The Climate Institute intends to be an authoritative source of information and analysis on the risks of climate change and what practical steps can be taken to lessen these risks. We view the decision of Mike McElroy and James Lee Witt to join our Board as a milestone in the Institute's emergence as the most balanced and comprehensive source of information on climate change. Mike McElroy has been at the forefront of research on climate change and variability and is impacts, particularly for the most vulnerable regions, and of efforts to preserve the stratospheric ozone layer. During the eight years he headed FEMA, James Lee Witt transformed this agency into one of the most innovative in government. Recently elected CEO of the International Code Council, he is now also spearheading this group's efforts to build storm and flood survivability into key building and planning decisions.

Mike McElroy's preeminence in atmospheric sciences is of great value as the Institute seeks to turn www.climate.org into the most comprehensive source of information on climate impacts and urban air quality. For the past five years the Climate Institute has been working closely with small island states in helping them design strategies for anticipating and responding to climate change to climate change and sea level rise. Our efforts to date have focused mostly on assisting island states to become leaders in sustainable energy. With James Lee Witt's election to our Board we anticipate helping island states to integrate energy sustainability and emergency response strategies. Those countries most threatened by climate change have an opportunity to show the world how thinking and planning smarter can benefit all.

Professor McElroy is now spearheading atmospheric science and policy work at two major universities, Harvard and Columbia. He is Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies at Harvard, heads Harvard University's Center for the Environment and chairs the Interfaculty Initiative on the Environment. He served as Founding Chair of Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and has focused his research especially on effects of human activities on the global environment. A 1984 paper he co-authored with Professors Wofsy and Prather on potential non-linear destruction of the ozone layer helped persuade the US Environmental Protection Agency to carry out a risk assessment of chlorofluorocarbons that laid the groundwork for the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol.

While maintaining his leadership role at Harvard, Prof. McElroy serves as Chairman of the Board of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction, a joint undertaking by Columbia University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Global Programs.

For over a quarter century James Lee Witt has been at the forefront of disaster and crisis management. As Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from 1993-2001, he made the agency a model in state of the art management and information systems, including geographic information systems (GIS) and garnered recognition from such bodies as the Council for Excellence in Government, Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and the National Association of Broadcasters. Before assuming the helm at FEMA, he served under Governor Clinton as head of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Management. Having started his career as head of his own construction and residential construction firm, at age 34 he was elected as County Judge for Yell County and reelected five times before assuming the leadership of Arkansas's disaster preparedness programs.

In addition to serving as President of James Lee Witt Associates, which provides innovative disaster mitigation solutions to local governments, the international community, corporations, universities, hospitals, and other nonprofit groups, Mr. Witt was recently elected as CEO of the International Code Council, a professional group that oversees formulation of building safety and design codes in the US and is fostering such work abroad as well.

Institute Has New Chairman

William A. (Bill) Nitze, President of GEMSTAR Group and a senior environmental official in both the Reagan and Clinton administrations was named Institute Chairman at a November 8, 2002 Board meeting. Earlier in April 2001 Mr. Nitze was elected Co-Chairman of the Institute and worked with the Institute's Chairman, Sir Crispin Tickell, to provide direction for the Institute's programs to bridge the growing international chasm on climate change response policy. Sir Crispin, who served for twelve years as the Climate Institute's Chairman, remains on the Institute Board as Chairman Emeritus where he will continue to work with Bill Nitze to rebuild frayed transatlantic relationships on the climate change issue.

Mr. Nitze is an internationally renowned expert on environmental issues, and currently serves as President of the GEMSTAR Group, a company focused on bringing energy-efficient technologies to developing economies. He has held key positions in government, non-governmental organizations and the private sector in the United States and abroad.

From 1994 to 2001, he served as Assistant Administrator for International Activities, US Environmental Protection Agency. From September 1990 to August 1994, Nitze was President of the Alliance to Save Energy, a Washington, DC, non-profit coalition of environmental, government, industry and consumer leaders dedicated to promoting investment in energy efficiency. He was Visiting Scholar from February to August 1990 at the Environmental Law Institute, Washington, DC, where he was at the forefront in developing international environmental policy.

