Speaker biographies

Joseph Aldy researches climate change policy, mortality risk valuation, energy subsidies to low-income households, and energy policy. He has studied the design of international climate change policy architectures; the costs, effectiveness, and principles of emissions trading programs and other mitigation policies; and the relationship between economic development and greenhouse gas emissions. His research on mortality risk valuation focuses on how individuals' willingness to pay to reduce such risk varies over their lifetime. He has also evaluated how heating subsidies to low-income households can mitigate the effects of wintertime weather and energy price shocks on mortality among the elderly. Aldy served on the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 2000, where he was responsible for an array of environmental and resource issues. While there, he focused on climate change policy, air quality regulations, petroleum markets, electricity restructuring, hazardous waste policy, environmental issues in China, and sustainable development.

Lee Lane has been the executive director of the Climate Policy Center (CPC) since the founding of its predecessor organization in 2000. Mr. Lane leads the development and implementation of the organization’s strategic options and directs its overall management. During his tenure as executive director, CPC has expanded its scope to encompass emission control policies, energy research and development, and the search for effective international agreements on climate change. Recently, Mr. Lane completed three book chapters on climate policy. The most, “Climate Change and Security Policy,” will be published in Proceedings from the First Annual Symposium on Emerging Issues in National and International Security from the American University National Security and Law Society. Another article, “A New Paradigm for U.S. Climate Policy,” appears in Climate Policy for the 21st Century: Meeting the Long-Term Challenge of Global Warming, published by the Center for Transatlantic Relations of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Lane is the author of “The Political Economy of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Controls,” which was published in Punctuated Equilibrium and the dynamics of U.S. Environmental Policy (Yale University Press, 2006). Mr. Lane has also authored several climate policy white papers that can be found on CPC’s website.

Thomas Schelling is a distinguished professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. Before coming to the University of Maryland, Mr. Schelling spent twenty years at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he was the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1991, he was president of the American Economic Association, of which he is now a distinguished fellow. He was the recipient of the Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy and the National Academy of Sciences Award for Behavioral Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War. He served in the Economic Cooperation Administration in Europe and has held positions in the White House, Yale University, the RAND Corporation, and the Department of Economics and Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He has written on military strategy and arms control, energy and environmental policy, climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, organized crime, foreign aid, international trade, conflict and bargaining theory, racial segregation and integration, the military draft, health policy, tobacco and drug policy, and ethical issues in public policy and in business.

Samuel Thernstrom is the managing editor of the AEI Press and director of AEI’s W. H. Brady Program in Culture and Freedom. He served as director of communications at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (2001–03), speechwriter to Governor George E. Pataki, and as a spokesman for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

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