House Committee Releases Climate Policy Report, Recommends Strengthening of Research Enterprise

On June 30, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis majority staff released the report Solving the Climate Crisis: The Congressional Action Plan for a Clean Energy Economy and a Healthy, Resilient, and Just America, a sweeping set of policy recommendations to address and combat climate change. The report recommends several initiatives to be taken by the U.S. government that would expand the federal science and technology sector’s ability to address climate change, including strengthening the research enterprise.

Some of the recommendations that are relevant to the social and behavioral science research enterprise include:

• Expanding and sustaining funding for federal agencies to support research and monitoring of climate change’s impact on human systems;
• Expanding support for climate STEM career training and education by emphasizing the removal of barriers for underrepresented groups;
• Directing the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support research on methodologies to improve education and training of climate scientists;
• Requiring strong scientific integrity policies at federal research agencies; and
• Reviving the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) and increase funding for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to better inform Congress about science and technology policy.

The full report and more information is available on the Committee website.

Back to this issue’s table of contents.