Andrew Light, a Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., will talk about responsible geoengineering when he presents the keynote address at the 39th Humanities & Technology Association (HTA) Conference being held at Salve Regina University.
Light’s talk, “What Would Responsible Geoengineering Look Like” will be presented on Friday, Nov. 3 at 4 p.m. in DiStefano Lecture Hall, located in the Antone Academic Center on Lawrence Avenue. It is free and open to the public.
Light is professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Atmospheric Sciences at George Mason, where he directs the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. He has served as Senior Adviser and India Counselor to the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change, and as a Staff Climate Adviser in the Secretary of State’s Office of Policy Planning in the U.S. Department of State. In this capacity, he was Co-Chair of the U.S.-India Joint Working Group on Combating Climate Change, Chair of the Interagency Climate Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals, and served on the senior strategy team for the UN climate negotiations.
He was awarded the inaugural Public Philosophy Award from the International Society for Environmental Ethics, the inaugural Alain Locke Award for Public Philosophy from the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, and a Superior Honor Award from the U.S. Department of State for “contributions to the U.S. effort that made the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris, where the landmark Paris Agreement was concluded, a historic success.”
Before joining the U.S. government he was also a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he was chief adviser on international climate policy to the center’s founder and chairman, John Podesta. At this time he authored or co-authored eleven major reports on climate change and renewable energy, and over a hundred columns and editorials.
He is the author of more than 100 articles and book chapters on climate change, restoration ecology, and urban sustainability, and has authored, co-authored, and edited 19 books, including Environmental Values (Routledge, 2008), Controlling Technology (Prometheus, 2005), Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice (MIT, 2003), Technology and the Good Life? (Chicago, 2000), Environmental Pragmatism (Routledge, 1996), and the forthcoming Ethics in the Anthropocene (MIT).
He has previously taught at a variety of institutions, including the Environmental Conservation Program at NYU and the School of Public Affairs and Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle.