas de Massachusetts. El alto costo de la energía durante uno de los inviernos más fríos en años recientes obligaron a muchas familias a mantener sus hogares a temperaturas inseguras. Una brutal tormenta de nieve dejó a oscuras a cientos de miles de hogares de Massachusetts durante varios días. Y ahora los precios del gas y el petróleo se están disparando debido a la guerra de Estados Unidos e Israel contra Irán. Todos estos acontecimientos reflejan el mismo problema: nuestro sistema energético requiere atención inmediata para que las decisiones que se tomen tengan un impacto real en la asequibilidad, la resiliencia y la confiabilidad de nuestra red eléctrica, ahora y en el futuro.

No es de extrañar que el proyecto de ley sobre la asequibilidad energética que se presentó en la Cámara de Representantes de Massachusetts y la reciente orden ejecutiva de la gobernadora Maura Healey sobre el suministro de energía se incluyera la energía solar como una solución clave para ayudar al estado a cubrir sus crecientes necesidades energéticas y  lograr que el costo de la electricidad sea más asequible. A medida que estas conversaciones avanzan, es fundamental recordar no solo el valor para el sistemas eléctrico que aportan los recursos energéticos distribuidos como los paneles solares en los techos y el almacenamiento en baterías, sino también la importancia de asegurar que los beneficios lleguen a todos los habitantes del estado, especialmente a las comunidades más vulnerables donde estas inversiones tienen un mayor impacto tanto en la asequibilidad como en la resiliencia energética.

Un nuevo informe de Applied Economics Clinic (AEC), comisionado por la Unión de Científicos Conscientes (UCS, por sus siglas en inglés), Clean Energy Group y Vote Solar, ofrece información clave para orientar los esfuerzos estatales para aprovechar el gran potencial solar y de almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental, donde viven personas racial y étnicamente diversas, de bajos ingresos y con dominio limitado del inglés. El informe Electrificación equitativa II estima el potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida (también conocida como solar distribuida (también conocida como detrás del medidor, o BTM, por sus siglas en inglés) y de la energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental. También analiza las características de las viviendas para diseñar mejor los programas a fin de facilitar la instalación de estos sistemas por parte de los usuarios finales y mapea la conexión con datos sobre el calor extremo y las cargas energéticas. El informe también ofrece información sobre las barreras y sus soluciones para desbloquear la implementación de estos sistemas en las comunidades de justicia ambiental. Este informe complementa otro reciente informe de AEC, el cual analiza de manera más amplia los retos y las oportunidades de la energía solar distribuida y los sistemas de almacenamiento energético en Massachusetts (estos términos se simplifican como “energía solar distribuida y almacenamiento energético” en este blog). Este informe se elaboró en colaboración con un comité asesor que contó con perspectivas de diferentes sectores, incluyendo organizaciones indígenas y de justicia ambiental, vivienda asequible y compañías de energía limpia, con el fin de reflejar las experiencias y prioridades de los vecindarios de justicia ambiental.

Los siguientes son algunos hallazgos clave sobre el potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento energético, así como los principales obstáculos y recomendaciones para aprovechar estos valiosos recursos exitosamente.

Potencial de energía solar y almacenamiento en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental

Los vecindarios de justicia ambiental en Massachusetts tienen un enorme potencial para implementar sistemas de energía solar distribuida. AEC calcula que el potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental de Massachusetts es de 31 gigavatios (GW) de energía solar, lo suficiente para abastecer de energía a los casi 3 millones de hogares que hay en el estado. Se estima que el potencial de los sistemas de almacenamiento energético asociados con energía solar distribuida es de 13 GW.