As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health and Natural Resources, from 1987 to 1990, Bill Nitze had a lead role in international negotiations on global issues such as climate change, ozone layer protection, transboundary shipments of hazardous substances, biotechnology and the conservation of tropical forests. He received the Superior Honor Award of the Department of State in 1988.

Nitze is an alumnus of Harvard College (1964), Wadham College, Oxford (1966) and Harvard Law School (1969). A resident of Washington, DC, he is a member of the State of New York and the US Supreme Court Bars.

Sir Crispin, who has served recently as a senior visiting fellow of the Harvard Center for the Environment while lecturing extensively on environmental and security issues, continues to serve as Chancellor of the University of Kent at Canterbury, Director of the Green College Oxford Centre for Environmental Policy and Understanding and Chairman of the International Council of Scientific Unions Advisory Committee on the Environment.

Institute President John Topping awarded Dartmouth College Martin Luther King, Jr. Social Justice Award

At an awards dinner in Hanover, New Hampshire January 24, 2002, Topping who has served as the Climate Institute's President since its founding in 1986 was recognized for Lifetime Achievement in advancing social justice as was James Strickler, a former Dean of the Dartmouth Medical School who has fostered humanitarian efforts with groups such as the International Rescue Committee. Two more recent Dartmouth alumnae, Miranda Johnson, Class of 1997, who has been active in the Tanzania Gender Network, and Beth Robinson, Class of 1986, who led efforts to have Vermont recognize same sex civil unions, were given awards for Emerging Leadership and Ongoing Commitment. This was the first year for these awards, which will now be given annually to members of the Dartmouth community.

John Topping who graduated from Dartmouth in 1964 and Yale Law School in 1967 was cited for work in the civil rights, minority business development and environmental areas that began in his student days at Dartmouth. During his senior year at Dartmouth, Topping, an International Relations major, gathered petitions in Lebanon, NH from neighbors of US Sen. Norris Cotton asking the Senator to vote for cloture to enable the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to come to a vote. While at Yale Law School he worked for passage of the Voting Rights act of 1965 and the next year co-authored a book analyzing the implications of this legislation for the growing Southern Republican parties as well as a policy proposal for a negative income tax to replace the welfare system. Following service as an Air Force JAG officer, he was involved in the launching of the national minority business program serving for three years as Chief Counsel of the Commerce Department's Office of Minority Business Enterprise. In 1974 he was appointed to the DC Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights on which he still serves today. In Aug. 1976 Mr. Topping was given the President's Award of the National Bar Association for "service to the minority legal profession."

For the past two decades John Topping has worked in the environmental protection area serving as Staff Director of US EPA's Office of Air and Radiation from 1983-1986 and then as President of the Climate Institute. While at EPA he was involved in efforts to phase out lead from gasoline, fund the studies that led to the banning of smoking on US domestic air flights and begin the risk assessment of CFCs that helped lay the groundwork for the Montreal Protocol. Under his leadership the Climate Institute has become a world-class policy organization.

His two daughters, Elizabeth, a Dartmouth senior, and Alexandra, a Dartmouth sophomore, presented Mr. Topping's award. In accepting the award Topping stated that what he was proudest of was that his daughters and their brother John III had been involved in environmental and social causes even earlier than he had been. He also noted that this same commitment was evident in the over a hundred young people who had served over the past dozen years as interns at the Climate Institute. He stated that Dr. King's dream was still alive and urged those present at the dinner to work with another attendee, NH air quality director Ken Colburn, to ensure that the Granite State became the first US state to include carbon dioxide among the air pollutants it regulates.  

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John Topping Interviewed for Living City special issue: The Challenge of Climate Change: global solutions to global problems. Reprint from Living City (PDF) Read interview on page 7.

Institute President profiled in Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (10/06)