democracy at the union of concerned scientists dr rosenberg's expertise is represented by decades of scientific leadership in government including as top scientist at the national  as well as by his academic contributions and his leadership at conservation international and other organizations dr rosenberg's understanding of the intersection between science and policy making is especially valuable now he's consistently warned about the consequences of this denial and distortion of scientific facts and last friday the trump white house dismissed the significance of the in ministrations own report on the climate change crisis so tonight dr rosenberg discusses this and other attacks on science plus the long range global impacts of this sort of ignorance and how the public must act to change the situation and we are very honored to welcome andrew rosenberg welcome sir it's a pleasure and could you start out with some examples for people of this kind of an attack on science sure so the trumpet ministration we really have seen and i'm precedented sort of attacks on specific science issues as well as the process by which science informs policy and let me explain what i mean by that there are very specific issues where the administration has set aside the scientific evidence and moved ahead with  policy without considering that evidence in full in many public policy issues you can think of science as providing the sideboards you know understand the policy decisions have other inputs including you know political sentiment public sentiment and so on but science provides the sideboards most of our laws say that you need to use the best available science in making your decisions and a good example of that in this administration is that early on there was a two year report that was developed on the impacts on child development of a pesticide called  the administrator of the e p a scott pruitt at the time set aside that report and made a decision not to move forward with proposing regulations on will appear photos he also made a decision not to move forward with a scientific report based on a scientific report on the impact of core peer photos and other pesticides on endangered species and he set that aside and made a decision to continue to use that chemical in other cases they have either suppressed or ignored reports of impacts of substances like formaldehyde which are very known well known to be cancer causing chemicals or have allowed despite their current evidence an increase actually in the amount of emissions of hazardous air pollutants so what they're doing in these cases is they're choosing to ignore the science and often for very specific reasons at the behest of very specific industries or special interest players right another thing in there is like that climate issue which is i think we're the only country of nineteen thousand six hundred and ninety seven countries that signed the paris climate agreement and we've withdrawn but this resistance to the climate science is disastrous but what's your well i mean he is administration has decided to withdraw we actually haven't withdrawn yet i understand we still are are bound by the paris climate a cold war even though those are voluntary limits that are set within in terms of our own actions so we are bound by the paris climate accord because there was a phase out period right but that's an example of setting aside the science as a very large body of evidence around climate change the impacts of the missions of greenhouse gases the administration decided to ignore that science and withdraw from the paris climate accord and as you note we are the only country that is moving to withdraw out of a global agreement of this kind the other kinds of attacks on science that i  think are more difficult to see are those attacks on the process processes by which science comes into our public policy so that is the individual issues like what your folks are climate but there also is this overall process about how science informs policy and this administration in many cases has either dismissed or ignored science advisory panel you know side advisors they have put restrictive rules on what type of science the agencies can consider they have changed the rules that define things such as the impacts of hazardous chemicals to only refer to direct impact on so called legacy or long term impacts and other actions like that that really hinder in the long term the way that science will form inform our public decision making right you pointed out somewhere that  the civil service to an extent even under an assault can keep going and many respects you just pointed out that there are some things where it's delayed they can say ok we're going to knock aside these regulations but say on mining pollution regulations but they may not be able to do it immediately so you might have a few years there but then you also said somewhere that the civil service  career people can keep on going how true is that just now when they're trying to got all these jobs and so on so it is certainly true that the issues and marine resources generally that's the professional staff all across the government and the intention is not simply to have continuity but also to have people who are steeped in the work so at the environmental protection agency you have people who have deep expertise in you know energy systems in pollution that comes from various kinds of sources in public health issues it is our premier public health agency for example them professional staff are critically important to the public policies that we make now it's true that they're still there and largely to the extent that they can they're still doing the important work that they do that includes the scientists who are still doing research are still providing technical advice and so on it also includes the policy experts who really understand how the policy in words any administration can choose not to listen to that professional staff i don't think we have ever seen an administration turn away from the priest pressure staff or shut them out of the process in the same way that we at least have heard is happening in this administration and we have surveyed scientists and sixteen agents and yes you know concerned scientists aside to survey now there also is the case that there are many many people leaving agencies many of them retiring not all of them other leaving for other reasons and there's two underlying forces there one is that much of the federal workforce is my age they him the opportunity to retire and they've served their you know twenty or thirty years or they are at the minimum retirement age which in the federal service to you know that they agreed to in their original contracts and for their pensions and they can retire and they've decided that they want to so we have a bump in retirements that would come because of the aging workforce but also many of those people are still very active and in this administration we have heard anecdotally so not systematically but totally we have heard that many people say look i still want to do this work i