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| Union of Concerned Scientists,Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy,Union of Concerned Scientists - Food and Agriculture,Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming,Union of Concerned Scientists - Science and Democracy,Union of Concerned Scientists - Science Communication,Union of Concerned Scientists - Scientific Integrity,Union of Concerned Scientists - Tropical Forests,Union of Concerned Scientists - Nuclear Power,Union of Concerned Scientists - Nuclear Weapons,Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles,Union of Concerned Scientists - Water,Union of Concerned Scientists - Biofuel |
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Delivery Vans Are Going Electric: Where and Why - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Sep 17) |
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Sep 17 · Let’s start this one with some good news: the transition toward clean freight is picking up speed. Over the past few years, we’ve started to see more and more zero-emission commercial trucks, delivery vans, and buses hit the road. The much-needed evolution of our on-road freight system to one that’s cleaner and more equitable is gaining momentum – and not a moment too soon.
Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MHDVs), like the big rigs on our highways and the vans that deliver our packages, make up just over 1 in 10 of the vehicles on our roads, but are responsible for over half of ozone-forming nitrogen oxide pollution and lung-damaging fine particulate pollution from on-road ... Read more ...
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The Electricity Distribution System Can Stay Resilient in Extreme Weather - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Sep 17) |
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Sep 17 · When Hurricane Beryl hit Texas this past July, millions of customers lost their power, some for over a week. This event, though saddening, is not a unique one. In recent years the frequency of extreme weather events has skyrocketed, and many events have included power outages that threaten people’s safety and even lives.
Extreme weather, which is increasing due to climate change, can degrade the electricity system and cause these failures. In fact, between 2000 and 2023, 80% of all major power outages in the United States were due to weather, including severe storms, wildfires, and extreme heat. Power outages are costly, can have extreme impacts on both the health and safety ... Read more ...
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Michigan Can Get Solar for All Right With These Steps - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Sep 17) |
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Sep 17 · Michigan, along with many other states, is set to receive significant funding under the federal Inflation Reduction Act’s Solar for All program (more than $156 million for Michigan specifically). With these funds the state can dramatically increase community and household access to the benefits of solar energy. The program requires that participating low-income households see a minimum of 20% savings in their electricity bills - but it’s important for Michigan officials to get the details right in setting up the program.
Last month, the Empower Michigan coalition shared resources on best practices for community engagement and program design with the Michigan Department of ... Read more ...
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How Do You Talk to Children about Climate Change? One Book Has a Few Ideas - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Sep 12) |
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Sep 12 · Science communication is strengthened when we use creative approaches. Art is such a powerful tool for this, especially when communicating to kids.
Last year, I met Dave Schneider, a climate scientist who studies ice sheets and climate systems, work very similar to my own. He recently published a children’s book titled Goodnight Fossil Fuels! that’s specifically about climate change and fossil fuel accountability. The book was co-written and illustrated by environmental educator and artist Kira Davis. It stars a penguin who teams up with scientists to help solve the problem of how fossil fuels are harming the climate system and features colorful watercolor ... Read more ...
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Hottest Summer on Record May Be Ending, but Fight to Protect Workers from Heat Is Far from Over - Union of Concerned Scientists - Food and Agriculture (Sep 12) |
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Sep 12 · Over the last three months, which have been declared the world’s hottest summer on record, outdoor workers across the US have endured dangerously hot conditions on the job. They’ve cut grass in 112°F heat in California’s Coachella Valley, handled baggage on the hot tarmac of airports across the country, harvested fruit, delivered packages, and performed countless other functions that go largely unnoticed by our society.
Unlike past Danger Seasons, however, this one included glimmer of hope: After decades of stalling, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has published a proposed federal heat-protection standard that would require employers to protect their ... Read more ...
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Has Gasoline Use in California Peaked? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Sep 10) |
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Sep 10 · Despite adding six million more passenger cars, trucks, and SUVs to the roads over the last 10 years, California’s gasoline consumption has dropped over two billion gallons from its peak in 2005. More efficient (and cleaner) gasoline cars are part of the reason why gasoline use is down, but the increasing number of electric vehicles being sold in the state will likely drive gasoline use down even further.Switching from fossil fuels like gasoline to increasingly clean electricity sources is vital for hitting climate and air pollution goals. This trend is clear, but this transition away from petroleum needs to speed up to reduce emissions as fast as possible. At the same time, we need ... Read more ...
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Newsom Can Continue His Climate Leadership by Signing These Three Bills - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Sep 5) |
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Sep 5 · Throughout his two terms, Governor Gavin Newsom has driven California to the top of the world in clean transportation policies that will improve air quality and fight the climate crisis. Under Newsom, California passed policies to get the state to 100% zero emission vehicle (ZEV) sales, transition large truck fleets from dirty diesel to zero emissions, and fund billions of dollars in incentives and infrastructure for clean transportation.
But California can’t take the foot off the gas (or uh, accelerator) now and neither can Newsom. As these policies change our transportation future, new hurdles arise, and we need new solutions to address them.
EVs are abundant in much ... Read more ...
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New Energy Permitting Legislation: One Step Forward, Too Many Steps Back - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Sep 3) |
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Sep 3 · The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee recently approved bipartisan energy permitting legislation (S.4753) sponsored by Chair Joe Manchin (I-WV) and Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-WY). The legislation combines worthwhile provisions to speed transmission buildout for renewable energy with windfalls for fossil fuel and mining companies, including provisions that would degrade public lands, double down on fossil fuels, harm frontline communities, and fail to meet the moment when it comes to responding to the climate crisis in an equitable and just manner.
In its current form, the price of the Manchin/Barrasso bill is simply too high. As a result, UCS joined more than ... Read more ...
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Climate Plans for Aging US Must Focus on Higher Risks to Older Adults - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Sep 3) |
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Sep 3 · It’s hard to keep up with the latest stories on extreme heat. 2023 was the world’s hottest year - a record that is likely to be broken by 2024. And just last month, NASA recorded the hottest day on record ever on July 22, the latest in a 13-month stretch of consecutive record-setting weather. These events are part of an upward march in extreme heat in the US that has turned summer into a veritable danger season. And what gets lost as we confront these record-breaking conditions is the reality that heat - like many other effects of climate change - has a disproportionate impact on older adults. But the good news is that when we center our heat response and broader climate resilience ... Read more ...
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Safety and Equity Must be Central to Battery Storage Development. - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Aug 30) |
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Aug 30 · Battery storage is essential to integrating more renewable energy into the grid. It provides energy resiliency in the case of natural disasters. It can advance environmental justice by replacing peaker plants, gas or oil plants that run when there is high demand. Peaker plants are dirtier than most power plants and usually sited in low-income communities and communities of color.
There have increasingly been concerns about the safety of large-scale battery storage systems. You may have seen news stories about large battery storage systems, particularly those with lithium-ion batteries, catching fire or exploding. These stories are alarming. Battery failures can emit dangerous ... Read more ...
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Solutions to Rising Cost of Climate Change in California Should Include Passage of Prop 4 - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Aug 26) |
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Aug 26 · The heat is on: it’s burning down forests and towns, it’s melting down grids, and it’s making hard jobs even harder. Beyond the staggering human and environmental toll of danger season’s extreme weather, there are rising costs associated with climate damages. And those costs are not being borne equitably. California has taken important steps to address some of these equity concerns - and now has another big opportunity to pass the water and wildfire bond, which will be on the ballot this November as Proposition 4.As one example of these rising costs, Californians’ electricity bills have been skyrocketing over the past few years. This is concerning not only because people are ... Read more ...
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Seven Years after Hurricane María, in Puerto Rico You Can’t Even Count on Keeping the Lights On - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Aug 22) |
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Aug 22 · On August 13, Tropical Storm Ernesto rapidly intensified just before hitting Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The intensification and trajectory merited a hurricane warning for the Virgin Islands as well as the island municipalities of Vieques and Culebra. Despite not making landfall in either archipelago, Ernesto brought with it winds of up to 50 miles per hour (80.5 kilometers per hour) and up to 10 inches (25.5 cm) of rain to Puerto Rico. The next day, Wednesday, August 14, Puerto Rico woke up with 728,000 clients (almost half) without electricity, thousands without drinking water (because many communities rely on electricity to pump water), and flood warnings throughout the ... Read more ...
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These Are the Critical Issues to Track with the New “Tech-Neutral” Clean Electricity Tax Credits - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Aug 20) |
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Aug 20 · The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) included a major - forthcoming - refresh for one of the biggest policy drivers of the nation’s clean energy transition to date: tax credits subsidizing the deployment of clean electricity resources.
