On September 19, Woodwell Climate submitted public comment on the U.S. Forest Service’s proposed rulemaking to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, also known as the Roadless Rule. This rule banned logging and the creation of new logging roads in 58 million acres of National forests.
The federal agency’s intent to rescind the Roadless Rule aligns with the presidential Executive Order, “Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation” which seeks to remove obstacles to extracting natural resources on public lands. Additionally, the agency claims the repeal of the rule will allow forest managers to remove trees from “overstocked forests” to prevent wildfire and disease.
Woodwell Climate strongly opposes the rescission of the rule, citing the best available science that shows increased roadways and subsequent logging will result in ecological degradation, increased wildfire, and loss of critical carbon stocks.
“The Roadless Rule currently protects millions of acres from extractive activities that would result in ecosystem degradation and increased vulnerability to wildfire,” writes Senior Scientist Rich Birdsey in the comment. “Rescinding the Roadless Rule would harm many public uses of the land, cause significant emissions of greenhouse gases, and destroy critical habitat for many species of wildlife.”
Federal forests have major carbon storage and climate mitigation potential, absorbing approximately 3% of U.S. emissions from fossil fuel burning each year. Mature and old growth forests are responsible for the majority of that, and the Roadless Rule has been instrumental in preventing the logging of these important forests, including the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
“Increased logging is the single greatest threat to these forests and the carbon they hold — and it is the threat we most directly control,” the Woodwell Climate comment states. “As the impacts of climate change become more extreme and damaging, we should prioritize protecting mature and old growth forests on federal lands, not harvesting them.”
Additionally, studies show that road building into previously undisturbed forests actually increases vulnerability to fire. This is because most wildfires are caused by human ignitions which become more common with better access roads. Undisturbed mature and old-growth forest ecosystems are also more resilient to wildfires compared to forests that are actively logged and managed.
Read the full public comment here.
What keeps Woodwell Climate Director of Government Relations, Laura Uttley going day to day?
Uttley leads the Center’s domestic policy advocacy, and it’s been a hard year for domestic policy. In the past, her work has involved building relationships with members of Congress, tracking climate-relevant legislation, and planning Hill visits and briefings with Center scientists. This year, it’s been all that plus an exhausting gauntlet of crisis response, as climate science falls under attack from an antagonistic presidential administration. It is a federal policy landscape that makes advancing climate research, mitigation policy, and adaptation efforts harder than perhaps at any point in U.S. history.
But waiting for easier times is not an option.
Since the start of the new presidential administration in January, federal funding and support infrastructure for science has been slashed, and many laws, court rulings, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that form the foundation of the U.S.’s climate and environmental policy have been targeted or overturned to make way for an agenda that prioritizes fossil fuels. Protecting as much environmental policy as possible has become an urgent priority for Uttley and the rest of the Government Relations team at Woodwell, but despite the chaos and uncertainty, they aren’t flagging.
“What gets me going on a day to day basis, is that I have a job to do,” says Uttley.
Holding back the floodwaters
At the beginning of the year, Uttley and the Government Relations team were bracing themselves for the new administration to “flood the zone.” The tactic, which involves mounting as many attempts as possible to repeal legislation, cut funding, and stymie regular governmental proceedings in a short timespan, is designed to overwhelm potential opposition and the media.
“It is done very intentionally,” says Uttley. “To distract. To exhaust. To cloud your judgment on things, and get you too focused on one area, so that you’re unaware or unable or too limited in terms of resources to work in a different space.”
And that’s exactly what newly appointed officials did—from pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, to proposing the sale of public lands, to firing staff from key agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to changing regulation around how the EPA implements signature environmental legislation.
The instinct, Uttley says, for individuals and organizations that care about diversity, the environment, or public funding for science, is to react to everything because every attack feels like a devastating loss. But that is exactly what drains motivation and resources the fastest.
“I don’t have the luxury of outrage right now,” says Uttley.
So she and others have had to stay focused on the most significant policy battles, concentrating resources on the areas most aligned with Woodwell Climate’s mission and expertise.
“You could make the argument that we should be in any number of fights and policy debates,” says Uttley. “But if we go too far afield, the impact of our voice changes in those dialogues that are so core to our mission. Staying focused can be really hard to do when everything feels so deeply important.”
