Bud Ward

Bud Ward founded ELI’s policy magazine, the Environmental Forum, in 1982 and was Editor-in-Chief during its first four years.

Ward spent nearly five decades in Virginia and Washington, D.C., as an environmental journalist and educator, the past two decades focusing exclusively on climate change. He retired in January 2023 after more than 15 years as Founding Editor of Yale Climate Connections. He also had worked as Assistant Director of the U.S. Congress’s National Commission on Air Quality, under the Clean Air Act.

The author of hundreds of bylined articles on journalism and environmental regulatory matters, Ward authored and coauthored numerous books and reports aimed at improving media coverage of climate change issues. In the mid 70s and early 80s, he worked as a regular analyst and commentator on environmental issues for NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” And in 2009, George Mason University named him its first “Climate Change Communicator of the Year.” In 2024 he authored the Foreign Policy Association’s “Global Trade and Green Energy” white paper as part of FPA’s Great Decisions briefing series.

An Advisory Editor for Oxford University’s encyclopedia of climate and weather and for seven years the manager of the $75,000 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment, he is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and communications from Penn State University.