Plenary 2.10: Climate Engineering Governance World Café

Holly Jean Buck is a assistant professor at the Department of Environment and Science at The State University of New York at Buffalo.  Her research interests include agroecology and climate-smart agriculture, energy landscapes, land use change, new media, and science and technology studies.  She has written on several aspects of climate engineering, including humanitarian and development approaches to geoengineering, gender considerations, and the social implications of scaling up negative emissions. Her book After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration (Verso Books, 2019) looks at best-case scenarios for carbon removal and solar geoengineering.  She holds a doctorate in Development Sociology from Cornell University and a MSc in Human Ecology from Lund University, Sweden.

Peter C. Frumhoff is director of science and policy and chief climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) – a non-profit science advocacy organization headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A global change ecologist, he has published and lectured widely on climate science and policy, the climate responsibilities of fossil fuel companies and the conservation and management of tropical forests and biological diversity.
He serves on the board of directors of the American Wind Wildlife Institute, the steering committee for the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS, and the Board of Editors of Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, and is a non-faculty associate of the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Previously, he served on the Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science at the US Department of Interior, and the Board of Editors of Ecological Applications.
He was a lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, lead author of the 2000 IPCC Special Report on Land Use, Land-use Change and Forestry and Chair of the 2007 Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA).  He was the 2014 Cox Visiting Professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. Previously, he taught at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Harvard University and the University of Maryland, and was a AAAS Science and Diplomacy Fellow at the US Agency for International Development.
Dr. Frumhoff is quoted frequently in print and electronic media and has given congressional testimony on multiple occasions. He received a PhD in ecology and MA in zoology from the University of California at Davis, and a B.A. in psychology from the University of California at San Diego.

Andrew Light is Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute, in Washington, D.C., and University Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, Philosophy, and Atmospheric Sciences at George Mason University.  From 2013-2016 he served as Senior Adviser and India Counselor to the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change and Staff Climate Adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry in the Office of Policy Planning in the U.S. Department of State.  In this capacity he served on the senior strategy team for the UN climate negotiations and Director of the U.S.-India Joint Working Group for Combating Climate Change.  In recognition of this work, Andrew was awarded the inaugural Public Philosophy Award, from the International Society for Environmental Ethics in June 2017, the inaugural Alain Locke Award for Public Philosophy, from the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in March 2016, and a Superior Honor Award, from the U.S. Department of State in July 2016, for his work creating and negotiating the Paris Agreement on climate change.  In his academic career, Andrew is the author of over 100 articles and book chapters, primarily on the normative dimensions of climate change, restoration ecology, and urban sustainability, and has authored, co-authored, and edited 19 books, including Environmental Values (2008), Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice (2003),  Environmental Pragmatism (1996), and the forthcoming Ethics in the Anthropocene.

Christine Merk works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. With respect to climate engineering (CE), she researches the trade-offs individuals make between mitigation and CE technologies. Within TOMACE – an interdisciplinary project within the German Priority Programme 1689, Climate Engineering – she conducts economic experiments integrating concepts from the psychology of risk perception to learn more about individuals’ perceptions and reactions to climate engineering. She has a background in political and administration science, and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Kiel University.

Anjali Viswamohanan is an analyst at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, where she works extensively on regulatory and finance issues in the energy space. Her broader role is centred around assessing the feasibility of energy transition scenarios as a response to the perpetually evolving technology mix. She is keen on developing frameworks around governance issues, specifically to advance the development of technology that deals with the mounting climate change-related concerns of the underdeveloped and developing world.
A lawyer by training, she has in her previous role, worked extensively on energy projects and public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the Indian infrastructure space.