La activación de este recurso es clave para cumplir con los objetivos estatales de descarbonización y asequibilidad. Se prevé que la demanda pico de electricidad en Massachusetts alcanzará los 24 GW para el 2050, lo que equivale al doble de los 12 GW de demanda pico registrados en el 2020. Esto significa que el potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental es mayor que el aumento previsto de la demanda pico. Este potencial contrasta con las instalaciones a la fecha en comunidades de justicia ambiental. A pesar del éxito general que ha tenido el programa SMART al facilitar el crecimiento de la energía solar y de los sistemas de almacenamiento en Massachusetts, los datos demuestran que solo el 1 % de la capacidad solar asignada por el programa se ubica en propiedades de bajos ingresos.

Massachusetts depende en gran medida del gas fósil (también conocido como gas natural), el cual provee provee más del 65% de la generación neta de electricidad del estado. Es crucial cubrir el aumento en la demanda pico con generación limpia, dado que más del 80% de las centrales eléctricas contaminantes, con los riesgos de salud que implican, se ubican en vecindarios de justicia ambiental o a menos de una milla de ellos. 

Además, los usuarios de sistemas de energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento energético no son los únicos que se benefician al  ahorrar directamente en sus facturas de electricidad, sino que estos sistemas benefician a todos los usuarios de la red eléctrica, ya que estos recursos contribuyen a reducir la demanda pico.  Esta reducción hace que disminuya la necesidad de realizar inversiones costosas en sistemas de transmisión y distribución, logrando que se reduzcan los precios de la electricidad al por mayor.De hecho, durante un evento en el que se observaron temperaturas pico de 100°F en junio del 2025, un estudio del Acadia Center reveló que el uso de sistemas de energía solar distribuida ahorró a los consumidores de Nueva Inglaterra al menos $8,2 millones de dólares en uno de los días más costosos del año para la red eléctrica. Esos ahorros son especialmente impresionantes si se considera lo reducida que ha sido la implementación de los sistemas de energía solar distribuida en todo Massachusetts, por lo que resulta aún más atractivo aprovechar todo su potencial. 

El acceso a la energía solar distribuida puede disminuir el costo de las facturas de electricidad y reducir las cargas energéticas de los hogares.

La carga promedio de los costos de energía (es decir, el porcentaje de los ingresos del hogar que se destina al pago de la energía) en Massachusetts es de aproximadamente el 3%. Esta cifra puede ser de hasta el 10% en el caso de las poblaciones de bajos ingresos y llega hasta el 31% en ciertos vecindarios. Al analizar los vecindarios de justicia ambiental que enfrentan una carga de los costos de energía mayor al promedio estatal, los autores del estudio determinaron que existe un potencial técnico de 11,4 GW de energía solar combinada con 4,9 GW de almacenamiento en estas zonas. Por otra parte, un estudio realizado por el Laboratorio Nacional Lawrence Berkeley en el 2024 reveló que la energía solar en los techos redujo la carga promedio de los costos de energía en el 2021 del 7,7% al 6,2% para los usuarios de bajos ingresos, lo que demuestra el valor que la energía solar distribuida puede aportar para reducir los costos de energía para quienes más lo necesitan.

Los sistemas de energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento pueden mejorar la seguridad energética y apoyar la resiliencia de las comunidades. Las comunidades de justicia ambiental suelen vivir en zonas de alta densidad urbana y en vecindarios que carecen de espacios verdes, lo que las expone al efecto de la isla de calor urbana. También es más probable que estas comunidades vivan en lugares con sistemas de calefacción y aire acondicionado ineficientes, lo que supone un mayor gasto de energía para estos hogares. En este estudio, AEC concluyó que más del 90% del potencial total de energía solar distribuida y almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental se encuentra dentro de las zonas más calurosas, lo que destaca el valor que puede aportar la instalación de sistemas de energía solar en estas áreas.

