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For Immediate Release
December, 11 2009, 03:00pm EDT
Contact:
Lisa Nurnberger, Media Director, lnurnberger@ucs.org
New Bill from Senator Cantwell Would Not Adequately Reduce Emissions
But Bill Does Underscsore Bipartisan Support for Addressing Climate Change
WASHINGTON
A climate bill introduced yesterday by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.)
is proof that there is bipartisan support in Congress for deep
emissions reduction goals. However, the bill is too weak to meet its
purported goals, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
The bill, the Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR)
Act, was also sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
The CLEAR Act includes the aspirational goal of cutting
heat-trapping emissions 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83
percent below 2005 levels by 2050. The long-term target is in line with
the minimum reductions scientists say are necessary to have a
reasonable chance of avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
However, the bill provisions would not achieve those goals. In reality,
the CLEAR Act would only cap carbon dioxide emissions at 6 percent
below 2005 levels by 2020.
Additionally, the bill says that it would provide funds to achieve
more emissions reductions, but doesn't say how funds would be spent or
how they would achieve emissions reductions. Further, all funds would
go through a typical appropriations process and important
emissions-reduction programs might not get funded at all. The bill also
lacks provisions that would help secure an international climate
agreement, such as deep near-term and long-term emissions reductions as
well as financial assistance to help protect tropical forests, support
clean technology deployment in developing nations, and help vulnerable
populations cope with the unavoidable effects of climate change.
According to a UCS analysis, Congress should adopt an integrated, comprehensive suite of climate and energy policies
to curb global warming and accelerate the development of clean energy
technology. In addition to a strong emissions cap, the United States
also needs efficiency and renewable energy policies that accelerate
investments in those areas. Such an approach can set us on a path to
adequately reducing our emissions.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.
LATEST NEWS
‘Another Outrageous, Criminal Act’: US and Israel Bomb University Known as ‘MIT of Iran’
Iran's first vice president called the attack a new "symbol of Trump's madness and ignorance."
Apr 06, 2026
A wave of US-Israeli airstrikes on Monday hit and extensively damaged Sharif University of Technology, a leading Iranian educational institution that is widely known as "the MIT of Iran" and seen as one of the world's top engineering schools.
The attack on the Tehran university—one of dozens of education sites bombed by the US and Israel since they launched their war on Iran in late February—sparked outrage inside Iran and around the world. Mohammad Reza Aref, an engineer currently serving as Iran's first vice president, said the attack on Sharif University "is a symbol of [US President Donald] Trump's madness and ignorance."
"He fails to understand that Iran's knowledge is not embedded in concrete to be destroyed by bombs; the true fortress is the will of our professors and elites," Aref wrote. "No barbarity in history has ever been able to strip science from the Iranian people. Science is rooted in our souls, and this fortress will not crumble."
The National Iranian American Council called the bombing "another outrageous, criminal act in an illegal war."
"This was a center of learning, not a military target," the group wrote on social media, highlighting video footage showing a building in ruins. "The increasing use of the Gaza playbook in Iran is deeply disturbing and will only deepen insecurity for the US and Israel. End this war."
US Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), the lone Iranian American in Congress, noted that Sharif University has "produced a huge number of engineers who’ve gone on to Silicon Valley and founded some of the most successful American tech companies."
"Why are we bombing a university in a city of 10 million people?" Ansari asked.
Another outrageous, criminal act in an illegal war: U.S.-Israeli strikes have bombed one of the world’s most prestigious universities in Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. This was a center of learning, not a military target. The increasing use of the Gaza playbook in… pic.twitter.com/GE6J8WhgMC
— NIAC (@NIACouncil) April 6, 2026
Al Jazeera's Tohid Asadi reported from Tehran that the university was "severely hit, with extensive damage reported in the compound's mosque and laboratories."
Vira Ameli, an Iranian global health researcher and lecturer at the University of Oxford, decried the US-Israeli strike on Sharif University, where she spent time as a postdoctoral fellow.
"To wake to the news of this war crime, at a distance and unable to return, is difficult to articulate," Ameli wrote. "And yet history has made one thing clear: Iran is not a country undone by bombardment."
Iranian authorities say US-Israeli attacks have hit at least 30 of the nation's universities, including the Isfahan University of Technology and the Iran University of Science and Technology. The US and Israel have justified some of the attacks by claiming the universities were involved in military-related activities.
"Would American and Israeli leaders consider their own equivalent institutions fair game? Of course not," journalist Natasha Lennard wrote in a column for The Intercept last week. "By stated US and Israeli rationale, however, were Iran able to launch airstrikes on American soil, direct ties to the U.S. and Israeli military-industrial complex would make valid targets of at least the University of California, Berkeley; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Johns Hopkins University, among dozens of other schools."
