Reinhard Bütikofer (Co-Chair of the European Green Party (EGP) and a Member of the European Parliament for the German Green Party) and Bärbel Höhn (Member of the German Bundestag and chair of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety) will be in Boston, MA from February 13th to February 15th, 2014 to participate in the German Conference at Harvard, Boston. Reinhard Bütikofer will give a keynote speech on Political-Military Security and Bärbel Höhn will speak on Energy Security.
Biographies:
Reinhard Bütikofer is Co-Chair of the European Green Party (EGP) and a Member of the European Parliament for the German Greens. He is a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and a substitute member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs as well as the Subcommittee on Security and Defense. He sits on the Delegation for Relations with the United States as well as the Delegation for Relations with China. Mr Bütikofer is Rapporteur on Raw Materials as well as Rapporteur on European Industrial Policy for the European Parliament.
He is the Green Group's spokesperson on industrial policy. Furthermore, he is delegation speaker for the parliamentarians from the German Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen).
From 2002 until 2008 Mr. Bütikofer was the national party chairman of the German Green Party. He was secretary general from 1998 until 2002. Prior to that he was the state chairman of the Green Party in Baden-Württemberg. He served as a member of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament from 1988 until 1996. His career with the Green Party began when he was elected to the city council of Heidelberg in 1984.
Mr. Bütikofer is a member of the board of the Aspen Institute Berlin, the advisory board of the American Jewish Committee’s Ramer Center in Berlin, the Europe/Transatlantic advisory board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the German- Chinese Dialogue Forum, the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU), and the European Green Foundation.
Mr. Bütikofer was born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1953 and grew up in Speyer. In 1969-70 he spent a year in Kenosha, Wisconsin. After high school he studied philosophy, history, classical history, and sometimes Sinology, in Heidelberg. He is married and father to three daughters.
Bärbel Höhn is a member of the German Bundestag and chair of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. She was vice-chair of the Green Party in parliament from 2006 to 2013 and headed its working group on environmental, energy, transport, agricultural and consumer policy during that time.
Climate change, the transition to renewable sources of energy and the phase-out of nuclear energy are the focus of her work. She participated in various UN climate conferences and is a regular speaker at international climate and energy conventions.
Before being elected to the Bundestag in 2005, Bärbel Höhn was Minister for the Environment, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in Germany’s biggest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, from 1995 to 2005. In that function she played a leadership role in the EU’s response to the mad cow disease epidemic, improved consumer rights and promoted energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy.
Before that she was a member of North Rhine-Westphalia’s regional parliament from 1990 to 1995 and a city councilor in her home town of Oberhausen from 1985 to 1989.
Bärbel Höhn, who has a degree in mathematics from the University of Kiel, began her political career as an activist in a local initiative against air pollution and as a city councilor in her home town of Oberhausen. She is married with two grown-up children and three grandchildren.