Episode 59: Science and Civic Engagement
“The truth is people still trust scientists...when you go into a room filled with lobbyists reading off of their cell phones prepared bullet points with no understanding of the larger issues...your voice matters and it carries a lot of weight. ”
A conversation with Dr. Juliet Christian-Smith (Union of Concerned Scientists) about the role of scientists in politics and policy with a focus on Western water policy. Released November 1, 2024.
guests on the show
Dr. Juliet Christian-Smith
Juliet Christian-Smith is the Western States Regional Director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She leads the program’s efforts to create effective policies addressing climate change in California and the Western United States.
Dr. Christian-Smith is an expert in water, climate, and sustainability issues and has a longstanding career focusing on these issues. Prior to her current role at UCS she was a senior program officer at the Water Foundation. In addition to developing and implementing grantmaking programs for the foundation, Juliet was part of teams that secured the new federal Low Income Household Water Assistance Program, California’s first-in-the-nation Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund, and LA’s Safe, Clean Water Program, the largest public financing program for stormwater capture in the nation. Previously, Dr. Christian-Smith worked on water and climate issues as a Senior Climate Scientist at UCS.
She received a Fulbright fellowship to study the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive in Portugal and was a Murray Darling Basin Futures Fellow in Australia. She earned a PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from UC Berkeley and a Bachelor’s degree from Smith College.
TRANSCRIPT
Faith Kearns
I'm super happy to have Juliet Christian-Smith on Water Talk today. Juliet is actually an old friend and colleague of mine. We went to graduate school together. She was a couple of years behind me, and it's been really, really fun to watch her career evolution over time. Neither of us quite took the traditional path, and I'll be excited for you all to hear how she approaches her career, which has been pretty diverse. And you know, a lot of it stems from wanting to make change, which is, I think, a different motivation maybe than a lot of traditionally trained scientists have.
I think it'll be really interesting just to hear the way she thinks about her career and her role as a scientist at this point. And the other thing I will say about Juliet is she's really humble. She has done a ton of work behind the scenes on lots of policy and management efforts in California and beyond when it comes to water, but you rarely ever hear her really talk about that work. And she's also somebody who I consider to have just a really high level of integrity about the way she approaches her work on California water. And so if you can't tell, I really admire Juliet, and I'm really, really excited to have her on the show today. So what about you, Sam and Mallika?
Mallika Nocco
I’m really, really excited to talk with Juliet Christian-Smith as well. Always interesting when we are thinking broadly about policy issues, about drinking water policy, and very curious to hear more about these areas that she's working with, as well as her vision for the future. What about you, Sam?
Sam Sandoval
Really excited to have this conversation with Juliet. I think our paths crossed, like three, four years ago, she was recruiting a scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a water scientist. And then Pablo, who was in our episode 23, he applied for that one. He was interviewed by Juliet. And then we have conversations first about, I mean, Pablo and other issues related to water. I am also really looking forward to listening to her path going to Europe, and how those experiences come back here.
The other part is making things happen. And making things happen, in this case, without being in the spotlight. And I think that is very interesting. Many people want to make things happen in the spotlight, or say that they are making things happen in the spotlight. But Juliet doing all this work on other institutions like the Water Foundation and so on, it really shows that she's been what I call a water warrior, a person always fighting for the good of the community, the good of the environment, and without actually really looking for being in the spotlight. So anyway, so that will be what from her trajectory, what she has done, what she's doing, how she does it, we need to have in this business, a lot of I'm not sure if it is humbleness or compassion or quiet time to just get things going, get things moving. So I don't know, I think from the technical side to the more professional career side, I'm really looking forward to listening to Juliet.
Faith Kearns
Awesome. Well, let's go ahead and get started with Juliet!
Welcome to Water Talk. For today's episode, we're talking with Dr Juliet Christian-Smith. Juliet currently serves as the Western States Regional Director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She has been working on Western water issues for decades, previously having been a senior program officer with the Water Foundation and an analyst with the Pacific Institute. She has worked as part of teams that secured the Federal Low Income Household Water Assistance Program, California's first in the nation Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund and LA Safe Clean Water program, the largest public financing program for storm water capture in the nation. Welcome Juliet, we're so happy to have you on Water Talk!