These incentives aren’t just historically important. Across multiple analyses, they’ve been repeatedly identified as one of, if not the, single most impactful incentives coming out of the IRA for delivering future emissions reductions, too, by supporting the deployment of hundreds upon hundreds of gigawatts of renewable resources.
Yet, for how pivotal these tax credits are, exactly how the refresh plays out is still to be ... Read more ...
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UCS Expert Testifies on the New Clean Electricity Tax Credits - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Aug 20) |
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Aug 20 · Earlier this month, the US Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service hosted a public hearing on their recent proposed rules governing implementation of the Section 45Y Clean Electricity Production Credit and the Section 48E Clean Electricity Investment Credit.
My testimony is copied below. It covered a subset of issues from the full set of technical comments UCS submitted to the record earlier in August and focused on:
For more information about the tax credits and the key issues at play, see this accompanying blog post.
Presented telephonically during the August 13th, 2024, public hearing for Docket ID No. REG-119283-23.
My name is Julie ... Read more ...
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Electric School Buses: The Best Choice for Our Kids and Communities - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Aug 20) |
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Aug 20 · The iconic yellow school bus is a familiar sight on our streets no matter where you live in the US, transporting millions of kids safely to and from school every day. While the color of school buses is still the same old yellow that it was when I was going to elementary school, there’s been a lot of changes going on under the hood recently. It turns out school buses are at the leading edge of the transition to electric heavy-duty vehicles. This is great news for our kids, our communities and our climate.
But just in case there was any doubt, UCS crunched the numbers to compare the different types of school buses from gasoline and diesel-powered option, to natural gas, electric ... Read more ...
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Heat, Flooding, and Fire Overwhelming Halfway through 2024 Danger Season - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Aug 13) |
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Aug 13 · It is halfway through August and this year’s Danger Season, the period between May and October when climate change makes summers extremely hot and brings more intense hurricanes, heat waves, flooding, and wildfires. Just this past week, the US was hit with record heat, wildfires, and a hurricane, with 2024 already ranking second for the number of billion-dollar disasters recorded.
In our Danger Season tracker, we are keeping tabs on how many people in the US, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands have been under heat, storm, flooding, or fire weather alerts issued by the National Weather Service.
Danger Season got a quick jump start early this year. By May 7, ... Read more ...
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Can EV Batteries Be Used Again? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Aug 13) |
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Aug 13 · This blog was written in coordination with Ellie Peichel at Plug In America.
The number of electric vehicles (EVs) on our roads has been increasing at an exceptional rate, reaching 9.5 million EVs sold around the world in 2023. The EV transition offers many advantages, including the ability to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.
At the end of an EV’s 10-15 year lifespan, the lithium-ion batteries powering the vehicle typically retain about 70-80 percent of their original capacity. At this point, there are several great options for the battery: it can be reused, repurposed, or recycled. Battery reuse includes using batteries in a ... Read more ...
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Ask A Scientist: What Energy Solutions to the Climate Crisis Are Within Reach? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Aug 13) |
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Aug 13 · As electric vehicle charging stations sprout like mushrooms along our roads and clusters of new wind turbines come online, these two clean energy solutions to the climate crisis are becoming more commonplace. Also more commonplace are the obvious, dangerous, and destructive effects of climate change on people and communities.
The United States needs to speed its transition to clean energy in order to stave off even worse impacts of climate change. But beyond more electric cars and solar panels, what can everyday people do?
One place to look is the power grid, responsible for a quarter of the United States’ carbon emissions. UCS grid modeling shows that there are readily ... Read more ...
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New England’s Offshore Wind Resource Is a Winter Powerhouse - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Aug 4) |
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Aug 4 · It was a bitter cold day on January 5, 2018, and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker had no choice. An Arctic air mass had descended on New England, causing temperatures in Boston to remain below 20 degrees Fahrenheit for a week. Outside, the windchill was negative 15 degrees, and the regional grid operator was warning that the situation was dire. Demand for electricity was high, but there was not enough gas available to keep all the gas-fired power plants running. Meanwhile, the power plants that burned oil had only a few days’ worth of fuel left in their tanks.
To make matters worse, the oil truck drivers, who had been working overtime to make deliveries to power plants as ... Read more ...
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Inside the IPCC 61st Plenary Meeting: Debates and Decisions Shaping Climate Policy - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Aug 2) |
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Aug 2 · This post was co-authored by UCS Principal Climate Scientist Kristina Dahl.
