Changing the Climate in Washington

• Pages: 40-43

Page 40 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2011, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, May/June 2011

Changing the

Climate in

Washington

Marty Spitzer joins World Wildlife Fund’s

U.S. climate change team at a

time when the international consensus

for action on global warming is

starting to cool of‌f in large part

because of American intransigence

Pr o f i l e

T o understand how he approaches

global warming you should know his

assumptions, says Marty Spitzer, the

new head of domestic climate change

policy at World Wildlife Fund, based

in Washington, D.C. “First, I trust the

scientif‌ic consensus. Humankind is ac-

celerating the onset of global warming. Our actions

today will change the climate for a hundred years into

the future.” If northern regions warm enough to re-

lease methane from frozen lands or the polar ice caps

continue to shrink, we could see global warming that

is irreversible, he says. “Second, I trust the scientif‌ic

process. I’m struck by how many people who aren’t in

scientif‌ic f‌ields have strong opinions that warming is

not happening. As leading professionals have said, the

only area of science we have more agreement on than

climate change is gravity.”

Spitzer’s early career was spent largely behind the

scenes making things happen, but the monumental

proportions of today’s environmental problems have

increasingly moved him to the front. Spitzer garnered

joint degrees in law and a Ph.D. in public policy at

the State University of New York’s Buf‌falo campus.

He served as a hazardous waste inspector in the New

York state government, then left to join the U.S. En-

vironmental Protection Agency, where he was a se-

nior advisor on strategies to promote multimedia pol-

lution prevention. He then became executive director

of the President’s Council on Sustainable Develop-

ment, managing the blue ribbon advisory committee

of Fortune 500 CEOs, cabinet secretaries, local gov-

ernment of‌f‌icials, and leaders of environmental and

community organizations. He also served on the staf‌f

of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Science Com-

mittee for several years. He left the Hill to join the

H.J. Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and

the Environment, where he provided strategic ad-

vice on a variety of environmental issues, including

climate change, nanotechnology, and environmental

performance measurement. And most recently he

served as director of legislative af‌fairs and director of

domestic programs at the Center For Clean Air Poli-

cy, where he garnished his background on the science

and politics of global warming.

I asked Spitzer to contrast his experience work-

ing in Executive Branch agencies and the Legislative

Branch, as well as his perspective on these bodies,

garnered from his varied career in organizations that

work with the executive and the legislature. “Con-

gress has to set high aspirations and create a legal