The Week of August 22, 2022

Image credit – The White House

Biden Signs Landmark Climate Change Mitigation Legislation

President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Aug. 16 at the White House, where he was joined by several congressional leaders, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who had blocked a prior, more expansive version of the bill and was integral to negotiating its final contents. Hailed by Biden as “the biggest step forward on climate ever,” the act will channel about $370 billion toward efforts to decarbonize the economy and build resilience to environmental hazards. The Department of Energy released an estimate last week that the IRA and other recently enacted policies will lead to a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions economy-wide by 2030, benchmarked against 2005 levels. It specifically projected that the IRA in combination with last year’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act could reduce nationwide greenhouse gas emissions by about a gigaton in 2030 compared to a baseline scenario. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Rick Spinrad highlighted how the bill includes $3.3 billion to help the agency “build a climate ready nation” and “address the growing demand for information and facilitate new products and services.” Interim White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Alondra Nelson spotlighted the bill’s impact on health equity and environmental justice, saying that the IRA and the CHIPS and Science Act will “lead us into a new era of inclusive American innovation and leadership in science and technology.” 

OSTP Deputy Jane Lubchenco Sanctioned for Publishing Misconduct

The National Academy of Sciences has barred senior White House science official Jane Lubchenco from its publications and activities for five years for violating the NAS code of conduct while working as an editor of its flagship journal PNAS. Prior to joining the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2021, Lubchenco edited an ecology paper published in PNAS in 2020 that was coauthored by her brother-in-law and included an author she had recently published a paper with on a related subject, both of which are prohibited by the journal’s policies. PNAS retracted the paper in Oct. 2021, due to these violations and the paper's use of outdated data. Reacting to the sanction, Lubchenco told reporters in a statement, “I accept these sanctions for my error in judgment in editing a paper authored by some of my research collaborators — an error for which I have publicly stated my regret." Lubchenco has previously led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is currently deputy director for climate and environment at OSTP, where she has played a lead role in an initiative to reinforce scientific integrity policies across federal agencies. Shortly after the retraction, Republicans on the House Science Committee suggested President Biden consider removing her from the scientific integrity initiative. They reiterated their case in tweets last week and asserted Lubchenco had “ignored clear guidelines for her own personal gain.”

US Prepares to Formally Track Economic Value of ‘Nature’

On Aug. 18, the White House released a draft national strategy for assigning value to “nature” for the purposes of regulatory and economic decision-making. President Biden directed his administration to produce the document through an executive order last spring alongside another report on the “condition of nature” in the U.S. to be produced by the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program. The draft strategy explains that gross domestic product and other economic metrics are “largely disconnected” from the various economic roles that nature plays, such as in product supply chains, tourism, and resilience against environmental hazards. Accordingly, it recommends that federal agencies follow a 15-year phased approach that will iteratively integrate environmental and economic data into core economic statistics that account for natural assets. The effort is expected to draw extensively on the environmental observation, monitoring, and data-producing efforts of agencies such as NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The draft is open for public comment until Oct. 21.

NSF Releases Vision for ‘Future of EPSCoR’ 

The National Science Foundation released a report this month that recommends updates for its EPSCoR program, which sets aside funds for states and territories that have historically received a small share of grants from the agency. The report arrives just as the CHIPS and Science Act has mandated that NSF begin ramping up the amount of funding allocated to EPSCoR jurisdictions. The report was developed by a 18-member advisory panel on the “Future of EPSCoR” that spent the past year assessing the effectiveness of the program’s policies and funding strategies. While it found that EPSCoR has helped facilitate research collaborations and expand research capacity in eligible jurisdictions, it recommends NSF improve coordination between EPSCoR and other programs and agencies, provide additional support for faculty retention and research infrastructure projects, and strengthen efforts to broaden participation and promote workforce development. It also suggests using the program to support regional “innovation ecosystems,” creating EPSCoR-specific versions of NSF’s traineeship and small-business R&D programs, providing start-up awards for new faculty, and providing funds to retain research administration expertise. Recent reports by the Government Accountability Office and NSF’s Office of Inspector General have also examined the EPSCoR program, respectively offering a mixed assessment of the program’s impact and identifying systemic challenges faced by participating institutions in complying with grant accounting requirements. 

Tight Planetary Science Budgets Threaten to Delay Future Missions

At a town hall meeting last week, NASA Planetary Science Division Director Lori Glaze presented the agency’s initial response to the new decadal survey for planetary science and astrobiology that the National Academies released this spring. Glaze repeatedly said she was aiming to set expectations around what the division could accomplish, presenting charts showing that the cost requirements of its expansive mission portfolio outstrip planned budgets, including in the near term. Recently, the budget demands of the flagship Mars Sample Return mission have increased rapidly and NASA’s written response to the survey suggests that if MSR overruns its cost projections, cuts would probably have to be made to other missions. Glaze also reported that the division aims to begin formal planning no later than 2024 for the Uranus orbiter that the survey recommends as its next flagship, and no earlier than 2026 for a subsequent flagship “orbilander” mission to Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. She suggested the Uranus orbiter could launch in the early 2030s, though that mission is also the first thing the survey recommends pushing back in the event of budget shortfalls.

NASA Narrows Field of Astrophysics Mission Contenders

NASA announced on Aug. 18 that it has selected four mission concepts to proceed into the final round of competition within the Astrophysics Explorers program, which funds the agency’s least expensive astrophysics missions. The selectees include two missions with a cost cap of $300 million: UVEX, an ultraviolet survey telescope that could reorient rapidly to investigate neutron star mergers, and STAR-X, an X-ray telescope designed to investigate a variety of transient events. The other two have a cost cap of $80 million: MoonBEAM, a CubeSat in a cislunar orbit that would help locate the sources of gamma ray bursts, and LEAP, a polarimeter that would detect gamma ray bursts from the International Space Station. NASA expects to make final selections of one mission in each category in 2024, with the smaller-scale mission targeted for launch in 2027 and the larger-scale mission in 2028.