Un estudio realizado en el 2025 por el Laboratorio Berkeley determinó que los hogares de ingresos bajos a moderados que cubren entre el 80% y el 100% de sus necesidades de electricidad mediante sistemas solares instalados en los techos logran reducciones significativas en sus facturas de energía. Esto permite que los residentes mantengan sus viviendas a temperaturas cómodas, especialmente cuando se enfrentan a olas de calor extremo. El acceso a la energía solar distribuida y al almacenamiento energético también puede proporcionar energía de respaldo en caso de un fallo de la red eléctrica, incluso para centros de resiliencia en centros comunitarios y refugios, permitiendo el funcionamiento de los sistemas de aire acondicionado y otros servicios esenciales durante los cortes de energía. 

Barreras que impiden aprovechar este potencial solar

Aunque el estado ofrece un conjunto de programas de energía, clima y vivienda, el potencial de la energía solar distribuida y de almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental no ha sido aprovechado en su mayoría.

El estudio reveló que las principales barreras para la implementación de estos sistemas incluyen dificultades financieras, problemas técnicos, obstáculos laborales, condiciones del mercado y falta de coordinación de los programas. La falta de incentivos para los inquilinos y propietarios de condominios requiere especial atención, ya que solamente un tercio del potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental se encuentra en viviendas unifamiliares.

El estado cuenta con objetivos energéticos claros y requisitos de abastecimiento de tecnologías específicas como la energía eólica marina, pero no existen requisiciones específicas para los recursos de energía distribuida, incluyendo los sistemas de energía solar y almacenamiento energético. Del mismo modo, la mayoría de los programas de energía limpia carecen de incentivos y metas de participación equitativa, lo que dificulta que los beneficios lleguen a quienes más los necesitan.

Soluciones para aprovechar este potencial solar

El estado tiene el mandato de garantizar la distribución equitativa de los beneficios energéticos y ambientales. Sin embargo, hasta la fecha la mayoría de las políticas y los programas estatales en materia de energía solar y almacenamiento no cuentan con disposiciones de equidad explícitas y aplicables.

Este análisis identifica un conjunto de recomendaciones para enfrentar estos desafíos, incluyendo la incorporación de opciones de financiamiento, incentivos, objetivos y fondos presupuestarios enfocados en la equidad, con el fin de resolver satisfactoriamente la falta de inversión en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental y garantizar que estas comunidades tengan acceso directo a los beneficios que la energía solar y los sistemas de almacenamiento in situ pueden ofrecer. A fin de que las comunidades de justicia ambiental comprendan mejor el valor que ofrece la energía solar y los sistemas de almacenamiento, es necesario prestar una mayor atención a la comunicación y difusión de la información, adaptándolas al contexto local. También es crucial que los promotores de energía limpia den importancia a la transparencia para generar confianza y proteger a las comunidades de justicia ambiental. Además, al garantizar oportunidades de empleo para los aprendices, se puede ayudar a fortalecer la economía de energía limpia del estado.

El estudio completo detalla las deficiencias existentes en los programas y ofrece recomendaciones para impulsar de manera eficaz una transición equitativa hacia la energía limpia.

Necesitamos acción por parte de los legisladores de Massachusetts

La energía solar distribuida y los sistemas de almacenamiento energético son tecnologías probadas que tienen mucho que ofrecer al estado y, en particular, a sus poblaciones más vulnerables. Es muy importante impulsar estos recursos en las comunidades de justicia ambiental para abordar la crisis de la asequibilidad energética, mejorar la salud pública y hacer que las comunidades sean más resilientes ante el clima extremo.

Las recomendaciones que se incluyen en el nuevo informe Electrificación con equidad II son soluciones con sentido común basadas en los programas existentes y se fundamentan en la experiencia probada en Massachusetts y en otros lugares.

La más reciente versión del proyecto de ley sobre la asequibilidad energética, energía limpia y competitividad económica (Proyecto de Ley de la Cámara de Representantes 5175), contiene disposiciones que respaldan el uso de sistemas de energía solar distribuida y almacenamiento energético, incluyendo la energía solar portátil y la concesión de permisos solares. Mientras los legisladores de Massachusetts consideran opciones para fortalecer este proyecto de ley, nuestras recomendaciones se enfocan en ofrecer incentivos que garanticen la participación equitativa y en el alistamiento del sistema eléctrico para facilitar la instalación de recursos energéticos distribuidos.