can't do the work i cannot use my skills in the current operation i'm going to go elsewhere and you know it's not because they no longer want to do public service it's because they feel like they can't do public service in the agencies right and then the final thing that is very concerning for these agencies is that there is very little hiring of young professionals and that means that in a sense the agencies are being hollowed out it is certainly the case that agencies thrive on new talent coming sure and that new talent is in turn mentor by the senior people who are in each of those agencies and so you want our young professionals to view public service as an important right places and events part of their career you don't have to spend your whole career there and i didn't but them does a disservice to our government in the long rant because after all this that government isn't there for you know to serve the public interest i might not like their decisions i don't like all their decisions but ultimately you need the professional staff right right caned you it people may not be aware of all the different agencies but i think we hear about the e p a the environmental protection agency on a regular basis but are there  that one has suffered tremendously his interior department has suffered a lot is there any other agency or department that has been really afflicted well i think department of energy yeah certainly a concern right there are our concerns in other you know all across the government in in every department from the defense department to you know health and human services to the independent agencies like food and drug administration certainly there's great concern of the department of agriculture yes has is that yeah it's probably not obvious to many people but there are science scientists working in all of these agencies apartment of energy has a huge scientific progress right because they deal with everything from nuclear weapons and nuclear energy to other forms of energy to clear yadin and well and you know they deal with renewable energy they deal with energy efficiency standards it just a very broad range of issues they manage the national laboratories which are a critical national resource around the country and so with apartment energy is a huge size workforce of course no and nasa and while they are perhaps in better shape as f d a is then the e p a there still are challenges ok and part of that is because the ethos of this administration is not to respond to the scientific information and certainly not to the professional staff it is you know very much a top down driven political ideology that says you know we want to remove regulations we want to remove what are viewed incorrectly in my view as barriers to business and you know that agencies are there to serve the business community as opposed to the public interest that's going to ask you what is the prime mover in that it is in the end and interest in profit st is that the idea is well do you think or profit or or relieving restrictions regardless of the potential impact ok so you know there has it would be easy to say this is a administration and lots of things are happening kind of without some overall plan i think that's a mistake i mean many of the actions that are taken have long been pushed by very very conservative interests by major corporations by major corporations but more often by i would say than corporations by trade organizations which often take more extreme positions than even the you know the u s chamber of commerce has long had a list of what they call barriers to business and have pushed issues such as restrictions on science and changing science advisory boards the american petroleum institute which is a trade organization the national association as well as heritage foundation american enterprise institute and others the coal industry certainly have had lists of regulations they wanted to remove because they hindered essentially profits for some of their companies i think it's a mistake to say that all companies want to follow they have a line when the trade organizations are pushing the sort of more extreme views and the difficulty with that is that we have seen over and over again that while many you know companies try to behave responsibly actually the entity that is representing the public interest at the table in these regulatory discussions is the government so any individual person doesn't have the opportunity to stand up and state no not in my neighborhood you can do that but the person you're saying that to is the government in most sometimes to an individual company itself so regulations which no one seems to like are actually there to protect public health i mean aren't increasingly here and that doesn't necessarily mean they i'm not claiming they always do it well efficiently but it's sort of the only game in town because it is not the case that companies are going to do this on their own some will some won't if you leave it up to voluntary action then you're rewarding the bad actors right and you're in some ways penalizing those people who want to you know be more responsible to to the public interest so regulations have that role of regulation is really a public health and safety protection how about other nations like the e u do you know they've had the problem with pushback from monsanto and sullivan too but it seems to me that there has been more progress along those lines also that the civil service may be what i want to say more stable in those nations i don't think that the civil service is more stable but it has a change yes hard to take power now relations are made but what is distinctly different is that in our american system when a new administration comes in at the federal level appoint political officials yes quite deep into the agencies in a parliamentary system the only political appointments of the ministers yes ok that's what so you're not managing the individual agency  ok in addition to that in places like the e u i would say on some rules and regulations to protect public health safety in the environment they are much stronger than we are and in some cases they're weaker yeah ok and but they have a different response to regulation in the public so unfortunately there has been a concerted attempt to build a narrative in this don't think it would be exit is it in a lot and places in the world so you know you have people making decisions based on that narrative and you know maybe it seems a little off the mark to to make a comment but you know watch any movie or television show and watch with the exception of potentially the military or the police every government official every government employee is portrayed as either evil evil corrupt scheming or are true professionals in their field they have enormous responsibility you know i used to when i worked as deputy director in know a fisheries and i would assume that i had about you know roughly an eighty hour  workweek you know sometimes it was seventy sometimes it would drop down to forty but very rarely that was vacation and that's because