This article is republished from SciLight, an independent science policy publication on Substack. In December 2023, I moved from Washington, DC proper to the suburbs. My husband and I, and our two dogs and cat, simply needed more room than the single bedroom condo we could afford in the city. Six months later and we’re really happy with our new home, although suburban life is quite different. One of the ways that suburban life is different is the increased amount of solicitation. We’ve had numerous folks knock on our door to sell their wares or services. One solicitor, in particular ..read more

As the Biden administration works to finalize implementation guidance for the new clean hydrogen production tax credit, 45V, the fossil fuel industry and a select set of other industry actors are aggressively lobbying to loosen the rules—while everyone else is scrambling to stop them. Here’s why. First, the tax credit is generous. Extremely generous. Borderline obscenely generous. And there’s no funding cap. Meaning through 2042, as long as produced hydrogen is deemed eligible, there’s no limit to how deep into the public coffers eligible hands can reach. Second, because of the tax credit ..read more

You’ve likely heard of Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco, and have a pretty good understanding of what they represent. But what do you think of when you hear the term “Big Ag”? For a long time, a villain that came to many people’s minds was Monsanto, but we stopped hearing about that company in 2018, after German pharmaceutical and chemical giant Bayer paid $66 billion to buy Monsanto and erase its much-reviled name. And therein lies a big part of the Big Ag problem: mergers and acquisitions across the food and agriculture industry have enabled big companies that touch every corner of our fo ..read more

The clock is ticking for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which provides health screenings and compensation for people sickened by radiation from U.S. nuclear weapons production. RECA is set to expire on June 7; this would mean not only an end to life-saving health screenings and compensation, but also to the hopes of thousands of downwinders and uranium industry workers who have been unfairly excluded from the program for decades.   Last year, a wave of public attention and new findings helped propel RECA forward: “Oppenheimer” brought new attention to the Trinity Tes ..read more

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago, I began to feel the most important thing I could do was learn how to replace fossil fuel with renewable energy.  I had seen from an early age how oil dependency distorted and aggravated conflicts around the world, especially in the Middle East. For 30 years I have been an advocate for offshore wind development off New England’s coast and for the creation of institutions to support a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It was never going to be an easy task. New England has fewer energy production facilities and less experience with new energy ..read more

Tyson Foods, the largest meat and poultry producer in the United States, churns out billions of animal products each year. In addition to countless ribeye steaks and chicken nuggets, Tyson also produces contaminated wastewater—over 18.5 billion gallons in 2022 alone. This toxic stew includes animal parts and byproducts like blood and feces, pathogens like E. coli and Enterococcus, and nitrogen and phosphorus that can deplete oxygen in bodies of water. And much of this pollution is dumped directly into rivers, lakes, streams, wetlands, and other waterways across the United States. In a new repo ..read more

I have spent the better part of the last 12 years writing about lies. My colleagues call it “disinformation,” and I generally do, too, but let’s call it for what it is: lying. During this stretch, I have written more than 200 articles and columns, and most of them were either about CEOs who lie, experts who lie, scientists who lie, attorneys general who lie, legislators who lie, or a president who lies. And I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill white lies. I’m talking about lies that have grave consequences for the future of the planet. (I should add that I also wrote 65 columns featuring Q&am ..read more

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would regulate two forms of PFAS contamination under Superfund laws reserved for “the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites.” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the action will ensure that “polluters pay for the costs to clean up pollution threatening the health of communities.” That was an encore to the Food and Drug Administration announcing in February that companies will phase out food packaging with PFAS wrappings and the mid-April announcement by Regan that the EPA was establishing the first-ever federal limits on PFAS ..read more

Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) made headlines across the country when we published a report demonstrating how worsening wildfires in the West are linked to the unrelenting, shameless emissions of the fossil fuel companies. While we hope that our science will bolster efforts to hold these companies accountable, the truth is that such accountability is necessary but insufficient. Climate-change fueled disasters will continue to have impacts on human health. We must measure these impacts and mitigate them. Wildfires have the most obvious and devastating effects on the lives of ..read more

Read part 1 of this blog post series on the White House’s initiative. In a previous blog post about the federal Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) recent report about how the White House can better implement its Justice40 initiative, I noted that the GAO should have said the program needs much more transparency at multiple levels. That is the first of three fixes that I and my former colleague and senior official at the EPA Matthew Tejada agree should have been recommended. As former EPA officials in the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, we had a front r ..read more