Esto implica establecer objetivos de participación equitativa e incluir metas de implementación para los recursos energéticos distribuidos. El proyecto de Ley de Equidad de la Energía Limpia (Proyecto de Ley de la Cámara de Representantes 3540, Proyecto de Ley del Senado 2303) establece un marco para la distribución justa de los beneficios de la energía limpia. Por otro lado, el proyecto de Ley de Maximización y Optimización de Activos a Pequeña Escala en las Comunidades (Proyecto de Ley de la Cámara de Representantes 3521, Proyecto de Ley del Senado 2270) establece metas para la implementación de recursos energéticos distribuidos en el estado, incluyendo la energía solar y el almacenamiento energético.

Además, necesitamos que los legisladores apoyen a MassSave como un mecanismo eficaz para promover la preparación para la energía solar y el almacenamiento energético. Los recortes propuestos a MassSave en un momento en que este programa beneficia a un mayor número de hogares de ingresos bajos y moderados, contradicen cualquier esfuerzo por hacer que la energía sea más asequible y dificultan el uso de los recursos limitados con los que cuenta el programa para apoyar las mejoras eléctricas. Con más del 50 por ciento de la electricidad de nuestra región siendo generada a partir del gas, las familias ya están expuestas a la volatilidad de los precios de los combustibles fósiles. Cortes al presupuesto del programa MassSave solo las hará aún más vulnerables al incremento en costos resultante de aumentos en la demanda energética provocados por el calor extremo y los inviernos muy fríos.

Legisladores de Massachusetts: contamos con ustedes para garantizar que nuestros vecinos que viven en las comunidades de justicia ambiental del estado finalmente puedan disfrutar de los beneficios de una economía de energía limpia.

But clean energy’s favorable economics, its environmental and health advantages, the ability to build it quickly, and its awesome momentum keep pushing it to greater heights—despite the forces looking to drag it down.

That progress is worth celebrating. As we mark Global Wind Day and the summer solstice in these unusual times, it seems good to take note of the wind at our backs, the sun overhead, and what they make possible.

What we’re up against

First, more on these times. The Trump administration began its assault on solar and wind right at the start, with Day-One executive orders in January 2025 that halted different types of renewable energy and looked to “unleash” American energy (by which Pres. Trump meant fossil). And it has continued through a range of administrative actions that have clearly discriminated against those two energy sources.

One recent tactic might be called the $1.8 Billion Scheme. No, not that $1.8 billion scheme. This one involves using US taxpayer money to take energy options off the table, by buying back offshore wind leases from companies that secured them in auctions in recent years, to keep those same companies from moving forward with offshore wind (a particular bête noire of the president’s). The total amounts in the three deals the administration has struck is that $1.8 billion figure (which also happens to be almost the exact amount of proposed cuts in healthcare funding just passed by the US House of Representatives).

The push to hamstring the leading sources of new electricity supply has been abetted by the actions of the administration’s allies in Congress, with the 2025 megabill that further undercut support for clean energy.

The administration has also worked to prop up fossil fuels, including dirty, uneconomic coal. One recent manifestation of that is Pres. Trump’s announcement that he was invoking the Defense Production Act and using other funds to provide up to $850 million to keep online more than a dozen coal plants around the country, and build a couple more. The EPA also just told another about-to-be-shuttered coal plant in Wyoming that it can stay open and is free to operate without new equipment to reduce its harmful air pollution. That support for a fuel that is on its way out is a cruelty to communities desperate for a real future, and by undermining more movement on solar and wind, the administration is pushing toward higher energy bills and worse health impacts in communities nationwide.

These examples are just a taste of the headwinds clean energy is facing.