Last week, we participated in an IPCC plenary meeting held in Sofia, Bulgaria. Delegates from around the world convened with three main, substantive tasks: approving outlines for a new special report on cities and climate change; approving outlines for a methodology report on short-lived climate pollutants; and agreeing on a timeline for the publishing the three main IPCC working group reports for the organization’s seventh assessment cycle.
As the IPCC has a consensus-based decision-making system, the days involved long, detailed, intense debates. At times, it seemed as though consensus would be ... Read more ...
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Our New Research Says the Solid Earth Can Help Protect the Antarctic Ice Sheet - Only if We Cut Emissions Now - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Aug 2) |
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Aug 2 · This post was co-authored with Natalya Gomez, Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair in Geodynamics of Ice sheet – Sea level interactions at McGill University.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet faces an uncertain future under climate change. As the Earth’s air and oceans warm, the ice sheet is starting to melt at an ever-faster rate. As it melts it contributes to sea level rise, causing harm to coastal and island communities around the world.
To more accurately project how sea levels will rise in the future, scientists also need to consider the structure of the solid Earth that the ice sheet rests upon. This often ignored variable plays an important role in how the ice ... Read more ...
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What Happens at Meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Aug 1) |
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Aug 1 · Dearest blog readers, I’m attending my first meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and it is so. dang. fascinating. For twenty-ish years, I’ve relied on the IPCC’s reports countless times, and in countless ways. But seeing the IPCC’s consensus-based decision-making process in action is giving me a new perspective on the incredible amount of work that goes into producing each of the organization’s reports. Here are some observations that have particularly struck me as a newbie to the world of the IPCC while attending its 61st session in Sofia, Bulgaria.
There have been Friday nights when my four-person household has failed to come to consensus on ... Read more ...
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Battery Minerals: A Common Fight Over Uncommon Things - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Aug 1) |
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Aug 1 · The current media and political churn over the production and distribution of battery minerals is generating some energy of its own. The debate feels modern because it touches on the future of electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels, and energy storage. If we could only get our hands on some Vibranium! In reality, however, this is a classic question of balanced resource allocation.
What are the appropriate standards for mining, refining, and distributing this resource, given its manufacturing and political importance on one hand, and the potential for harmful social, environmental, and labor outcomes on the other? These concerns are not novel. In fact, they are centuries ... Read more ...
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Don’t Get It Twisted - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Jul 30) |
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Jul 30 · A group of climate and energy experts and enthusiasts enters a theater to watch Twisters, hoping for a renewable energy twist. Little did they know they would be left chasing for more…
But really, as I entered the movie theater with my Chicago-based UCS colleagues and friends a week and a half ago, I knew we would be carefully watching the summer blockbuster for an accurate portrayal of our present situation: stark climate realities, Midwest experiences, and greatly impacted weather systems. Especially after 27 reported tornadoes in the Chicagoland area just this month, we all had high expectations for a story that connected all those realities - or at least a CGI-flying cow ... Read more ...
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Reporting from Bulgaria on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jul 29) |
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Jul 29 · My colleague Dr. Kristy Dahl and I arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria, last week for the 61st session of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We are here to engage in early discussions about timelines and content for this cycle of IPCC reports. Over the next week, we will hear delegations and organizations from all across the world discuss, debate, and make decisions that will set the stage for this 7th cycle of the IPCC.
For me, this planning is deeply personal and vital to my work. As a scientist, I rely heavily on the IPCC’s reports. These documents offer an internationally accepted summary of the state of climate science, and form the ... Read more ...
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Climate Change Fuels Catastrophic Wildfires Across the Western U.S. and Canada - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jul 26) |
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Jul 26 · Over the past few weeks, many large wildfires have broken out across the Western United States and Canada, forcing thousands of people to evacuate. Hotter, drier conditions driven by climate change are a significant underlying factor in this trend toward larger wildfires and longer, more intense wildfire seasons in the West. And with more people and property located in close proximity to wildfire-prone terrain, the risks and costs are mounting as the erratic and extreme behavior of these fires has grown much more difficult to fight.
The largest wildfire in the U.S. right now - the Durkee Fire - is raging in Oregon, while the Park Fire, California’s largest so far this year, is ... Read more ...
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Twisters, and the Elephant in the Room - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jul 24) |
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Jul 24 · I didn’t walk into the movie theater last week, popcorn in hand, expecting Twisters, a summertime action movie about “taming” tornadoes, to be a movie about climate change. And to be clear, at no point did Twisters actually mention climate change. But beneath the cowboy hats, the quotable one-liners, and the impressive special effects, the film mirrors two climate change realities:
Sure, I left the theater having been entertained. But I also left feeling deeply unsettled. Here’s what Twisters has me thinking about.
