John Berger (author)

John J. Berger (born May 8, 1945 in New York City) is an environmental science and policy specialist, prize-winning American author, journalist, and environmental consultant. He has worked for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, Fortune 500 corporations such as Chevron, nonprofit groups, such as Friends of the Earth, and governmental organizations, including the Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress. He co-founded and directed the Nuclear Information and Resource Service as well as founding and directing the Restoring the Earth organization. Berger has authored and edited eleven books on energy and environmental issues, including Solving the Climate Crisis: Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth, Climate Peril: The Intelligent Reader's Guide to Understanding the Climate Crisis, Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science, Restoring the Earth: How Americans Are Working to Renew Our Damaged Environment, and Charging Ahead: The Business of Renewable Energy and What It Means for America.

Biography
Berger is a long-time supporter of alternative energy solutions to global environmental problems. He has repeatedly called attention to the nation's excessive dependence on fossil fuels and the huge economic and environmental costs, and risks. He has outlined strategies for a clean, renewable energy economy in his books and articles which have appeared in publications such as Huffington Post, Scientific American, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and Renewable Energy World. Berger's writing on energy and natural resource issues has helped to launch the environmental restoration movement, beginning with his book Restoring the Earth in 1985 and later by convening the Restoring the Earth Conference, January 13-1, 1988 at the University of California, Berkleley (see below).

Education and Work
In 1966, John J. Berger earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Stanford University. Prior to his work on energy and the environment, Berger was an innovator in journalism. In 1970, he co-founded Alternative Features Service, Inc. to support the development of alternative and college newspapers and radio stations in the U.S. with syndicated press materials that highlighted the creation of alternative institutions, such as free clinics, people's banks, free universities, and alternative housing.

In 1976, after publishing his first book, Nuclear Power: The Unviable Option, with an introduction by Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling and a foreword by Senator Mike Gravel, he was invited by David Brower to become Friends of the Earth's Energy Projects Director in San Francisco. In 1977, as a consultant to Stanley A. Weiss, co-founder of American Minerals, Berger and Judith Johnsrud conducted field research for what was to become the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which Berger designed and directed in Washington, D.C. from 1978 to 1979. In 1979, he became a technical editor at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California and enrolled in the Energy and Resources Program at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was awarded a master's degree. In 1980 and 1981, Berger taught courses in energy technology and policy at Vista College and the University of San Francisco. In 1984, Berger began two years of postgraduate research on land-use policy in Sacramento at the University of California, Davis. In 1985, he published Restoring the Earth: How Americans Are Working to Restore Our Damaged Environment and became the executive director of Restoring the Earth, an environmental organization based in Berkeley, California.

The group convened the 1988 Restoring the Earth Conference, which at the time was the most comprehensive meeting ever held on the repair of environmental damage and the re-creation of disrupted ecosystems. The meeting brought together environmental leaders, restoration practitioners, corporate executives, scientists, government officials, labor, media, grassroots activists and concerned citizens from throughout the U.S. to discuss and plan the restoration of all types of damaged natural resources and the planning of sustainable uban area. The conference drew national attention to examples of successful ecological restoration and to the potential of restoration technology to heal prior environmental damage. More than 150 scientific papers and popular talks were presented on topics ranging from the restoration of forests, rivers, lakes, streams, wetlands, estuaries, prairies, and mined lands to wildlife and its habitats; as well as prevention, management and containment of toxic wastes.

Berger later went on to receive a PhD in Ecology from the University of California, Davis in 1990 and served as visiting Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at the Graduate School of Public Affairs of the University of Maryland and Professor of Environmental Science at the University of San Francisco. In addition to his teaching and leadership of environmental organizations, Berger has been a journalist specializing in energy, environment, climate, and natural resources, and he is currently (2023) the U.S. Correspondent for Sustain Europe.

His awards include the 2015 International Book Award for Science; a Switzer Foundation Environmental Fellowship for graduate study: a year-long fellowship for study at the University of Tunis in Tunisia: a summer writing fellowship at the Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks; and selection to participate in a summer-study program at the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory for Genetic Research. Berger is also an independent energy and environmental consultant. He was an Affiliated Research Fellow at UC Berkeley's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory.

He is currently a Senior Fellow of the Pacific Institute of Oakland, California.