And yet…

The progress wind and solar are making anyway

Despite Pres. Trump’s irrational animosity toward solar and wind, those sources have repeatedly answered the call for new and cleaner power. Installations of solar panels and wind turbines in the United States have been on a tear in recent years, and recent results show continued progress in increasing that generating capacity. Solar, wind, and energy storage have accounted for more than 90% of new electrical capacity in each of the last two years, for example, and accounted for 96% in the first three months of this year. Solar has been the largest source of new generating capacity for at least 28 straight months.

All that new capacity has been reflected in the ever-increasing amounts of clean electricity in the US supply. One good way to see the progress is to focus on wind and solar power’s contributions over the course of each year. You can do that right here:

Wind and solar generation as a percentage of US electricity supply, January 2001 to April 2026, with thanks to UCS Multimedia Producer Nick Davis-Ianacco (Sources: UCS analysis of EIA data, Ember)

The graph, based on UCS analysis of data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows monthly electricity generation from solar—everything from large-scale systems to ones on tops of homes and businesses—and wind, divided by the total generation for that month. The highest wind and solar percentages are typically in the spring and fall, as times when renewable energy generation is stronger and electricity demand is lower (shoulder seasons = less need for heating and cooling).

And here’s some of what the data show:

• Humble beginnings – The EIA data start in 2001, which was still early days for both wind and solar power. Their combined contribution broke the 1% mark on a monthly basis for the first time in 2007—almost entirely thanks to wind. (Solar by itself first passed that 1% mark in 2015.)
• Acceleration – And then things heated up. Wind+solar’s monthly output passed 5% in 2013, and 10% in 2017. In 2021, their combined forces for the first time reached 15%, and 16%, and 17%, and in 2022, the monthly tally blew past 20%.
• Leaps – And now the two technologies together have leapt past another notable threshold: according to preliminary EIA data for April 2026 via global energy think tank Ember, solar and wind together provided 26% of US electricity. That means that more than one of out of every four kilowatt-hours used by homes, businesses, institutions, farms, and communities across the country came from the wind or the sun.

Also remarkable is the fact that in 2025 the lowest monthly total for solar and wind was almost 16% (1/6 of US electricity). And solar generation for the first quarter of 2026 was more than 20% higher than in the same period last year.

The growth of wind and solar’s contributions, 2001-March 2026. Monthly variations reflect changes in both wind and solar generation and overall generation. Source: UCS analysis, EIA data

Keeping up the momentum

It’s clear that clean energy is by far the best option for electricity generation in so many ways, as not just the cleanest source but also often the lowest-cost option for new electricity supply, a key solution to energy affordability challenges, and the option that can get built the fastest. Sustaining clean energy’s momentum, though, will require pushing back on the forces that are looking to prop up fossil fuels and hold back clean energy.

A key source of energy (no pun intended) for renewable energy growth for years has been state action, and that continues to be the case, as governors and legislators look to clean energy for affordability, pollution reduction, and resilience, and look for ways to compensate for the Trump administration’s anti-clean energy actions. One interesting new approach to increasing access to clean energy is plug-in solar, which various states have endorsed with recent laws, starting with Utah in 2025. Plug-in solar, also known as balcony solar, involves households (including renters and people in multi-family buildings) buying solar panels that they can easily install and connect. The solar can cover a portion of their energy use and whittle away at their electricity bills. It’s a generation option that is as grassroots as can be, and one that appeals to people across the political spectrum.

For states and others, another force in favor of wind and solar has been the justice system, as the administration keeps getting challenged in the courts, and keeps losing. A few recent examples from the courthouse:

• Pres. Trump’s push to stop work on the five offshore wind projects under construction failed in each of the five attempts. And the first of those five projects is now fully built (and doing its thing, saving money for Massachusetts electricity customers and helping keep the lights on).
• In a lawsuit against the administration about many of the ways it has discriminated against wind and solar to block deployment, the plaintiffs (including, indirectly, UCS) have won a preliminary injunction against the administration’s actions.
• A coalition sued the administration over the IRS’s anti-solar and anti-wind changes to the tax code, and a federal judge has just ruled that the administration’s actions were indeed “arbitrary and capricious,” and would have had the effect of limiting clean energy development and raising energy costs for consumers.
• Seven Northeastern states have just sued to stop the $1.8 Billion Scheme, with lead plaintiff NY Attorney General Letitia James calling it “a sham deal” and “an illegal agreement” intended to push companies away from offshore wind and toward fossil fuels.

