Speaker biographies

Scott Barrett is a professor of environmental economics and international political economy, director of the international policy program, and director of the Global Health and Foreign Policy Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He has advised a number of international organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the European Commission, the Independent World Commission on the Oceans, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Commission on Environmental Law, and the International Task Force on Global Public Goods. He was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change second assessment report and previously served on the academic panel for the U.K.’s Department of Environment. Mr. Barrett received the Erik Kempe Prize for his work on international environmental agreements. His books include Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-Making (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Christopher DeMuth has been president of AEI since 1986. Previously, he was a practicing lawyer and consulting economist, taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and worked at the White House in the Reagan and Nixon administrations. His articles have appeared in The American Enterprise, the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Journal of Regulation, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and other publications.

Kerry Emanuel is a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has been on the faculty since 1981. Previously, he spent three years as a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles. Mr. Emanuel’s research focuses on tropical meteorology and climate with a specialty in hurricane physics. His interests also include cumulus convection and advanced methods of sampling the atmosphere in aid of numerical weather prediction. He is the author or coauthor of over one hundred peer-reviewed scientific papers. Mr. Emanuel’s books include Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes (Oxford University Press, 2005) and What We Know about Climate Change (MIT Press, 2007). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and serves on the National Academy’s Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate.

Fred Iklé is a distinguished scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he focuses on the impact of technology on national security and the prospects for democracy. He is a member of the Defense Policy Board, a governor of the SmithRichardson Foundation, a director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and an advisory board member of the Center for Security Policy. Prior to joining CSIS in 1988, Mr. Iklé was under secretary of defense for policy during the first and second Reagan administrations. In 1987, he cochaired the bipartisan Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, which published Discriminate Deterrence. From 1977 to 1978, he was chairman of the Republican National Committee’s Advisory Council on International Security and, from 1979 to 1980, coordinator of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy advisers. From 1973 to 1977, Mr. Iklé served presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Since 1988, he has been chairman of CMC Energy Services. He served for nine years as a director of the National Endowment for Democracy and from 1999 to 2000 as commissioner on the National Commission on Terrorism.

Lee Lane, codirector of AEI’s project on geoengineering, is a resident fellow at AEI and a consultant to CRA International. Previously, he served as executive director of the Climate Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.–based policy research organization that analyzes climate policy and promotes economically efficient policy responses to the challenge of climate change. Mr. Lane is the author of Strategic Options for Bush Administration Climate Policy (AEI Press, 2006). He has contributed chapters to several books on climate change and energy policy. He was the lead author of the 2006 NASA Ames workshop report on geoengineering. Mr. Lane has consulted with both the American and Japanese governments on technology and energy policy and with private sector clients both here and in Australia.

Samuel Thernstrom is codirector of AEI’s project on geoengineering. He is also director of the AEI Press. Mr. Thernstrom previously served as director of communications at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (2001–2003), speechwriter to Governor George E. Pataki, and press secretary for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He has studied and written about environmental issues for twenty years, with a particular emphasis on global climate change.

Vaughan Turekian is the chief international officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Previously, Mr. Turekian served as special assistant to the under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs, where he was lead adviser on international science, technology, environment, and health issues, including clean energy, sustainable development, climate change, scientific outreach, and avian influenza. He has twice received the State Department’s Superior Honor Award for his work on climate change and avian influenza. Mr. Turekian has also worked at the National Academy of Sciences, where he was study director for a report requested by the White House on climate change science in 2001. He has published numerous articles on the links between science and international policy.

Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is one of the world’s experts on climate change. He was trained as a meteorologist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Mr. Wigley has published widely in the field of climatology and related sciences and is the author of more than 250 refereed journal articles and book chapters. He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His current primary interests include projections of future climate and sea-level change; carbon-cycle modeling; the interpretation of past climate changes, including the detection of anthropogenic influences; climate model validation; and economic and policy aspects of mitigation. Mr. Wigley has contributed as an author to all Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments and developed the MAGICC coupled gas-cycle/climate model used to produce temperature and sea-level projections given in IPCC reports. He is the former director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

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