Posted on 04/19/2017 2:51:05 PM PDT by mdittmar
Of all the attacks on our civil society, the attacks on evidence-based science pose perhaps the greatest existential threat. Decisions being made about climate science and environmental protection at this critical time will shape the future of our planet.
Advances in research are produced by the twin pillars of dedicated scientists and an activated citizenry who demand that the best science be applied to today’s most pressing problems. Because scientists produce the facts that expose the lies currently being purveyed, the tip of the spear is pointed at the heart of science-based policy and research.
But the imminent threat also presents an extraordinary opportunity for the scientific community to unify around a message of resistance, one in which organized labor has a critical role to play. Unionized scientists are well-positioned to fight back against the false narratives being pushed by the administration and to advocate collectively for continued funding of crucial basic research. Science professionals need a workplace free from fear of corporate power and political malfeasance influencing their results. We are the protectors of truth and facts, and in that way we all are in service to the public. With scientific integrity, we speak truth to power.
Budget cuts are the beginning of the attack. For example, the Donald Trump administration is proposing a 31% cut in funding and 21% cut in workforce at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on top of less-heralded budget cuts over the past three years. Such low funding levels have not been seen since the 1970s, prior to the enactment of most of our national environmental laws. Enforcement is also targeted, crippling the EPA’s ability to protect human health.
Is this a good way to save money? Investments in environmental protection pay huge dividends for the country. For example, air pollution reductions will avoid 230,000 premature deaths and produce total benefits valued at $2 trillion in 2020, according to a 2011 study. This benefit exceeds costs by more than 30-to-1, to say nothing of the human suffering.
Scientists have long held the view that with enough data and evidence we will be able to convince skeptics that climate change is real, that humans are responsible and that immediate action must be taken. It is increasingly clear that this approach has not worked.
For the nearly 7,000 postdoctoral researchers at the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab represented by UAW Local 5810, having a union ensures strong workplace protections as well as a powerful, nationwide platform for advocacy when research comes under threat. And the collective power of the union is not limited to the workplace.
With a diverse membership that includes both higher education and the manufacturing sector, the UAW has been a leading advocate for climate change policies that both create healthy communities and address economic and racial inequities. And at the EPA, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Local 20/Engineers and Scientists of California (ESC) has rallied in opposition to the cuts and will continue to speak out, including in San Francisco at the March for Science.
Make no mistake. As organized scientists, we are in solidarity with our union brothers and sisters who have lost jobs and real income steadily over the past several decades. We support the creation of jobs in clean energy sectors and in green infrastructure projects.
It is time for scientists and the citizenry who depend on science to embrace our responsibility to advocate for sound policies. Our very lives and livelihood are now dependent on stepping collectively forward into the realm of political advocacy and action.
Together we will March for Science on April 22, in opposition to the damage that the current administration seeks to do to research and in solidarity with scientists, researchers, and concerned citizens who remain resolved, undeterred, and organized in the face of these threats.
Carly Ebben Eaton is a postdoctoral scholar and executive board member of UAW Local 5810. Kathy Setian was a project manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a steward of IFPTE Local 20, Engineers and Scientists of California. She will be a speaker at the April 22 March for Science in San Francisco.
As an aside, I think we should get more control over our research labs. A nice big corporate tax break would spur on research and development for a good 8 year cycle.
OK Bubba.....roll out that evidence and we'll have a look at it. Waiting.....waiting....crickets.
Re no real scientist would be a member of a union - yes, but the Marxists/Leftist Liberal scientists created two “unions/federations” to promote their anti-defense views.
They are the Union of Concerned Scientists (color me pinko) and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). FAS was led, until his recent death, by Jeremy Stone, son of identified Communist Party USA member and secret KGB operative I.F. “Izzy” Stone, the communist propagandist who claimed that the US used germ warfare in Korea (along with a similar claim by Australian Communist, KGB agent Wilfred Burchett, a friend of Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, and fundraising events sponsor Norman Lear).(See: www.keywiki.org, search for “Wilfred Burchett” and see the list of his fundraising/birthday party sponsors. You’ll shit a brick at some of them.
Both UCS and FAS were members of the “Anti-Defense Lobby” that was created in part, in 1965 with the creation of Women Strike for Peace, a CPUSA dominated organization and the older red-dominated Women’s international League for Peace and Freedom. Then came the “coalitions” of the 70’s including the Hayden/Hanoi Lobby’s “Coalition to Stop Funding the War” and its successor, the “Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy”.
Can’t forget the liberal/communist group known as SANE (roughly Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy). Loaded with reds and liberal cowards.
Later the CPUSA founded/largely dominated Mobilization for Survival became the successor version of the older anti-defense organizations.
Off the top of my head, the names of a few “scientists” kept popping up in most of these organizations including “Philip Morrison”, an identified member of the CPUSA; Linus Pauling, I believe he was a Nobel Prize winner, also a longtime identified member of the CPUSA; Leo
Szilard (reportedly an id. CPUSA member; Michio Kaku, affiliated with the former Communist Workers Party (maoist); and others including the Hanoi Lobby’s group who supported Hanoi’s claims that the US was waging chemical and biological war in Vietnam, esp. concerning defoliation.
There are scientists who practice the Kemeny Method of Scientific Inquiry and there are scientists who don’t.
As Pres. Reagan used to say, “Trust but verify”. In the case of the “new scientists” it is “Trust us, we know everything. No need to verify”.
That’s not what I was taught in my college science classes.
Well, not exactly. Them-there unionized "scientists" have the proof in hand that they get more government money after they unionize. What else is there for them to care about after exchanging their professional credentials for a meal ticket?
That made me spit up!
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