David Rothbard, President, Co-Founder
David Rothbard co-founded the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) in 1985, and has served as chairman and president of the organization since its inception. He has provided vision, guidance, and oversight to help build CFACT into a global presence, with activities on three continents and the support of more than 50 internationally-recognized scientists and experts. Rothbard has testified before Congress and various state legislatures; is a regular speaker on college campuses and at policy gatherings in the U.S. and around the world; and has led delegations to numerous UN environmental summits including those in Durban, Cancun, Copenhagen, Cairo, Kyoto, Buenos Aires, the Hague, Johannesburg, and Nairobi. He is a frequent guest on radio and television talk shows, and his work has been printed or critiqued in such publications as Newsweek, the Houston Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Rothbard is also now spearheading the creation of model demonstration projects in impoverished villages in Latin America and Africa. He is a graduate of Fairfield University in Connecticut, with a degree in political science. He and his wife, Kelly, are the proud parents of three daughters in suburban Maryland.
Craig Rucker, Executive Director, Co-Founder
A native of Buffalo, New York, who received his Masters of Public Administration from the State University of New York at Albany, Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its executive director. For over 20 years, Craig has provided expertise to a wide range of government, academic, media, and industry forums. He serves as co-host of CFACT’s daily national radio commentary called “Just the Facts” that has been airing on some 125 radio stations from coast to coast since 1993. Rucker has written extensively on numerous environmental policy issues, and his work has been featured in such media outlets as CNN, the BBC, USA Today, the Des Moines Register, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Rucker has had primary responsibility for helping build CFACT’s Collegians program on more than 40 campuses across the country, and has attended or brought student delegations to major United Nations conferences in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Cancun, and Montreal. Rucker has a wife and four sons, and currently resides in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Marc Morano, Director of Communications
Marc Morano currently serves as Communications Director for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and executive editor and chief correspondent for the award-winning ClimateDepot.com, a global warming and eco-news center founded in 2009. Morano spearheaded the 2007 groundbreaking report of 400-plus dissenting scientists and the follow-up 2008 report of 650-plus scientists dissenting from man-made global warming fears; by 2010, a new 321-page “Climate Depot Special Report” listed over 1,000 international scientists who had turned against the UN IPCC. Morano released his “A-Z Climate Reality Check” report at the UN COP17 conference in South Africa in December 2011.
From 1992 to 1996, Morano served as the television reporter/producer for the nationally syndicated “Rush Limbaugh, the Television Show.” He next served as an investigative reporter for Cybercast News Service and as a reporter and producer for the nationally syndicated television newsmagazine “American Investigator.” In 2000, his investigative television documentary “Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting the Myths” created an international firestorm. During his tenure as senior advisor, speechwriter, and climate researcher for U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), he managed the communication operations of the GOP side of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. His Senate website won the coveted 2007 Gold Mouse Award for being the “Best of the Best.” Morano was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in McLean, VA. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at George Mason University.
Duggan Flanakin, Director of Policy Research
Duggan Flanakin is CFACT’s Director of Policy Research as well as a journalist who has served as a policy analyst for CFACT since 1997; he is responsible for many of the articles found on the CFACT website. Mr. Flanakin began his professional career as a science editor with the now-defunct U.S. Bureau of Mines, and from 1989 through 2005 he served as editor of a high-level, Texas-based newsletter that focused on federal and state environmental regulation and policy. Mr. Flanakin has also served as a Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Arkansas Public Policy Foundation. He has written extensively on environmental education issues, the intersection of environmental policy and human rights, the divide between sound science and junk science, and many other topics. In Texas, he is widely respected for major reports that critiqued that state’s consolidated environmental regulatory agency and that laid the framework for a new Texas Environmental Education Partnership that brought diverse interests together to improve the quality of the science in the classroom. Mr. Flanakin holds a B.A. in History from Louisiana State University and an M. A. in Public Policy from Regent University.
Christina Wilson Norman, Development Officer
Christina Wilson currently serves as Development Officer for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. Previously, she served as the Collegians Upper Midwest Regional Director based in Madison, WI, overseeing chapters in the upper Midwest. Christina graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2008 where she obtained her B.A. in Political Science. She was born in South Korea, adopted as an infant and has lived all over the U.S. and Latin America since. During her time abroad she gained a broad cultural viewpoint and true appreciation for America. At UMD, Christina chaired the College Republicans, founded and ran a Pro Life group, founded and ran a conservative newspaper, and chaired her CFACT chapter for 4 years. As the current Development Officer, she’s excited to be able to help CFACT support its efforts fighting radical environmentalism.
Paul Driessen, Senior Policy Advisor
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, Congress of Racial Equality and other nonprofit public policy think tanks. He writes and speaks frequently on energy, the environment, economic development, malaria eradication, human rights, global warming and corporate social responsibility. His articles have appeared in news-papers and magazines and on news and opinion websites in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Peru, Venezuela, South Africa, Uganda, Bangladesh and other countries.
Driessen’s studies and analyses have also appeared in Conserving the Environment (Doug Dupler, editor), 2006, part of the Thomson-Gale “Opposing Viewpoints” Series; Redefining Sovereignty: Will liberal democracies continue to determine their own laws and public policies, or yield these rights to transnational entities in search of universal order and justice? (Orin Judd, editor), 2005, Smith and Kraus Global Publishers; and other publications. He is also the author of the book Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death, and the report Responsible Progress in the Andes.
Paul received his BA in geology and field ecology from Lawrence University and a law degree from the University of Denver College of Law, before embarking on a career that also included tenures with the United States Senate, U.S. Department of the Interior and an energy trade association. He is active in the Public Relations Society of America’s Social Responsibility Section; and is a frequent guest on radio talk shows and college campuses, and at business and public policy forums.