PAUL DRIESSEN is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Heartland Institute, public policy institutes that promote environmental stewardship, enhanced human health and welfare, and personal liberties and civil rights. He writes and speaks regularly on environmental, energy and economic development, malaria eradication, climate change, human rights, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development issues.
His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Investor's Business Daily, New York Post, Houston Chronicle, Risk Management, American Coal, World Commerce Review and other periodicals, and on news and opinion websites in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Peru, Venezuela, South Africa, Uganda, Bangladesh and other countries.
Driessen's book, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death, documents the harm that restrictive environmental policies often have on poor families in developing countries, by restricting access to life-enhancing modern technologies. It is has been published in the United States, Argentina (Spanish), India (English), Germany (German) and Italy (Italian). He also wrote Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine (with Ron Arnold), Miracle Molecule: Carbon dioxide, gas of life, and Climate Hype Exposed.
He was editor for Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle, by CORE national chairman Roy Innis; Rules for Corporate Warriors: How to fight and survive attack group shakedowns, by Nick Nichols; and Creatures, Corals and Colors in North American Seas, by Ann Scarborough-Bull. He has also written reports on modern mining methods in Peru, Environmental Protection Agency regulations, and sustainability as a useful concept or development-blocking mechanism.
Driessen's studies and analyses have also appeared in Conserving the Environment, Resurgent Diseases, Malnutrition, Wind Farms, Drilling in ANWR and Coal, all books in the Thomson-Gale and Cengage Learning library series used in many high schools and colleges; 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); and other publications. He helped coordinate the "Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now" campaign, an international effort that restored the use of the powerful mosquito repellent DDT to many African and other malaria control programs.
Paul received his BA in geology and field ecology from Lawrence University and a JD 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 has produced documentary films about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, immigration through Ellis Island, and marine habitats beneath offshore oil production platforms. Driessen is also a frequent guest on radio talk shows and college campuses, and at business and public policy forums. He participates in energy, health and environmental conferences, and was active in the Public Relations Society of America, where he served as Washington, DC chapter newsletter editor and in the Social Responsibility Section.