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Winter 2006

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Science Under Siege
Kevin Knobloch ’78 leads the charge for the Union of Concerned Scientists

—Eric Goldscheider ’93G




	Kevin Knobloch ’78 president of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). photo by Ben Barnhart

TWO YEARS AGO KEVIN KNOBLOCH ’78 assumed the presidency of the Union of Concerned Scientists - www.ucsusa.org - (UCS). The Cambridge-based organization (with offices in Washington, D.C., and Berkeley, Calif.) was started in 1969 by a group of MIT scientists who were worried about nuclear weapons buildup. Some of them came from the Manhattan Project, which developed the nuclear bomb, and they felt a responsibility to speak out about the awesome power of nuclear science. Today, with about 70,000 dues-paying members, a staff of almost 100, and an annual budget of $12 million, the organization still focuses on the dangers of nuclear weapons as well as what it considers to be other threats to human survival.

Knobloch graduated with concentrations in journalism and English. He worked as a reporter before going to Washington, where he became legislative director for Senator Tim Wirth (D) from Colorado. He worked for UCS before going back to school for a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He sat down with writer Eric Goldscheider ’93 recently to discuss the direction and concerns of his organization.

What does the Union of Concerned Scientists do?
We seek to bring strong science to public policy. Our mission basically speaks to protecting the earth and human life on the planet, addressing the biggest threats to these like global warming, nuclear proliferation, and the global food supply. Our newest program area is scientific integrity.

Tell us about that.
Over the first years of the Bush administration we had been hearing concerns from scientists across the country and in federal agencies that political appointees were censoring, suppressing, rewriting, and misrepresenting findings by government scientists. And also subjecting scientists nominated for advisory panels to political litmus tests like, ‘Did you vote for President Bush?’ ‘Do you support President Bush’s policies?’ So we helped organize the scientific community to speak out on that.

Why a Union of Concerned Scientists? Many groups advocate for many different causes. What is unique about UCS?
Our core membership is made up of scientists, and we’ve also always had people without scientific training who support us and are active with us. That partnership has made us powerful. Many scientists are uncomfortable in the realms of public policy and politics—for good reason: They see that when scientists stick their heads out of the foxhole and testify before Congress or work for a federal agency and has a nasty encounter with a political appointee, they get their head shot off. If the very best science is not informing public policy, then the American public is worse off.

So yours is primarily a political organization.
No, I would say that we are a science-driven public policy organization. We can talk about politics if you want, because politics are not divorced from public policy. We are nonpartisan, by both law and instinct. We work with anyone who will help advance the issues we care about. Senator John McCain (R) of Arizona is the leading champion on global warming in Congress. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is probably the leading governor of any party on the environmental issues we work on.

Your literature and your Web site ( www.ucsusa.org ) put a great emphasis on global warming. Why?
There’s a lot we don’t know about how our earth’s climate system functions. But we know that we’re seeing thawing at the poles, at the glaciers, in Siberia, faster than the models have predicted. Climate scientists I’ve talked to are very distressed, and it’s very important to pay attention to them. The stakes are high.

What are your goals and aspirations for UCS?
We need to step up our game and be part of creating demand for what we call transformational change, on the order of magnitude of the civil rights movement or the antiapartheid movement. It is clear that the people who think about these issues have been unable to put solutions in place that are commensurate with the magnitude of the problems we are trying to solve—by a big stretch. Time is running out, and we’ve got to turn these things on their head in a big way. We generally feel that we have 10 years, give or take, to put policies in place that will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Does the left/right spectrum apply to environmental issues?
Not especially. Conservation is a conservative principle. Starting with Teddy Roosevelt, Republicans are among our strongest environmental champions, not the least of which was Richard Nixon, who signed a number of seminal environmental laws. Really what it’s about is corporate polluters who are exploiting the environment to make an easy dollar. They are not being forced to cover the full cost of their activity. So rather than left/right, it’s much more about corporate malfeasance.

For example, a utility can argue that coal is the cheapest fuel. Well, coal is only the cheapest fuel if you don’t incorporate the cost of respiratory disease that is leading to a record amount of asthmatic inhalers on youth soccer fields today and causing a grave distress to the health of our elderly. It is not incorporating the cost of mountaintop mining that is devastating parts of West Virginia. It’s not taking into account the costs of mercury poisoning. Science is showing that a record number of women of child- bearing age have mercury in their bloodstreams sufficient to harm their unborn children.

If you define ‘right’ as totally unfettered markets and ‘left’ as a command economy, where on the continuum would UCS fall?
In the middle. I think the environmental community has come a long way in terms of embracing market solutions—not unfettered market solutions, but a hybrid of market-driven solutions with checks and balances protecting the public interest. We still need rigorous enforcement, yet at both the federal and state levels we often see people wrapping themselves in a green market blanket while slashing the number of inspectors and enforcers of existing laws. And really, one makes the other go. If a polluter knows they can’t get away with polluting they will work on making a profit in an environmentally responsible way.

What more can you say about scientists’ role in our society? Aren’t they a neutral force there to figure out how the world works, and then it’s up to the politicians to decide what to do with that knowledge?
Science is the best system we have designed to pursue the truth. Scientists are part of the bedrock of a participatory democracy. If you look at the basic tenets of science—transparent methodology, rigorous review by one’s peers, publication for all to see in journals—you will see that it’s a rough profession, dedicated to a constant incremental addition to a body of knowledge through a testing of hypotheses. I believe that science is a positive force for good.

But it is more complex than that. Scientists working in the tobacco industry were producing studies showing that cigarettes didn’t cause lung cancer. Exxon-Mobil employs scientists who are arguing that global warming isn’t real. In the biotech realm, there is a rush to genetically engineer products with a lack of attention to risks. The key is transparency. When something is put forward as scientific fact, you have to be able to show the research that went into that conclusion. What were the assumptions that went into that research? What was the methodology? Did a group of peers, highly trained specialists in the field, look it over and poke at it? How does it fit into the body of knowledge?

How do you respond to those who see the UCS as a lefty organization?
Let’s talk about the sanctity of life, which is a term that the so-called right wing has appropriated around the abortion debate. I’m happy to talk about the sanctity of life because global warming and nuclear weapons proliferation are demeaning and putting at risk the sanctity of life. So I’m confident that if we can help people who consider themselves on the right part of the spectrum to look at these issues in a way that responds to their values, they’re going to be with us.

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