Top Priority: The Endangerment Finding
Among the fights the Center’s Government Relations team has engaged in, protecting the infrastructure of American climate policy has been a chief priority. In July, the administration announced its intent to revoke the Endangerment Finding, which underpins the majority of U.S. climate action. This finding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) affirms that the emission of six greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere— including carbon dioxide and methane— represents a threat to human health and wellbeing, giving the agency authority to regulate them. The decision was based on rigorous science, and was re-affirmed in a 2018 study, led by then-president of Woodwell Climate, Dr. Phil Duffy, who wrote that in the intervening years evidence in support of the finding had only accumulated.
The current administration has attempted to call into question the scientific basis of the finding by releasing a report from the Department of Energy (DOE) that challenges consensus on the damaging impacts of carbon emissions. The suggestion that regulating emissions has caused more harm than the effects of climate change, according to Dave McGlinchey, who served as Woodwell Climate’s Chief of Government Relations between 2016 and 2025, is a blatant dismissal of scientific fact.
“We built an operation here at Woodwell that is very non-partisan, but the idea that the Executive Branch of the U.S. federal government just doesn’t engage with evidence, or moves forward despite clearly contravening evidence, is a real challenge,” says McGlinchey.
It also dismisses the fact that the EPA’s ability to regulate things like tailpipe and power plant emissions has improved air quality for millions of Americans. The finding has made our skies clearer, lungs healthier, and contributed meaningfully to reducing the U.S.’s emissions.
Legal challenges to the proposed repeal began to roll in almost immediately after its announcement, and the opportunity for public comment on the rule was extended to September 22. The Woodwell Climate team developed an organizational comment in support of the Finding to throw more scientific weight behind the efforts to keep it in place.
Climate risk spans political divides
While the political landscape around climate mitigation remains contentious, opportunities to advance resilience projects on the local scale remain. Communities across the political spectrum are feeling the acute impacts of climate change and need information to protect themselves.
“Risk is a bipartisan issue,” says McGlinchey. “Unfortunately, in this country, we have repeated, catastrophic reminders of what climate change impacts look like, so people are attuned to that. They want to understand risk and they want to understand how to become more resilient.“
Andrew Condia, External Affairs Manager, leads the Center’s primary climate adaptation project, Just Access. The initiative connects climate scientists with communities both in the U.S. and around the world to provide assessments of current and future climate risks at no cost to the communities. With a better understanding of how variables like flooding, drought, heatwaves, and fires will impact their communities in the coming years, leaders in municipal governments have been able to have climate-informed conversations about planning, infrastructure, and public health. Even in overwhelmingly conservative areas.
“We work with some Democratic mayors, some Republican mayors, and they are lined up and equally as engaged in the process,” says Condia. “They understand the importance of this information and know that it’s a critical tool to help them as their communities grow and change in the future.”
The sweeping nature of cutbacks on the federal level has meant that municipalities are now one of the only places these conversations are able to move forward.
“I think local governments recognize that in the absence of federal leadership, it’s up to them to step up to make progress on these issues. It’s the only climate action in the country that is really making meaningful progress right now,” says Condia.
Bigger picture, longer term
At higher levels of government, McGlinchey says the current top priority is to maintain relationships with policymakers and lay the groundwork for long-term changes while momentum in the short term has been halted.
“We can’t look at how bleak the landscape appears to be and throw our hands up and give up. Because political winds shift frequently in this country, and fairly dramatically, and when they shift again, we don’t want to start at zero,” says McGlinchey.
For the past three years the Government Relations team has organized “fly-ins”, which bring Woodwell Climate scientists to Washington D.C. for meetings with Members of Congress and their staff. The fly-ins are key to how the Center stewards relationships on Capitol Hill and raises issues like permafrost thaw or flood insurance risk to the attention of legislators. Despite this year’s political changes, Uttley was still able to bring 12 scientists, board members, and staff for meetings with 15 congressional offices this September.
Woodwell has also remained active in coalition groups, which combine the power of many organizations to push for common goals.
“We’re engaged in the Adaptation Working Group, Friends of NOAA, the Coalition for National Science Funding, and more,” says Uttley. “From a policy perspective we have really seen the advocacy community rally together this year.”
And while the U.S. regresses on climate action, the rest of the world continues forward. Woodwell Climate is helping to propel important climate policy on the international stage, forming a delegation to the annual UN Conference of Parties (COP) in Belém, Brazil in November. Given its location, tropical forests will feature heavily on the agenda this year, and the Center will be showcasing emerging work on tropical regenerative agriculture, sustainable development in the DRC, and financing for forest protection. The Center is also collaborating with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to provide technical support for countries submitting biennial transparency reports on their progress towards climate goals.
