Senator Lieberman Receives Edmund Muskie Memorial Environmental Protection Award for Work on Climate

On September 28, 2006, US Senator Joseph Lieberman received the Climate Institute’s first Edmund Muskie Memorial Environmental Protection Award. This award is named for the late former Senator from Maine and Secretary of State who more than any other US legislator was credited with enactment of the key environmental statutes that for over three decades have given the United States a strong framework for environmental protection.

In recognizing Senator Lieberman, the Climate Institute cited his leadership for over a decade in raising public awareness of climate change. The Climate Institute’s President John Topping noted:

“In the mid 1990s, when few in the US Senate were focused on climate change, Joe Lieberman convened a series of seminars in which he brought experts on climate change impacts to the Capitol to discuss implications of climate change for various regions and concerns in the US. He recognized that climate change might affect more than coastal areas in New England and the Gulf Coast; it might reshape our whole ecology, making the sugar maple a distant memory like many Currier and Ives winter scenes. In September 1996 he spoke at the Climate Institute's Washington Summit on Protection of the World’s Climate and in April 1998 keynoted a New England Climate Symposium at Yale University that pulled together leaders from industry to discuss climate protection. Over the past dozen years Joe Lieberman has used gentle persuasion and a remarkable grasp of what may be at stake to move Senators on both sides of the aisle to take climate change seriously.”

This photo was taken just after Senator Lieberman was awarded the Muskie Award in his Capitol Hill office early in the afternoon of September 28, 2006. Pictured from Left to Right are Dr. Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist of the Climate Institute; John Topping, President of the Climate Institute; Senator Lieberman; Alexis Sloan Nussbaum, the Institute’s Director of Research and Operations; Lina Karaoglanova, Research Associate at the Climate Institute; and Courtney Wilson, an intern from Hobart and William Smith College. The photo was taken by Stephanie Haas.

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