Juliet Christian-Smith
I am so happy to be here as a big fan.
Faith Kearns
I've given this brief outline of your career and accomplishments, which are many, but so it'd be great to hear from you in more detail about your career path and what led you to where you are today.
Juliet Christian-Smith
It's always a challenge where to start with that question. I'm going to take you back to growing up. We would go to an island off the coast of Maine. There's a little group of islands called the Isles of Shoals. It takes about half an hour to get there on a ferry, and it's where the University of New Hampshire has their marine biology labs. And we would go to Star Island, which is actually a retreat center for the United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalist Association. And it was a place where my parents would attend meetings, and I would just run around the island, one square mile, no cars, no television, no cell phones, no radios. I spent a lot of time in the marine biology lab, and got very interested in all things water related.
An interesting fact about Star Island is, when I was growing up, it was all cistern dependent. So the number of showers you got on the island was dependent on how much rain they'd captured that year. So some years, you got showers every other day. Other years, you know, I think the lowest was twice a week. You got a shower, but you could always jump in the water. Polar bear swimming was something that we did in the mornings, and it was freezing cold water. It would literally take your breath away, the Atlantic Ocean. I have to say, I went back this summer with my daughter, and I could get right into that water. So, you know, climate change, we know, is here.
Star Island brought me to my love of biology, and my love of biology brought me to really understand the role of humans and management in how we share precious resources. And I got to spend a semester working in a marine park on the Turks and Caicos Islands, which actually got me thinking about who is in charge of marine parks and who is allowed in and who is out, and what we really meant by protection. And that's eventually what took me into policy and governance and really trying to understand the people behind the rules that shape the way that we live our lives and the water and the air and the earth and the soils that we have access to in our daily lives.
Faith Kearns
That sounds like a really evocative place to spend part of your childhood. I'm happy to hear that story. So you've been involved in an incredible amount of both research and policy on water and related issues for a long time, and in several different sectors, academia, nonprofits, government, philanthropy. Can you talk about the role of these organizations in the water and climate sectors, and what drew you to such a diverse array of experiences that are fairly different from the traditional scientific path that folks follow.
Juliet Christian-Smith
When I came to California, I was really surprised to see how fresh water was managed because it was so scarce, and to see the huge inequities in terms of access. As we know, 1 million Californians currently lack access to safe and affordable drinking water. The UN has declared parts of California in a human rights crisis. And this was really shocking to someone not from the West Coast, and it informed my dissertation work and also my Fulbright Fellowship.
I was able to go to Portugal and look at the implementation of a new law, the European Union's Water Framework Directive, which was an effort to really start to manage water systems based on the boundaries of where the water comes from, so the watershed is the area that drains to a particular location, and to think about management across the entire watershed, from the headwaters where the water originates, to where many times people are located, closer to the ocean or the rivers. And that experience really taught me a lot about really well intentioned policy being very hard to implement and coming up against some of the constraints of civil society in Portugal.
You may know a little bit about the history because it was under dictatorship until the 1970s, and there's a lot of disincentives for people to be engaged politically or publicly, and so there wasn't the civil society infrastructure to ensure, for instance, low income communities had a seat at the table when Portugal and Spain decided to build the biggest new dam in the European Union, the Al Qaeda dam, and to ensure that they would receive, for instance, some of that water. That water was apportioned to those who were at the table. And it also reinforced the idea that if you aren't at the table, you're on the menu.
So the importance of having a decision making role and a voice in this case, water decisions were really clear to me and how the water from that particular infrastructure project got apportioned. When I came back, I was able to do some teaching. I have taught at a bunch of different places, Monterey Institute for International Studies, Sonoma State University, UC Berkeley, and to work in the nonprofit sectors. I worked for the Pacific Institute for a while, and then I actually worked for the Union of Concerned Scientists for four years prior to the Trump administration.
So during the Trump administration, I decided to move into philanthropy. You may recall that one of the first things that the Trump administration did was wipe the term climate change from almost all of the government websites, and I watched as decades of painstaking research was obliterated in mere days, and it got me to thinking a lot about how much of the scientific research that underpins our understanding of climate change is impartially funded by government sources, and it made me concerned about the future for that funding.