there's just a huge number of issues that come up and that as a small agency yeah i was a tiny agency and so you know these are very difficult jobs because you're trying to balance an norma's number of competing interests but your fundamental job is to implement the laws that congress passed you don't buy into that whole there's also a whole narrative which is completely false that says agencies just make up laws and make up authorities and they're making laws they go you could never do that you're sued on every issue yet and every judge is going to say you don't have the authority to do that this is ministration has said oh well we don't really have the authority to do anything for example on climate well the supreme court has already said that there is but they're still saying we don't have the authority you have to go back to congress because it's a yes exactly that a what for thing on this the civil service and these agencies in parliamentary systems and everywhere else is that i'm not sure that a prime minister could appoint anybody he or she wanted to to direct an agency we have that situation and it can be ready somebody who is going to go in as a wrecking ball and this this administration has excelled in that but i don't know if that's true elsewhere so in a parliamentary system the people who are appointed have to be elected officials ok so they have to be members of parl ok and so do they have to be qualified to well know they can be appointed by the prime minister but but in a particular field but they're overseeing the ministry they're not  technical work in our system some of the appointed officials st of all they're not elected they were appointed and they have some of them have to be confirmed by the senate who in principle should be questioning their qualifications and have some cases the laws best of five the qualifications of people who should be appointed now this is ministration has in again ignored that they attempted to appoint a chief scientist at the department of agriculture  credentials and so the president has the authority to nominate someone who is not qualified the senate has the responsibility to actually then determine whether that nomination is appropriate ok now unfortunately when you have the political circumstance that we've had for the last two years the majority party the republicans have not pushed back on many of those appointments with some exceptions so one example is that we and many other groups strongly objected to the appointment of a man named michael dorson to head the chemicals office at the environmental protection agency because of the work he had done for industry for a long time  eventually several republican senators also objected to his appointment because of work he had done in north carolina and their concerns around military bases in north carolina and he had to withdraw his nomination the person at the pardon of agriculture who was not qualified well timidly had to withdraw his nomination arlo you can argue whether the nomination was withdrawn because he wasn't qualified or because he had links to the russian investigat so you know there's lots of different sources of play again all right i understand but it's just seems like a thoroughly unprofessional approach at a time when the science is so important and the public safety the public health and i want to ask about that as a matter of fact now is what will be the effects of long term especially when you start rolling back environmental regulations toxin regulations in particular and we don't even know how this is going to play out two decades from now when you start rolling that back and preventing these regulations what will happen we versed things well so st of all the rollback of regulations has become a guiding principle of this administration's and often without real concern with what those regulations do and often with a false narrative some one of the one of the false narratives is that this will free up essentially it only makes sense if you say there are no more threats that we need to be concerned about therefore we should only roll back regulations there's the mythology that there's all these regulations out there that are completely unnecessary don't do anything i have yet to have anyone in my own field in natural resource management i've only had one that has been presented to me as unnecessary and doesn't really do anything and it's a regulation on whale oil ok how much is  actually costing anybody says we don't have the illusion is true it's just not the case that there are all these regulations that are out there that you don't need because many many many regulations most are continually revised in the system now we might decide that we have better ways to protect public interest and but it's not the case that there are regulations that are just out there for no purpose and again we have a constructed narrative that's been pushed very hard by some special interests that say regulations are only there because the government wants to impose costs on industry they don't really have you notice they never talk about benefits to the public right but if you look at any analysis of the regulatory system the benefits of those regulations the public are always huge compared to the cost to industry and the cost to industry are often overestimated because industry innovates which is exactly what they should do so there are long term effects of regulatory rollbacks yes you can put them back in place but taking a step back on things like hazardous polluting on toxic contaminants i went there full of them by that time right on on toxins in consumer products you know those pretty consumer products aren't the ones that are around for one year they stay in the system for a really long time that's right and so there are long term effects on people where they live in their water table in the air they breathe in the products that they use in the way that industries you know use their profit their industrial processes so all of those things have long term impacts even if you were able to put regulations back in place but i would say that the story that there's been this huge rollback of regulations there's a little bit premature and there has been a rollback but many of those things have been challenged in court and this administration is losing more often than right that was the next question as a matter of fact is that it seems as though the a c l u american civil liberties an effective measure i don't know where it will go in the end but that is like a new ish strategy for taking these problems on well i c o u n crew have taken action around as you would guess civil liberties and civil rights and on ethics issues specific a as their names implies citizens for responsibility and looks in washington and merican seven hundred union other organizations like earth justice yes natural resources defense council environmental defense fund and the union of concerned scientists which is not something that traditionally we have not been particularly latoya's into now we are engaged in a number of lawsuits have used the courts