Robert Harry Socolow

Scholar and public intellectual on the global energy system, climate change, carbon management, and sustainable energy production. Cofounder of the field of industrial ecology and coeditor of Industrial Ecology and Global Change (1994). With Stephen Pacala, introduced the idea of stabilization wedges, showing how the climate problem can be stabilized for the next fifty years with current technologies, and introduced an innovative framework for allocating a global carbon reduction target among nations, based on how emissions are distributed among a country's citizens. Coedited Patient Earth (1971), one of the first college textbooks on environmental studies. Committee member and coauthor in producing the influential reports: Grand Challenges for Engineering (2008), America's Energy Future (2009), and America's Climate Choices (2011). Cochaired the American Physical Society committee that wrote the technical assessment of direct air capture of CO2 (2011). Lifetime national associate, National Research Council of the National Academies.