That was a big reason why I moved into philanthropy and in a new organization called the Water Foundation that was forming then to try to find a pathway forward during a very hostile federal administration that was intent on undermining the scientific advances that we had made. So my time in philanthropy was a great education in terms of understanding the really important role that private money has in shaping, again, civil society and what we think about, you know, the ways that we are able to access power.
Sam Sandoval
And Juliet, you talked about civic engagement and science. You're also talking about trust. And I mean, if you can expand off that trust, and how it does a virtuous cycle, but also how we are losing trust in our institutions, trust in our scientists, and how that can be dangerous or or if you see anything that can be worried about it.
Juliet Christian-Smith
Yeah, there's a whole set of scholars who've been interested in this idea of the decline in civic engagement in America. There's a book, Bowling Alone, that received a lot of attention, and what it really pointed to was this decrease in the ways that people get involved in democracy. So there are lots of ways that you can be involved, voting, voter registration, going and helping out at the polls, educating people about civics, volunteering with organizations that build community well being, advocating for specific pieces of legislation or regulation, representing your community through appointment or election that could be a city council, a school board, a water district, a Wastewater District, all of those ways are are really valuable paths for being a part of the decision making process and and that is how we create that virtuous cycle.
These scholars have documented, there has been a decline in the engagement across all of those fronts. And so this is, you know, a real project we have to pay attention to. And I think as scientists, we often hold ourselves apart a bit from the rest of the world and even engagement and what we see as political spheres. But that engagement is what allows us the freedom to even be able to do science that isn't influenced or in service of particular outcomes or conclusions.
Faith Kearns
Thank you. I think that was a pretty good segue into your current role, where you're back working with the Union of Concerned Scientists. And so for listeners that might not be familiar with UCS, can you tell us about the work that that organization does, and kind of what you're working on there?
Juliet Christian-Smith
I'd love to start with the story of the Union of Concerned Scientists. I think a lot of people on the west coast, and I will include myself, don't know about its founding. It's a little more well known on the east coast, but it was founded in 1969 by scientists and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And that year, the Vietnam War was at its height. Cleveland's heavily polluted Cuyahoga River had caught fire, and a lot of the faculty and students were pretty upset about what they saw as the United States government misusing science.
So the founders of UCS drafted a statement calling for scientific research to be directed away from military technologies and towards solving pressing environmental and social problems. If you would humor me, I would love to read you an excerpt of that pretty short statement.
They said, “Misuse of scientific and technical knowledge presents a major threat to the existence of mankind. Through its actions in Vietnam, our government has shaken our confidence and its ability to make wise and humane decisions. There's also disquieting evidence of an intention to enlarge further our immense destructive capacity. The response of the scientific community to these developments has been hopelessly fragmented. There is a small group that helps to conceive these policies, and a handful of eminent men who have tried but failed to stem the tide from within the government, the concerned majority has been on the sidelines and ineffective, and we feel that it is no longer possible to remain uninvolved, so that from that beginning, we really began to bring scientists into the policy sphere, mobilizing scientists, combining their voices with advocates, educators and other concerned citizens, to really build a reputation around using science to make change happen in support of a safer and more just world, and we are uniquely a member supported nonprofit, meaning we do not take any corporate funding or government funding to ensure that there's no question about our independence and integrity.”
I do think that really sets us apart from other organizations that we work closely with and also have important roles, but may receive quite a bit of corporate dollars or have other ways that they are limited in the things that they can say and the questions that they can ask just as the time period when I'm talking about 1969 when UCS was getting started, these faculty members and students actually walked out on March 4 in protest of science being used for unethical purposes.
Again, here we find ourselves in a moment of a lot of upheaval and change. We just had the hottest summer on record. June through August was almost three degrees hotter in the northern hemisphere than ever recorded. The southern hemisphere's winter was about two degrees above average, and we have wild heat waves, hurricanes, floods and fires, all of this we call “danger season” at UCS, and we actually track the alerts that people receive. So by the end of August, 100% of Americans had been affected by some weather related phenomena. And we have threats to our social system. Our social fabric of our society.