Continued action is needed in each of those areas, and many more, to make sure that the unwise, spurious, and illegal actions of the administration not be allowed to persist and undercut the US’s clean energy future.

Spiraling outward and upward

Meanwhile, wind and solar, and the people who can use them, aren’t taking the Trump administration’s “no” for an answer. While the most recent projections from the solar industries association and energy analyst firm Wood Mackenzie suggest new US solar installations will be down from last year’s, it could still be the third highest year on record.

And the latest data offer what might be the clearest recent illustration of the transition underway—toward clean energy and away from fossil fuels—despite it all: in May 2026, for the first time ever, the United States got more electricity from solar than it did from coal.

As the spirals of our latest graphic of progress, and so many other recent numbers, make clear, clean energy has a whole lot of momentum. The job now is to keep that momentum growing.

Reducing mineral demand, hallelujah

Reusing and repurposing batteries, hallelujah

Committing to a clean energy future, hallelujah

Last week, Colorado made history. The first US electric- and hybrid-vehicle battery recycling policy—with mineral recovery rates, reporting requirements, and measures to lower barriers to battery reuse—was signed by Governor Polis and made law. This will set a standard for the rest of the country.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are essential to reducing both global warming pollution and toxic tailpipe emissions, and they continually outperform their fossil fuel alternatives. But our responsibility for the health of the global community doesn’t stop there. To effectively decarbonize and lessen the impact of our products and transportation, we must reuse, repurpose, and recycle the batteries in our vehicles.

The policy in Colorado ensures that the minerals in EVs today can be used in EVs of the future by requiring recycling and the recovery of lithium, cobalt, and nickel from used batteries. Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) research shows that if the United States adopted recycling and a complementary set of strategies, we could meet about half of future EV battery lithium demand with domestic recycled content by 2050. That means less mining, less emissions, safer communities, and more domestic jobs.

UCS, in partnership with Western Resource Advocates, worked over the past nine months to educate decisionmakers in Colorado about the benefits of recycling and important elements of effective policy. We are ecstatic to see smart policy advance under the leadership of Senators Cutter and Wallace.

But the job isn’t done yet. California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, and Washington State have all introduced bills in the past but were unable to take them across the finish line. Most notably, California SB 615, introduced by Senator Allen, closely resembles this Colorado law. Support from environmental organizations and industry in Colorado demonstrates the desire for a well-thought-out policy that meets stakeholder needs. The time is ripe for this policy to be adopted by other states to create alignment and stability within the market.

Battery recycling means a stronger EV future

UCS is motivated to champion this work because recycling is essential in the creation of a strong and lower-impact EV future. The Colorado law reflects continued negotiation—hours and hours of discussion with industry and environmental partners to get to a place that works for Colorado communities and the future of EV automakers, recyclers, and automotive dismantlers. These stakeholders have come to the table thanks to the years of pressure from environmental organizations. Industry stakeholders have recognized that if left to the market, batteries are bound to slip through cracks, and minerals will not be recovered to their fullest potential. But if we can develop solutions together, we can maximize the mineral recovery and environmental and economic benefits.  

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a group representing the legacy automotive companies, supported the Colorado bill and recognized the benefits of this policy: “This balanced policy approach helps return used EV battery critical minerals to the supply chain, reducing the need for new mineral extraction,” said Nick Steingart, director of state affairs for the Alliance. “By encouraging domestic reuse and recycling of EV batteries, we can create a more resilient local critical mineral supply chain that supports the automotive industrial base and American economic security.”

