Mr. Topping has been President and CEO of the Climate Institute, an international environmental group concerned with climate protection, since its founding in 1986.  Under his leadership the Climate Institute has worked in over thirty nations and has developed with local teams climate protection and energy plans in nations with a quarter of earth’s population.  

 

He is the Editor of two books on climate change and co-Author of one on U.S. air pollution control law.  A graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, Mr. Topping served as Staff Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation from 1983 to 1986. Together with his EPA colleague, Joe Cannon, he was instrumental in phasing out lead from gasoline, movement to a fine particulate air quality standard, and initiation of the risk assessment of CFCs that helped lay the groundwork for the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol to protect the stratospheric ozone layer. 

 

An attorney, he is a member of the Bar in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia and served in the U.S. Air Force as a member of the Judge Advocate General Corps.  As an attorney, he also served as Chief Counsel of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise of the U.S. Department of Commerce.  In 1976, he received the President’s Award of the National Bar Association in recognition of outstanding contributions to the minority legal community.  In 2002, he was the first person to receive the Martin Luther King, Jr. Social Justice Award for Lifetime Achievement from Dartmouth College.  He served on the Energy Resolution Team of the Presbyterian Church USA from 2004 to 2006.