Mallika Nocco
So this is another moment where I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have never heard the term danger season before, and I don't know if our listeners have heard it. If it's UCS specific, can you define it for us? It's just very interesting and I feel like a useful frame for you know, folks who are not specialized in these areas.
Juliet Christian-Smith
Yeah, it is a UCS framing, but we're really happy that a lot of media has picked it up. So danger season is the period between May and October, when the United States and its territories typically experience the worst climate impacts. So we work with the National Weather Service and Climate Central to track where danger season events are occurring, and we put it all online on a tool that can allow reporters and anyone who's interested in what's going on around them to better understand the threats that they face.
Mallika Nocco
Thank you. That's really helpful.
Juliet Christian-Smith
So the UCS Western States program has been around for over three decades now, and we have been relentlessly focused on supporting California, and mostly the Pacific coast to be at the forefront of passing a series of groundbreaking policies that really show how we can mitigate and adapt to climate impacts and climate change. So we've had a variety of successes, and these successes are possible because the states are, in many ways, laboratories for innovation. We have a very hospitable political climate that allows us to get ahead of some of the even the federal regulations.
So we have a waiver, for instance, from the air quality rules, and are allowed to exceed the standards at the federal level. And we have done that for over a decade now in making sure that California's air quality has really seen major improvements. So if you know people who grew up in the Los Angeles region or even in the Bay Area, they'll tell you stories about the smog that blanketed those areas, and that doesn't happen nearly as much anymore. Of course, now we're contending with wildfire smoke and other threats that weren't envisioned at the scale that they're occurring now, but our tailpipe emissions and the greenhouse gasses that we're emitting from our transportation and power sectors have been drastically cut by really innovative policies.
So for example, we have a statewide goal to power all of California's electricity needs with 100% clean energy by 2045, we have a requirement that all new passenger cars, trucks and SUVs sold in California, need to be zero emission vehicles by 2035. And we have rules that require our watersheds and groundwater basins to achieve groundwater sustainability by 2042. These are some of the groundbreaking policies that we were able to enact in California as examples that have spread elsewhere.
Some of our vehicle policies and emissions policies have been adopted by other states. The vehicle standards that UCS worked hard to achieve have been adopted by 11 other states and Washington, DC. So we do see that by trying and testing out things, we are able to figure out how to really go beyond what people think is possible. And there's always somebody who will say that will destroy the economy. When California passed cap and trade, people said, you know, California will be in ruins. Businesses will leave.
Well, in fact, over the time period that cap and trade has been in place California went from the sixth largest economy in the world to the fifth largest economy in the world. And it's really interesting. I was able to go to France with an international delegation of legislators, and in other countries, we were treated as though we were almost a separate nation because of the economic power of the state of California and California's bilateral negotiations that it conducts, particularly on climate change in a number of places, including a very important relationship with China.
Sam Sandoval
Juliet. I mean, that's quite impressive. And in your role right now as the Western States Regional Director, are there any other projects that you're currently working on or that you're seeing in the near future?
Juliet Christian-Smith
Well, one thing that we've been working on together is really thinking about the future of the Central Valley of California and understanding that we have been on a long term trend that has not led to healthy communities or a healthy environment. For instance, the GRACE satellite. That told us that we were mining groundwater at some of the fastest rates in the world, that it actually was changing the gravitational pull of the earth.
That was the first time, honestly, in Sacramento, the conversation around groundwater was taken seriously, because until then, there was no really record keeping or monitoring of groundwater use, and this satellite data filled a hole and provided the data that underscored community experiences, that their wells were growing going dry, and that they had to dig farther and farther to reach water, and that it was affecting the infrastructure of the state, from our aqueducts to bridges and highways, actually subsidence underneath all of this due to the groundwater mining.
So understanding we're using too much water and that 80% of that water is going to irrigated agriculture, and much of that is in the Central Valley. There is a concerted effort now to think about multi benefit land repurposing, and that is something the Union of Concerned Scientists is really involved in, ensuring that community voices are at the table to decide what kind of future the Central Valley wants to see. Obviously, the extremely high rates of poverty, asthma and poor health conditions are all signs that what we're doing isn't working. So how do we do it right.