as an accountability measure and it can be effective the problem is it takes a long time yes and also the remedy in most cases so the legal remedy if a judge decides an agency has acted improperly is to send it back to the agency to do it again and so you could go through another there and often the agency will say ok we'll do it again we'll we'll just do it a little bit differently so let me give you an example of that chemical large chemical facilities are required to implement a set of provisions under something called a risk management program to protect the communities around those facilities and to prevent major chemical accidents and disasters of which there are something like thirty thousand dollars a year in the country those provisions are things like providing information to st responders providing information to members of the community about you know the kinds of chemicals that are there providing evacuation plans and other things of that sort those rules haven't been revised for more than twenty five years but suffice it to say that you know information services and other things have moved along including requiring companies to look for inherently safer technologies then you know the cheapest one or the ones they might choose but to try to be safer and the trumpet ministration immediately put a implementation of that rule the court said no you can't do that we soon to move along with many community groups and others and the court said no you can't just stop a rule because you don't like it there is a process by which you have to go to public comment much weaker set of rules which went along exactly with what the industry had requested and in that rule right up front these rules to prevent chemical disasters they said our proposal is to remove all preventative  measures so essentially you have a rule to prevent disasters with no preventative measures there you go and now we'll go back around the circle and suing and so on and so court action can often take a long time but it's important as an accountability right what about it this time it seems as though mobilization in the public is also important that having the pressure from the public might change things so what's your opinion about that and then i want to ask about the role of the union concerned scientists in that regard to so you know my program is the center for science of democracy if people don't participate in the democracy it doesn't work right but there's also maybe a responsibility if you're right there certainly is a responsibility and it goes beyond voting with your critical right responsibility of course and  believe that people need to speak out to their elected officials into the agencies that are supposed to be serving their interests if the only people of the agencies hear from are the industries that they regulate as opposed to the people that the regulating on behalf of then they tend to be captured by those industries and we've seen that to an extreme degree in this administration and it is effective if people do let their representatives  know they they don't necessarily have to get out on the streets they just not be able to raise their voices they need to make their opinions known or their views known they do need to do that through their elected officials and through particularly those who have expertise like scientists also need to respond to the opportunity to comment that every agency is required to provide for every action that they take regulatory action is accountable comment period so one of the things that we do in union of concerned scientists is we encourage people to comment on agency actions and we give them guidance on how to comment in an effective way right because that also becomes important later on in terms of reviewing whether the agency action met the legal standard so everyone is a constituent in this country who have elected officials at the state local state and federal level all of whom believe it or not in our current political climate they still respond to constituencies are very powerful ok and that i think is one of the things that we don't understand so well in the public or you feel like oh i don't know enough about that or something rather but the voice really matters and the union of concerned scientists in our last few minutes is a prime organization for he given the information for one thing but nine by physicists at mit who are dr kent l yes very concerned about the direction the vietnam war as well as the missile defense program and we still work on those global security issues where one of the few organizations that do but there are still many many issues around what our folks call existential threats yeah and then i have them down and so we have an important role in raising awareness around those issues but we also work on climate and energy as our largest program and also a very important challenge for society we work on food in and in the environment with the goal of trying to we work on the center for science and democracy on the role that science plays so what we do as an organization with over one hundred thousand members is we try to connect scientists in those who care about science into the public policy process to speak out and to advocate i don't believe and we as an organization don't believe there's anything wrong with scientists also raising their voices as constituents and that he advocates it doesn't really research is any less it doesn't mean that you are biased it means you have an opinion whereas we all do and so it is important for the public to be engaged and to do that to try to learn about the issues as much as they can so we do an awful lot of public information in our blog series  yes we also do webinars on training yes scientists and activists on how they can be more effective for example we have within my program what we call the science watchdogs with people who are engaging with key members of the senate or the house as scientists and a watchdog in the administration and raising issues about the process by which science comes into decision making speaking out as scientists but also as constituents that we have science champions who are people who really care that science is a basis for our public policy decision making even though they are not science right and they are speaking out to their elected officials and we've had some real success in doing yes it's a little bit or oppose any particular candidate but people being involved does change the system there are many many challenges within our political system but it we just cannot possibly succeed unless the citizens are itself as drivers get right thank you for that we have to close but i want to emphasize that there isn't any better organization for for want of two things the quality of information and the accessibility of that of a number of issues it's a major organization for the nuclear issues but for many issues and it's very well done and the other is this training of people that it is not necessary to feel like all this is over my head you can learn it and we all need to learn to participate in this