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said "bare due diligence" would have exposed ICE officers' falsehoods.
Apr 06, 2026
Video footage obtained by The New York Times has exposed lies told by two federal immigration enforcement agents about the circumstances leading up to a non-fatal shooting in Minneapolis that occurred on January 14.
According to a Monday report from the Times, the video directly contradicts claims made by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials that they were attacked by assailants armed with a shovel and a broom for around three minutes before the agents opened fire and wounded one of the attackers.
"Instead, the confrontation depicted in the video lasts about 12 seconds and shows two men struggling with the agent," reported the Times. "It shows no sustained attack with a shovel."
Federal prosecutors had initially pursued assault charges against Venezuelan national Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was shot in the leg by the ICE officers during the January confrontation, and fellow Venezuelan national Alfredo Aljorna.
However, the government abruptly dropped charges against the two men in February, and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons acknowledged that two federal officers appear “to have made untruthful statements” about the incident.
The Times noted that the government had access to the video of the shooting hours after it took place.
However, one source told the paper that prosecutors didn't watch the video until three weeks after they filed charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna, and instead relied on "the ICE agent’s statement and an FBI agent’s affidavit describing the footage."
This revelation prompted a rebuke from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who told the Times that "bare due diligence would have shown that the agents were lying."
Trump administration officials have come under fire in recent weeks for lying about shootings involving federal immigration officials, such as when former US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem falsely claimed that slain Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was aiming “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement."
In reality, video footage showed Pretti never drew his handgun during his confrontation with federal immigration officers, while also clearly showing that officers disarmed him before they opened fire.
Noem also falsely claimed that slain ICE observer Renee Good had attempted "an act of domestic terrorism" by trying to run over a federal immigration officer with her car, even though footage clearly showed Good turning her vehicle away from the officer in an attempt to get away from the scene.
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Iran Says Trump Will Go Down as a 'Supreme War Criminal' If He Follows Through With Threat
"This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide," said a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry.
Apr 06, 2026
Iranian officials on Monday warned US President Donald Trump that his name will be "etched in history as a supreme war criminal" if he follows through with his threat to wage total war on Iran's civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, wrote on social media following Trump's Easter-morning outburst that "threats to attack power plants and bridges (civilian infrastructure) constitute war crimes under Article 8(2)(b) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 (Article 52)."
"The president of the United States, in his capacity as the highest-ranking official of his country, has openly threatened to commit war crimes—an act that entails his individual criminal responsibility before the International Criminal Court and any competent national court," Gharibabadi added, vowing that Iran "will deliver a decisive, immediate, and regret-inducing response" to any attack.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said Trump's threats are "an indication of a criminal mindset."
"This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide," Baghaei said in an interview on Sunday. "Threatening to attack a country's critical infrastructure, energy sector, it would mean that you want to put at risk the whole population."
Absolute bombshell. Iran's Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei accuses the Trump administration of a criminal mindset and public incitement for genocide. Threatening a nation's critical infrastructure puts the entire population at risk. The White House has completely abandoned morality. pic.twitter.com/HcBZGZho5p
— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) April 5, 2026
The US and Israel have already done significant damage to Iran's civilian infrastructure. The country's deputy health minister said Monday that more than 360 healthcare, education, and research centers have been hit by US-Israeli strikes, and dozens of medics have been killed since the bombing began on February 28.
But Trump on Sunday threatened an indiscriminate assault, telling Fox News that if the Iranians "don't make a deal and fast," he is "considering blowing everything up and taking the oil."
"You're going to see bridges and power plants dropping all over their country," the president said, setting a new deadline of 8 pm ET for the complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump's remarks came after he published a deranged post on his Truth Social platform demanding that Iran "open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell."
Analysts and lawmakers in the US echoed Iranian officials' warnings that Trump's threatened attacks would constitute war crimes.
"Trump's advisers are telling him to hit civilian sites because it will cause unrest and potentially topple the regime. But just think about the insanity of this plan: kill tens of thousands of civilians in order to cause a national panic," US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote. "Bombing to induce political panic IS A WAR CRIME."
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said that "any lawmaker who votes for supplemental funding for the war on Iran or against war powers resolutions to end it will be fully complicit in the war crimes threatened here, as well as those already committed by this unhinged and unfit Commander in Chief."
The US president's renewed threats came amid reports of a diplomatic effort, mediated in part by Pakistan, to enact a 45-day ceasefire to provide space for a lasting resolution to the war.
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