There's a lot of great ideas on the table. You know, some of it is going to be around habitat conservation, some of it's going to be affordable housing. Some of it is going to be aquifer recharge and management. Some of it is going to be renewable energy creation, but it all has to be done in a way that actually produces community benefits. If we do that, then the rest of it will work. You know, if we put the community voices front and center, then we can be sure that the policies will actually produce the benefits that we're saying they will.
Mallika Nocco
I have to say, Juliet, listening to you, makes me miss California. And usually the things that have been making me miss California are like wine. So it was great to miss it for other reasons, to just think about all of the political power that this state has to demonstrate a brighter future and an alternative path, as you know a state government. I thought that was really well stated. I appreciated that, and it made me think to myself, boy Juliet would be a fantastic politician. But you, you have been a politician in addition to your career, you know, with the Union of Concerned Scientists and as a scientist, you've also served as a member or are currently serving as a member of your local Sanitation District. What made you decide to run for office, and is it something that you'd recommend for other water professionals?
Juliet Christian-Smith
Yes, I like to practice what I preach. So I looked around and said, is there anything I could do, is there anything I could run for where I would actually bring some knowledge or perspective that would be valuable. And one of the projects I had actually been working on at the Water Foundation was looking at water leadership. And water leadership is notoriously, let me think of the right adjective. It's notoriously not representative, so it tends to have board members…and so let me go back to water governance. Water governance is usually at the local scale, divided up into tons, 1000s of local districts, whether they're providing water or wastewater treatment, whether they're a wholesaler or providing the water directly to your community from a wholesaler, it's a complicated array of institutions, and a lot of people don't even know who provides their water, particularly if you're a renter and you're not receiving a water bill, you might not have any idea.
So it's maybe not that surprising that water boards tend to have extremely long tenure. People who get on a water board often stay for decades, and they often don't represent their communities. So they are by and large, white males over the age of 60. Having that information, I looked at my local water district. Well, it's a big water district, and it costs hundreds of thousands to run for office. I wasn't going to do that. I don't have that kind of time or money. It's also a full time job. And I looked at my local Wastewater District. It's a small district, and the people on the board had been there, indeed, for decades.
So I thought to myself, I'll put my name in the hat. And it turned out, I was the first person to run against one of these Wastewater District Board members for over 20 years, and I won by a landslide. And I will say I spent no money on this. I did walk door to door and talk to people about what the district was, why it was important to them, but that's all I did. And once I got on the board, I found out some interesting things. For instance, our rate structure was not equitable to multifamily homes. I found out that we had some issues with not having prepared for some of the impacts of climate change, like increased infiltration into our system, which meant we actually would sometimes spill sewage into the bay.
And so all of this has been a real learning experience for me to understand the utilities perspective, which is very different from the nonprofits perspective, which is different from academic perspective, and to find solutions using all of those pieces of the puzzle to really make this system a model for the whole state and nation. That's my goal.
Sam Sandoval
What an amazing goal. And I think from the books now to the practice, those are great examples. Many of the people in our audience are scientists and it's good that we can share some of the wisdom that you have. If you can share some of your wisdom related to how some of us, scientists and researchers, academics, we are interested in engaging in policy. How can we do that?
Mallika Nocco
Do you have any words of advice for students too?
Juliet Christian-Smith
Yeah, that's such a great audience. So my main piece of advice would be to Power Map. And what I mean by that is to ask yourself these questions, what really needs to change about the issue that I'm working on? Where is that change made? So for instance, is it a legislative change or a federal agency or city council resolution, and then who specifically can make that change happen. There might be multiple decision makers, but consider what kind of authority each of them has, and then really try to connect the work that you are doing with the types of decisions that you have that you're targeting, and specifically in the spheres where the decisions are made.
So it's a lot of navigation between what are your research questions, what are you finding? And then in the world, who needs that information, and who will be making decisions that could be improved by having that information, and that is really the work of groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists to help navigate that complex field of figuring out who is the right person to give the right information to at the right time.