Momentum on climate means telling climate stories
Still, facing down the urgency and magnitude of climate change, these incremental wins and slowly unfolding plans often don’t feel like enough compared to swift federal actions. Especially for individuals who don’t have their hands on the levers of power. But Uttley says the local level is where most change has always started, and individuals can make a difference.
“While I’m working to make systemic change on the federal level, one of the most powerful things each of us can do to keep up momentum on climate is to tell stories about local impacts,” says Uttley. Whether it’s about soccer practices canceled for heat or commuting lanes flooded, stories that connect climate change to our daily lives help change minds and motivate action.
Working on climate policy in times like these is a careful balance of hope and disappointment, Uttley says, but in order to move forward hope always has to win out. Not wishful thinking, but the kind of hope that springs from facing down the obstacles and getting to work.
“I’ve been in public policy and advocacy for 15 years,” says Uttley. “If I didn’t have a strong sense of optimism and hope, I would not be able to do this job.”
The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding has underpinned almost all U.S. efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, making it a prime target for the Trump administration’s rollback of climate policies. A day-one executive order included a directive to review the “legality and continuing applicability” of the finding. On March 12, the EPA announced that it would potentially rescind the Finding, and the announcement was formalized with a proposed rule on July 29.
Repealing the Finding would undo more than a decade of work that has made American communities healthier, skies clearer of smog and other pollution, and contributed to the country’s decreasing carbon emissions.
What is the Endangerment Finding?
The Endangerment Finding is a pivotal determination by the EPA, issued in response to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court Case Massachusetts vs. EPA. In that case, the court held that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and that after it has made a finding of endangerment, the agency cannot refuse to regulate these gases.
Additionally, the EPA found that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are both a hazard to public health and that motor vehicle emissions contribute to this pollution. In the years since, the EPA has built on the original ruling and issued subsequent endangerment findings relating to aircraft and utility emissions under other provisions of the Clean Air Act .
Why is the Endangerment Finding important?
As a result, the Endangerment Finding has become the legal foundation for essentially all federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. – including motor vehicle tailpipe emissions and power plant rules.
The EPA’s proposed rule would repeal all greenhouse gas emissions standards for light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles and engines, and would preempt any state fuel efficiency or vehicle emissions laws or regulations. Furthermore, this repeal could be a foundation for undoing greenhouse gas emissions regulations on stationary sources like power plants or oil and gas facilities.
The Endangerment Finding is based on sound science
The attempt to repeal the Endangerment Finding is emblematic of the current administration’s disregard for scientific consensus around the causes and impacts of climate change.
The original finding draws from expertise at the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the National Academies of Sciences. It examined public health and public welfare in the U.S., with a focus on air quality, food production and agriculture, forestry, water resources, sea level rise and coastal areas, energy, infrastructure, and settlements, and ecosystems and wildlife. The EPA received over 380,000 public comments, the majority of which provided support for the Finding.
In 2018, Dr. Philip Duffy, then-president of Woodwell Climate Research Center, led a review of the scientific foundation of the Endangerment Finding. That work, published in the journal Science, found that “for each of the areas addressed in the EF, the amount, diversity, and sophistication of the evidence has increased markedly, clearly strengthening the case for endangerment. New evidence about the extent, severity, and interconnectedness of impacts detected to date and projected for the future reinforces the case that climate change endangers the health and welfare of current and future generations.”
What’s next for climate policy?
The legal validity of the administration’s proposed rule was contested almost immediately and challenges will likely continue to roll in even if the rule is made official.
The EPA has extended a public comment period on this topic through September 22, 2025. The recently released Department of Energy (DOE) report, A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate, which challenges scientific consensus by claiming that carbon dioxide-induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, serves as a foundation for the EPA’s proposed rule. That report is also open for public comment through September 2, 2025.
The National Academy of Sciences has fast-tracked its scientific review of the impacts of greenhouse gases on human health in order to inform the decision within the comment period, and has requested contributions from scientists and experts in the fields of public health, extreme weather, climate modeling, agriculture, and infrastructure. Woodwell Climate is contributing to the opportunities for public comment and scientific engagement to aid future consideration of this, and similar, proposals in courts and encourages members of the public to do the same.
In recent public comment, scientists at Woodwell Climate Research Center warn against the use of the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) clean electricity tax credits to support biomass as an effective clean energy solution. Scientists cited its higher carbon footprint per unit energy compared to burning fossil fuels, and highlighted that claims to offset these emissions by planting trees are misleading, as new trees take decades to centuries to recapture lost carbon. The comment, submitted in response to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and U.S. Department of Treasury’s proposed guidance on the Clean Electricity Production Credit and Clean Electricity Investment Credit, advocates for more rigorous guardrails from the agencies regarding the use of wood for bioenergy, greater regulatory clarity, and more accurate accounting of emissions from wood-burned fuel.
