Temple University Beasley School of Law invites you to: Dean’s Forum: Using the Law to Combat Climate Science Disinformation

Dr. Michael E. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He is director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM). 

He has received many honors and awards, including NOAA’s outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. He contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Pete Fontaine is chair of Cozen O’Connor’s Environmental practice and co-chair of the Climate Change team. He counsels large, medium, and small companies across the United States to help them manage and resolve their environmental liabilities and capture new business opportunities arising from the convergence of the energy and environmental demands of the world. A thought leader on issues surrounding climate change, Pete has authored a number of articles on the topic. Prior to private practice, he was an enforcement lawyer with the Office of Enforcement, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., where he helped write regulations implementing the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act, prosecuted civil violations of environmental laws, and served as a Special Assistant to the Director of Civil Enforcement. He received the EPA’s Award for Excellence for his contribution to the EPA’s first multimedia enforcement team. He routinely draws on his EPA experience to help clients navigate EPA and state agency regulations to achieve practical solutions to their environmental problems.  

Amorie Hummel (LAW ‘16) is a member of Cozen O’Connor’s Environmental practice, where she represents public and private clients in environmental litigation, environmental regulatory counseling, and environmental transactional work. Her work on behalf of clients has involved assisting with regulatory matters before the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, in addition to environmental litigation matters nationwide and appellate litigation matters before the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on behalf of utilities and energy generators. Amorie is also an author on environmental and energy-related topics published in Pratt’s Energy Law Report. 

Professor Amy Sinden joined the faculty in 2001, bringing a decade of experience in public interest law. She specializes in environmental and property law. Her recent academic writings have criticized the misuse of economic theory in environmental law, arguing against the use of cost-benefit analysis in environmental standard setting and countering claims that private property rights can solve environmental problems in the absence of government regulation. She has also written about the application of classical human rights norms to environmental conflicts. Her articles have appeared in a number of books and academic journals, including the Harvard Environmental Law Review and the Iowa Law Review, and have twice been selected for inclusion in the Land Use and Environmental Law Review’s annual compilation of the best environmental law articles of the year (2010 and 2020). She is a member scholar at the Center for Progressive Reform and is an affiliated faculty member of Temple University’s Center for Sustainable Communities.