The Program: “Meeting Our Energy and Climate Change Challenges” The challenges of providing for our energy needs and confronting the threat of climate change in the global energy environment must be addressed together. The talk will address both the problems and opportunities involved in doing so.

Presenter: Senator Jeff Bingaman He grew up in the southwestern New Mexico community of Silver City. His father was a chemistry professor and chair of the science department at Western New Mexico University. His mother taught in the public schools. After graduating from Western (now Silver) High School in 1961, Jeff attended Harvard University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in government in 1965.

He then entered Stanford Law School where he met, and later married, fellow law student Anne Kovacovich. Upon earning his law degree from Stanford in 1968, Jeff and Anne returned to New Mexico. They have one son, John. After law school Jeff spent one year as an assistant attorney general and eight years in private law practice in Santa Fe. Jeff was elected Attorney General of New Mexico in 1978 and served four years in that position.

In 1982 he was elected to the United States Senate. He was re-elected to a fifth term in the Senate in 2006. At the end of that term he chose not to seek re-election and completed his service in the Senate on January 3, 2013. At the time of his retirement from the Senate he was Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He also served on the Finance Committee, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the Joint Economic Committee. In April of 2013 he began a year as a Distinguished Fellow with the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford Law School. In 2015 he taught a seminar on the functioning of Congress in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico.

Sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories
Exceptional Service in the National Interest