A lot of times, scientists and researchers and students are so busy doing the research itself that they don't have the time to think about the very complicated nature of the decision making arenas that that information needs to be informing. And so we have a program at UCS called the Science Network, where we have about 25,000 scientists, economists, public health specialists and other experts who are interested in making that connection. And what we can do is we can give you tools. We can help you learn how to talk to legislators. We can bring you up to date on some of the types of decisions that are being made at different scales, and we can connect you with others who are working on these issues, whether that's community groups or other scientists and researchers and really under.
Understanding your role in the whole ecosystem of advocacy is important, because the truth is, people still trust scientists. They still trust independent science. And when you go into a room that's filled with lobbyists that are reading off of their cell phones prepared bullet points with no understanding of the larger issues beneath those bullet points, your voice matters, and it carries a lot of weight, and so using that power and that privilege to actually advance the causes that you care about and the research results that you're finding is, I think, an ethical responsibility of being a democratic citizen and a scientist,
Sam Sandoval
I think with power comes responsibility, right?
Mallika Nocco
Oh, Spider Man.
Sam Sandoval
And truly, I'm saying this because, I mean, it comes to embrace also our responsibility to know our governance system, to not only know our academics and how to publish and what classes to take, what is the graduate path to to get my degree, but also how to to engage? From a personal point of view, I truly am glad that you're sharing with us that we have to be civically engaged, not just us on our benches, on our computers, doing all this math and the end result is a paper. We actually need to engage and thank you for giving us the tools. Thank you, Juliet.
Juliet Christian-Smith
Oh, you're welcome. That's music to my ears. And I want to say one thing, there is a great three page description of power mapping for success. So like one of my favorite UCS publications – just look it up and think about how you might be able to apply it to your work.
Mallika Nocco
Awesome. Yeah, I may do it at one of my lab meetings. Spoilers for the lab. No, but I feel very inspired, and just what a great call to action. I also think it's really interesting, because, like for the students who are listening, or just the early career people like, I don't know that when people decide to become scientists, they don’t necessarily consider that as a path to politics. But why not? Right? Like, why? Why wouldn't it be a path to politics any more or any les, than any other area of expertise? So I think that's fantastic.
Juliet Christian-Smith
Also, I think science is politics. It's not just a path to politics. It is politics. So if you saw Oppenheimer, or you know, you remember the history of Galileo going on trial, science has been a tool wielded by different interests for different purposes, and so if you want science to be for the public good or to improve lives, you have to make sure it does that. Because there's a lot out there. There's a lot of forces that are looking at other goals, whether that's militarism, whether it's revenue generation, there's a lot of powerful interests, and your science will be used. You know, that's why I think it's important to consider, what is your role as a scientist, ensuring that it's used for the purposes that you believe in.
Mallika Nocco
Absolutely, absolutely. And this is something that I think is very different from how most of us were trained. I remember absolutely, yeah, I remember specifically being trained and told to stay out of this, that scientists are supposed to be objective, whatever that means and that we shouldn't do. We shouldn't be involved, and we shouldn't do this type of work. But you know, for me, I almost had to get out of that. I took some fantastic classes about public engagement with science during my PhD that helped me to think about it differently, but I don't know if I hadn't taken that course. I don't know how I would have changed my mindset, so I really appreciate you saying that to everyone who's listening right now.
We always like to end by asking our guests if there's anything more that you'd like people to know about your work and how all of us can support your efforts.
Juliet Christian-Smith
Well, I love what you just said about finding your way to understanding that science is a part of society, and therefore we have to consider the societal implications of our work. I don't know if there's a better example right now than that of artificial intelligence and the growing interest in science and technology studies, which wasn't even a thing when I was in school, but the idea that our technological innovations need to have a similar attention to how they will be used and who they will impact and what kind of future they create.
I would love if some of your listeners would think about joining the UCS Science Network, if they would think about ways in which they want to be engaged in really ensuring that all of this important work we're doing gets used and that it really changes how we experience the world from having access to clean and affordable water to having healthy air. We have done it, we will continue to do it, and science has been a big part of it, but we really have to be engaged to ensure it's used in the right ways, and that decision makers have the information they need to make choices that will improve our lives.
Faith Kearns
Awesome. Well, thank you so much Juliet for talking with us today. We have had a great time, and I have many thoughts going through my head that I'll have to deal with later, but thank you so much for being on Water Talk today.