Unlike other types of extreme weather, such as heat waves and hurricanes, the influence of climate change on tornado activity is unclear. That’s in part ... Read more ...
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My Drama-Free EV Road Trip Through New York’s Wild North - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Jul 23) |
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Jul 23 · On a Monday in June, I got my first electric vehicle. Two days later, I took it on my first EV road trip: A 6-hour, 370-mile drive that took me, my wife, and son from my home in New York’s Hudson Valley to a transportation conference (the Transatlantic Transportation Decarbonization Summit) outside of Montreal, Canada.
Some might call this jumping into the deep end. I had only driven an EV three times before. The first was when my neighbors let me borrow their car to satisfy some electric-car curiosity; the second and third were half-hour test drives from auto dealerships. Now I was taking my family through some of the most undeveloped land in the Eastern United States - New ... Read more ...
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Public Concern for a Cleaner Energy Grid vs. Corporate Interests: Who Will Win? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Jul 16) |
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Jul 16 · Active public policy to support the broader economic well-being is a hallmark of democracies and modern economies. Everyone will suffer greatly from sea-level rise and climate change if policymakers cede decision-making to corporate interests.
In the electric utility industry, this conflict is on display in the debate over who makes decisions on new electric transmission and how to include policies set by state laws.
Because new transmission investments are widely needed for economic growth and decarbonization, attitudes among the central players in the electric power industry are changing. Leaders of states, regulatory agencies and grid planning bodies are motivated by ... Read more ...
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Ask a Scientist: What Happens When Sea Level Rise Comes for Public Housing? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jul 15) |
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Jul 15 · Rising seas threaten the viability of thousands of coastal communities in the US. Encroaching water means higher high tides that seep into streets and first floors, sunny-day flooding, and more water to fuel dangerous and destructive storm surges. So many buildings - homes, schools, hospitals, parks, fire stations - are clustered on our coasts, at risk of being regularly inundated with seawater, and built for a climate that no longer exists.
In some communities, disruptive flooding is already affecting necessary infrastructure, especially housing. This crisis converges with the US housing crisis.
Millions of people in the US already struggle to find adequate and ... Read more ...
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Ripe for Disaster Declarations: Heat, Wildfire Smoke…and Death Data - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jul 12) |
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Jul 12 · Extreme heat and wildfire smoke should of course be defined as major disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. According to the National Weather Service, heat kills more people in this nation than hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and lightning combined. The Washington Post reported that extreme heat killed at least 28 people across the nation in the past week.
Yet, despite several requests from states over the years, most recently California during a 2022 “heat dome” and wildfires, no White House has ever approved a disaster declaration for heat or smoke.
Some states outright ignore the dangers in the name of greed. Over the last 13 months, Texas and Florida ... Read more ...
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Improved EV Credits Makes the Switch Even Easier for US Drivers - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Jul 11) |
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Jul 11 · To avoid the worst impacts of climate change we need to switch from gasoline and diesel to electric vehicles powered by clean electricity as soon as possible. While driving an electric vehicle (EV) can save drivers on fuel and maintenance, the upfront cost of electric cars and trucks can be a barrier to choosing an EV. The federal tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are important tools to accelerate the transition and make EVs accessible to more car buyers by reducing the initial cost of both new and used EVs. The Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently finalized rules on these credits, including on the transfer of the new and used EV ... Read more ...
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Massachusetts’ Siting Process is Hurting Environmental Justice Populations. Will New Legislation Help? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Energy (Jul 8) |
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Jul 8 · Massachusetts is laser focused on passing new legislation to streamline the building of new energy infrastructure to clean the electric grid and electrify buildings and transportation. While being able to build fast is a key component of a clean energy transition, the slow speed is not the only major failure of Massachusetts’ current siting process. Appropriate attention to the needs of communities, and particularly to those who have been most heavily burdened by energy infrastructure and pollution, has been sorely lacking. And on that score, the legislature’s latest push leaves a lot to be desired.
A recent analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists and community ... Read more ...
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How the Supreme Court’s Chevron Decision Benefits Big Oil and Gas - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jul 1) |
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Jul 1 · Last Friday, the Supreme Court overruled the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, fundamentally changing the landscape of federal regulatory power. This decision, reached with a 6-3 majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts, marks a significant shift in administrative law and has profound implications for environmental regulations and climate accountability.