The Clean Electricity Production and Investment Credits were designed to provide incentives “to any clean energy facility that achieves net zero greenhouse gas emissions.” The proposed guidance, released in June, is intended to clarify and add certainty around how to measure and define “net zero,” and how clean energy production facilities can qualify for these incentives.
In their comment, however, scientists emphasize more work must be done to achieve this goal: “The content of the proposed guidance is ambiguous or even conflicting about some parts of the rule regarding sources of forest bioenergy,” they write. “Parts of the guidance should be made much clearer and more definitive to ensure that there are no unintended consequences. Guardrails could be put in place to avoid the many ways that increasing use of wood for bioenergy would increase emissions rather than having the desired effect of decreasing emissions. It is also important to consider the many values of forests beyond climate mitigation, such as timber, biodiversity, water, and recreation.”
Scientists also note the proposed guidance does not properly account for the net emissions associated with forest bioenergy – all of which contribute to its high carbon footprint and add to concerns from experts that biomass can actually worsen the climate crisis – including those from harvesting intact forests, logging debris, transporting woody biomass, and converting biomass to fuel, as well as from feedstock, fertilizers, and forest management practices like thinning, where live trees are removed to reduce wildfire risk or promote forest growth, and more.
Because many of these emissions are left out, the proposed guidance overestimates the potential of forest bioenergy to achieve the IRA’s intended goal of lowering emissions, and further fuels incorrect assumptions that biomass energy is an effective, carbon-neutral alternative to fossil fuels.
Throughout the comment, scientists offer recommendations to help decision makers more accurately incorporate and represent these emissions in policy. For example: 1) account for both direct and indirect emissions; 2) avoid the fallacy of assuming carbon neutrality; and 3) take a case-by-case approach to calculate the counterfactual emissions, or what the emissions would have been had the wood or biomass not been used for bioenergy; among others.
On September 13th, 2023 a group of 15 of Woodwell Climate Research Center staff, scientists, and board members gathered on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. They had a big day ahead of them: on the docket were around 16 different meetings with Congressional staff and Members of Congress on topics ranging from carbon markets and the Farm Bill, to water research, to assessments of climate risk. The goal was clear across the board: share the takeaways from Woodwell’s scientific research with the very policymakers who are tasked with making decisions on climate issues.
This was Woodwell Climate’s second annual “Fly-In”—so called because it brings team members of a non-DC-based organization, like Woodwell, face-to-face with policymakers in Congress. The masterminds behind the Fly-In were staff members who are part of an invaluable team at the Center: the Government Relations (GR) team.
Building a team for the greatest impact
Woodwell Climate has always been involved in the policy-making process. From its outset, the driving principle behind the Center has been carrying out scientific research to inform decision making. For many years, however, there were no team members on staff whose primary responsibility was to bridge the gap between science and policy. When Dave McGlinchey, Chief of Government Relations, came on board with the Center via the Communications team, then-president Dr. Philip Duffy was taking on much of the policy work himself. It became clear as the Center grew, that in order to realize the full impact potential of the Center’s research they needed a dedicated policy team.
Today, the GR team has four full-time members who come from a diverse set of professional backgrounds. McGlinchey got his start as a journalist on Capitol Hill who “fell in love with the policymaking process” and felt drawn to address the severity of the climate crisis. Laura Uttley, Director of Government Relations, has been a lobbyist in D.C. for over ten years and was excited to join a relatively new team establishing its roots in the capital. Andrew Condia, External Affairs Manager, spent many years working in the office of a U.S. Senator as a liaison for local government officials. He pivoted to Woodwell because he wanted a more narrow focus on a policy area he was passionate about: solving environmental problems. And Natalie Baillargeon, a Policy Analyst, was a scientist first before she realized that her passion lay in transforming that science into useful policy.
It is precisely this diversity of perspectives that makes the team so effective, Uttley says, because they are able to reach decisions by coming at problems from many different angles. The full-time team members work alongside Dr. Peter Frumhoff, a part-time Senior Science Policy Expert, and Government Relations Assistant Abby Fennelly.
The road from research to legislation
In the three years since the creation of the team, the investment in dedicated GR staff members has proven invaluable.
“In 2023, it’s no longer enough to produce good science and hope something good comes of that…What we came to realize is that we really need to get involved in shaping that policy,” McGlinchey says. “The science is not getting put to use otherwise. And if we don’t get involved in the policymaking process, other people will, and oftentimes it will be people who are not prioritizing climate stability as one of their main objectives”
So how does the GR team shape policy?