What does Colorado’s EV battery recycling law do?

The Colorado law supports reuse and recycling goals using several mechanisms:

• Extended producer responsibility. Requires automakers to reuse, repurpose, and recycle batteries they have and those that are unwanted by downstream industries. The commercial entities that handle EVs and their batteries when vehicles retire (think auto dismantlers, mechanics, scrap yards) can reuse or recycle batteries, or have the automaker collect them free of charge.
• Mineral recovery. Requires recyclers to recover 90% of nickel and cobalt, and 50% of lithium, in 2031 (increasing to 80% in 2036) at intermediate form (also known as black mass). These recovery rates effectively prevent smelting, a high-emissions and low-recovery recycling technology.
• Labeling. Requires batteries to be labeled with essential information to increase the efficiency of recycling. This includes the manufacturer, battery chemistry, battery capacity, hazardous substances, and product safety and recall information.
• Battery health transparency. Requires the battery health (including charging capacity) to be accessible by a third party while the battery is in the vehicle. The third party must then document the state of health, which will help downstream entities decide if it is suitable for reuse and repurposing.
• Reporting. Requires automakers to report information about battery collection and recycling to the state. This includes the batteries collected, length of time until pickup reason for non-collection, recycling recovery rates, form of recovered materials, and the percent of batteries reused, repurposed, and recycled.
• Funding. Requires automakers to cover regulators’ costs, ensuring proper oversight by the state.
• Survey of effectiveness. Requires the state to conduct a survey to understand if the program is working and assess if there are any cracks that need to be addressed.

The biggest wins of this policy include holding a centralized party (automakers) responsible for unwanted batteries, and that the recovery of key minerals is required and independent from the mineral market price. By creating a centralized responsible party, regulators can enforce these laws at lower cost to the taxpayer and ensure the minerals are going back into the supply chain.

California, are you next?

California started this conversation in 2019 and made important strides: an advisory group was formed and a report published. Due to the high volume of EV sales in the state, it is clear from this work that there would be large environmental and economic benefits if California EV batteries were reused and recycled.

Senate Bill 615 built off this work by creating a framework that holds producers responsible for recycling EV batteries they have placed on the market. The bill passed the legislature in 2024 but was vetoed by Governor Newsom, who stated that it didn’t fit the typical format for producer responsibility. We at UCS have a good reason for our recommended approach that hinges on the unique nature of EV batteries in terms of safety and market forces.

“Extended producer responsibility” is used in California to hold producers responsible for products including textiles, packaging, mattresses, carpets, paint, pharmaceuticals, sharps, and consumer electronic batteries. These are all low-value products that are unlikely to be recycled, and some of them pose a safety risk when improperly disposed of.

EV batteries partially fall into this category. Some are likely to be recycled, while others aren’t, but all of them pose a risk if improperly stored or disposed of. Because EV batteries fall into multiple categories, the typical extended producer responsibility has been modified through six years of discussion in California, resulting in a policy that meets the product’s needs by providing a safety net when the market isn’t functioning properly.

It is especially important to have automakers be responsible for batteries that are damaged or don’t contain high-value minerals. The modified extended producer responsibility framework ensures that automakers are responsible for the collection and recycling of unwanted batteries, as there is a risk of improper disposal or storage, which could lead to fires and wastes materials that could otherwise return to the supply chain.

There are also batteries that can be reused or repurposed to extend their life in another vehicle or as stationary storage, and companies are building brands to do so, which creates a market for these used batteries. In addition, some batteries contain valuable minerals, such as nickel and cobalt, that recyclers are willing to pay for. When there isn’t a market for the used batteries or materials, the automaker is responsible for collection and recycling.

Overall, EV battery recycling requirements will minimize the mining needed to transition to a sustainable transportation system, reduce environmental impacts, protect our community from potential fires caused by improperly stored or disposed of batteries, and support the US economy.