Citizens and scientists pointing the way to a cleaner environment and a safer world, that's the Union of Concerned Scientists.

   Through their five programs, pressure points translate vision into action. The Union of Concerned Scientists, located in Cambridge, Ma., connects the best scientific insights with the knowledge and support of an astute citizenry and apply them to the machinery of government at all levels -- with results that have set a standard for effective advocacy for decades.

   Begun in 1969, UCS is an independent nonprofit alliance of 50,000 concerned citizens and scientists across the country. It was born out of a movement at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where an ad hoc group of faculty and students joined together to protest the misuse of science and technology. UCS is a small organization that tackles big issues.

   The five programs are food/ environment, trying to persuade the government to encourage innovative ways to grow plants and animals, protect the safety of food, and ensure that consumers and citizens can make choices about how food is produced; clean vehicles, which develops and promotes strategies to reduce the adverse environmental, public health, and economic impacts of the US transportation system; global environment, since implementing the Kyoto Protocol is a vital first step to curbing global warming, UCS is working to build support for US ratification and to strengthen some of the protocol's outstanding details; clean energy. UCS examines the benefits and costs of the country's energy use, and promotes energy solutions that are sustainable both environmentally and economically; and global security, UCS has a powerful voice in the international arms control community and on Capitol Hill.

   Currently, movie theaters across the United States are showing a public service announcement on global warming that they produced in partnership with the Earth Communications Office in Hollywood. Comments by UCS experts that help to shape public opinion are often featured in newspaper articles and radio and TV news programs.

   Knowing the immensity of the challenge, UCS actively works in coalition with other environmental groups that share its goals.