“Anytime the government acts, there’s an opportunity to influence policymakers, legislation, or regulations and promote or defend policies that advance Woodwell’s interests,” Uttley says. For the members of the GR team, their job is to spot those opportunities and leverage Woodwell’s science in a way that improves climate policy.
That process starts with building relationships and trust with decision makers. As McGlinchey puts it, “you can’t show up in these policymaking settings and just expect people to welcome you in and embrace your science right off the bat.”
The GR team puts time and effort into establishing Woodwell’s reputation for producing rigorous, high-quality science and advocating for pragmatic, nonpartisan policies that foster relationships and improve climate-related legislation. After building the organization’s credibility in government, team members take a two pronged approach to advancing climate policy. The first is to spot windows within existing legislation where “there could be a stronger role of climate science,” McGlinchey says.
One example of this is Woodwell’s work on the Farm Bill, legislation that authorizes programs related to agriculture, nutrition, conservation, and forestry policy and must be renewed every five years. Given climate science pertains to a range of topics and policies included in the Farm Bill, Woodwell developed policy priorities, hosted a congressional briefing, drafted legislative text alongside congressional offices, and spoke with decision-makers about advancing the role of climate science in the Farm Bill.
The second approach Woodwell’s GR team takes is to build support for new initiatives. An example of this is Woodwell’s push for the development of a more coordinated system of national climate services, which grew out of one of the Center’s flagship programs: Just Access.
Just Access is a partnership between GR and Woodwell’s Risk program that provides “useful, relevant, accessible, and free of charge climate information that can help communities make forward thinking policy decisions,” says Condia, who leads this work on the GR side.
GR team members find and communicate with partner governments around the world, providing project management while the Risk team completes the scientific assessment of risk for relevant climate factors such as heat, flooding, and drought.
Through this work, the Woodwell team has come face to face with the enormous gaps in delivery of climate services and information to local and regional governments. “You realize that you’re just scratching the surface,” McGlinchey laments. “You work with Chelsea, Massachusetts, and it’s important and powerful. But there’s 1000 other communities like it that I wish we could work with.”
For many communities, Condia says, “the Just Access program may be the only opportunity they have to have access to this data, to be able to understand their climate future.” This realization led the GR team to develop an advocacy framework calling for a new federal initiative establishing comprehensive national climate services.
From Chelsea, Massachusetts to the D.R.C.
Federal policy work can be a long game. For Baillargeon, working on more local projects like Just Access is exciting because “when we work with these communities, science is in the hands of decision-makers immediately.” In many cases, communities quickly undertake steps towards protecting vulnerable residents and infrastructure identified by the risk assessments. In Chelsea, Massachusetts, city officials integrated the results of the assessment into their planning for equitable climate resilience solutions. In Charleston, South Carolina, local governments are using their risk assessment as support for a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grant application.
It’s not just in the United States where these risk assessments have an impact. For the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Environment Ministry, Woodwell completed a unique assessment that included an analysis of risk to forest carbon stocks. The risk assessment led to a request for Woodwell to support the creation of a regulatory agency for carbon markets.
For McGlinchey, this work is incredibly exciting. “This is a once in a generation opportunity to direct enormous amounts of funding into forest conservation efforts…and we need those forests conserved if we’re going to have a stable climate.” Voluntary carbon markets, he says, have not historically been reliable. What’s happening now in the DRC is an opportunity for Woodwell policy experts to support the creation of science-backed standards to ensure that when offsets or credits are sold there is a verifiable climate benefit. In short: “there’s a lot at stake here.”
Endless possibility for policy action
The flow of opportunities for leveraging Woodwell’s research continues to build momentum. The team is rising to meet the challenge, and there is a lot they want to accomplish in the coming years. As they take on new projects and add new team members, they will continue to stay true to the organization’s mission, never straying from the science. Each team member was adamant about one thing: Woodwell does things differently, and it is that difference that leads to such a profound policy impact coming from such a small team.
“Woodwell exists in not a unique niche, but an unusual one,” McGlinchey says. “We’re not a pure science organization, but we’re not a straight advocacy organization. We bring deep scientific credentials and then we get into the policymaking room and engage and try to create better legislation…people appreciate it. They appreciate that our motivations are purely focused on a stable, safe climate.” It’s what makes an event like September’s Fly-In so successful. Science, translated into policy, without the political baggage.
“Once they figure that out about Woodwell,” says McGlinchey, “they want to work with us.”