Ironically, the downfall of the Chevron doctrine will give Chevron and other major oil and gas corporations more latitude to slow down and block regulations, allowing them to pollute with near impunity. At the end of the day, this decision means that courts will play a more active role in interpreting regulatory statutes, ... Read more ...
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Fossil Fuels Must Go: Re-inventing US Transportation - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Jul 1) |
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Jul 1 · We have over 284 million gasoline- and diesel-burning cars, trucks and buses on our roads. Together with other modes of transportation, our vehicles emit the most heat-trapping gases in the US economy: 28 percent, followed closely by the electricity sector. Carbon dioxide and methane (a short-lived but extremely powerful global warming gas) are emitted during the extraction, processing, storage, transportation and combustion of gasoline, diesel and other petroleum fuels used by our vehicles. To adjust the focus of this picture a little closer, just our passenger cars and light trucks contribute to a whopping 58 percent of total transportation emissions, placing our car-centric ... Read more ...
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Infrastructure at Risk in Your Hometown: New Map Shows What Will Flood as Sea Level Rises - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jun 25) |
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Jun 25 · A new map tool from the Union of Concerned Scientists shows you where and when critical pieces of coastal infrastructure such as public housing buildings, schools and power plants are at risk of repeated, disruptive flooding due to climate change-driven sea level rise.
The map tool is based on data from our new analysis and report, Looming Deadlines for Coastal Resilience: Rising Seas, Disruptive Tides, and Risks to Coastal Infrastructure. Covering the contiguous United States, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam, the analysis finds that by 2050, with a medium sea level rise scenario, seawater would flood more than 1,600 critical coastal infrastructure assets ... Read more ...
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How to Protect Coastal Infrastructure at Risk from Sea Level Rise - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jun 24) |
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Jun 24 · A new UCS study released today, Looming Deadlines for Coastal Resilience, shows that risks are growing to vital infrastructure and services that millions of people in coastal communities depend on as global sea levels rise in the coming decades. This will have wide-ranging implications for public health, safety, education, and well-being, and for coastal ecosystems and ways of life. Policymakers and public and private decisionmakers must act with urgency to take protective action now, working together with communities.
Decisionmakers, planners, and technical experts involved in funding, developing, designing, insuring, operating, and maintaining infrastructure must take ... Read more ...
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New Analysis Pinpoints Critical Infrastructure Threatened by Rising Seas in Hundreds of Coastal Communities - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jun 24) |
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Jun 24 · A new analysis out today and led by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reveals a significant amount of critical infrastructure along US coastlines at risk of disruptive flooding today and in the near future as sea level rises, potentially affecting millions of coastal residents. We unpack the results of our analysis in a new report - Looming Deadlines for Coastal Resilience - and a slick new interactive mapping tool. Here, I’ll summarize why we did this analysis, what we found, and how the nation can address the risks we’re facing.
Sea level rise is a climate change impact that doesn’t charge into our lives the way a wildfire or a hurricane might - exploding in size and ... Read more ...
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Watt Comes Around Goes Around: Will California Do the Right Thing on EV Batteries? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Vehicles (Jun 24) |
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Jun 24 · Over the past year, I have written a lot about electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling, answering common questions, reviewing the European Union’s gold standard battery recycling policy, and establishing principles for strong EV recycling policy generally.
While I have been frantically typing away for your reading pleasure, I have also been working in Sacramento to push for the strongest possible EV battery end-of-life policy in California. This advocacy has been laser focused on Senate Bill (SB) 615 (Allen), which faces a vote in the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials on June 25, 2024.
UCS will be at the June hearing asking legislators to ... Read more ...
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It’s Danger Season–Is Our Nation’s Infrastructure Ready? - Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming (Jun 24) |
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Jun 24 · We’re now in the midst of “Danger Season”– the months between May and October when we witness extreme events turbo-charged by climate change. These six months bring dangerous and often deadly conditions due to peaks in heat waves, heavy rainfall, hurricanes and wildfires.
We’re witnessing an increase in costly damages thanks to fossil-fueled climate change, which has increased the intensity and frequency of some extreme events, and also thanks to more buildings and people in risky areas. On the ground, this means communities, local, state and the federal government, territories and tribes have less time to prepare for the next event and less time to respond after an event. ... Read more ...
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