Contributor
Dirk Forrister, Managing Director, Natsource LLC
Biography provided by participant
Dirk Forrister is Managing Director at Natsource LLC, where he is responsible for new carbon fund development. Until recently, he worked in the company's London office, where he was responsible for building the company's carbon finance business in Europe. He managed the development and launch of the Greenhouse Gas Credit Aggregation Pool, which grew to over $800 million in corporate commitments.
Prior to joining Natsource, Forrister served as Chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force in the Clinton Administration, and prior to that was Assistant US Secretary of Energy for Congressional & Public Affairs. He has also held positions as Energy Program Manager at Environmental Defense Fund and as legislative counsel to Congressman Jim Cooper, the author of two early climate change laws.
Forrister holds a B.A. from David Lipscomb University and a J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law.
October 7, 2009 09:53 AM
At what point did we decide… good question. It certainly didn’t happen overnight. It took about 20 years, and it makes many of us feel old. We did not arrive here without a serious look at carbon taxes – in fact, we took a major detour toward taxes that failed miserably. Here is a quick recap: Congress first began considering an emissions trading model for climate change in 1989, right as the acid rain law neared final passage. It isn’t new. This first proposed legislation, introduced that year by Reps. Jim Cooper and the late Mike Synar, proposed capping power sector emissions and allowing offsets for…
Read moreSeptember 30, 2009 02:58 PM
Last week, the statements of national leaders on climate change in and around the opening of the UN General Assembly mainly served as a scene-setter for the difficult challenges of the Copenhagen Summit. The media coverage of Presidential statements in New York and protesters in Pittsburgh gave important visibility to the depth of the challenge, but not to the details of solutions. Seasoned observers did not expect much more: New York and Pittsburgh were not the real negotiating sessions and good negotiators know not to give away much until the real bargaining sessions occur in Copenhagen. The stakes for Copenhagen are massive…
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