Can Europe Lead the Fight Against Climate Change?: Speaker bios

 

Dec. 15, 2020

 

Jason Bordoff is the Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA. Bordoff joined the Columbia University faculty after serving until January 2013, as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the Staff of the National Security Council, and, prior to that, holding senior policy positions on the White House's National Economic Council and Council on Environmental Quality. One of the world's top energy policy experts, he joined the Administration in April 2009. At Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, Bordoff is a professor of professional practice and serves as founding Director of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. Bordoff's research and policy interests lie at the intersection of economics, energy, environment, and national security.

Alex N. Halliday is the Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. He joined the Earth Institute in April 2018, after spending more than a decade at the University of Oxford, during which time he was dean of science and engineering. With about 400 published research papers, Halliday has been a pioneer in developing mass spectrometry to measure small isotopic variations in everything from meteorites to seawater to living organisms, helping to shed light on the birth and early development of our solar system, the interior workings of the Earth, and the processes that affect Earth’s surface environment. His scientific achievements have been recognized through numerous awards, including the Murchison Medal of the Geological Society, the Bowen Award and Hess Medal of the American Geophysical Union, the Urey Medal of the European Association of Geochemistry, and the Oxburgh Medal of the Institute of Measurement and Control. He is a Fellow of the UK’s Royal Society and Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. His contributions to science and innovation have been recognized with the award of a knighthood in the UK.

Since 2015, Enrico Letta is the Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) at Sciences Po in Paris and since 2016, the President of the Jacques Delors Institute. In June 2019, Enrico Letta has been appointed President of APSIA (Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs). He was the Prime Minister of Italy (2013-2014). Before he served as Minister for EU Affairs (1998-1999), as Minister for Industry, Commerce and Crafts (2000), as Minister for Industry, Commerce and Crafts and Foreign Trade (2000-2001), and as Undersecretary of State to the Prime Minister of the centre-left government led by Romano Prodi from 2006 to 2008. Between 2001 and 2015, he was Member of the Italian Parliament, excluding between 2004 and 2006 when he was Member of the European Parliament. He was born in Pisa in 1966 and he spent the first years of his life in Strasbourg. He graduated in International Law at the University of Pisa and obtained a PhD in European Union Law at the School for Advanced Studies “Sant’Anna” of Pisa (Italy).

Laurence Tubiana is CEO of the European Climate Foundation (ECF). In addition, she is the Chair of the Board of Governors at the French Development Agency (AFD). Before joining the ECF, Laurence was France’s Climate Change Ambassador and Special Representative for COP21, and as such a key architect of the landmark Paris Agreement. Following COP21, she was appointed High Level Champion for Climate Action by the UN. She brings decades of expertise and experience in climate change, energy, agriculture and sustainable development, working across government, think tanks, NGOs and academia. She started her career as a Research Director for the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). In the 80’s and early 90’s she founded and then led Solagral, an NGO working on food security and the global environment. She founded in 2002 and directed until 2014 the Paris-based Institute of Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI). From 1997 to 2002, she served as Senior Adviser on the Environment to the French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. From 2009 to 2010, she created and then led the newly established Directorate for Global Public Goods at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE). In 2013, she chaired the French National Debate on the Energy Transition. In 2018, President Macron appointed her to France’s High Council on Climate Change.

Adam Tooze holds the Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University and serves as Director of the European Institute. He teaches and researches widely in the fields of twentieth-century and contemporary history. From a start in modern German history with a special focus on the history of economics and economic history his interests have widened to take in a range of themes in political, intellectual and military history, across a canvass stretching from Europe across the Atlantic. His most recent book was Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (2018). In 2019, Foreign Policy Magazine named him one of the top Global Thinkers of the decade.

 

Dec. 8, 2020

 

Sébastien Balibar est directeur de recherches émérite au CNRS. Il travaille au Laboratoire Pierre Aigrain de l’École normale supérieure (Paris). Élu membre de l’Académie des sciences en  mars 2011, Il est l'auteur de plus de deux cents publications scientifiques et de six livres dont Climat : y voir clair pour agir (Le Pommier ed. 2015). Ses thèmes de recherche ont évolué de la physique des métaux à celle de la superfluidité, des surfaces liquides aux surfaces cristallines, des phénomènes critiques à la physique de la croissance cristalline, de la thermodynamique hors d'équilibre aux transitions de phases, aux problèmes d'instabilités, de mouillage, d'élasticité, d'acoustique non linéaire, de nucléation (cavitation et cristallisation), à la structure de l'eau, à l'énigme de la supersolidité, à la plasticité géante des cristaux d'hélium, aux nanotubes de carbone, etc. 

Paléoclimatologue et glaciologue, membre du Giec, Jean Jouzel est une figure incontournable de la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique. Durant toute sa carrière, menée au sein du CEA de Saclay, il a axé ses recherches sur l'utilisation des formes isotopiques de l’eau en vue de reconstituer les changements climatiques passés, à partir des carottes polaires et sur la modélisation isotopique. À partir des années 70, il s’associe à l’équipe grenobloise du glaciologue Claude Lorius et participe aux  projets de forages profonds de l’Antarctique, d’abord ceux de Vostok, puis d’Epica (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) qu’il présidera (1995 à 2001) et dont il produira 800 000 années d’histoire climatique. Ces résultats inédits seront publiés dans la revue Science en 2007. Auteur de plus de 400 publications, Jean Jouzel a toujours mené de front de multiples responsabilités. Il a notamment été directeur de l'Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (2001-2008) regroupant  six  laboratoires spécialisés dans les questions environnementales.

Thierry Grillet est ancien élève de l’École normale supérieure. Il a enseigné dix ans la culture générale à l'Institut d'Études politiques de Paris. Journaliste au Monde, à Libération et au Nouvel observateur, il collabore à des nombreuses revues (Médium, AOC, etc). Il a dirigé les Éditions du Georges Pompidou. Ancien directeur du développement culturel et du musée de la BnF, il a publié de nombreux ouvrages dont : Dictionnaire de la pensée du cinéma (Presses Universitaires de France) et des Essais sur la culture (Les 300, Éditions First). Dernier ouvrage paru : James Tissot (éditions Place des Victoires)