Lynn Scarlett, will deliver the 2011 Aiken Lecture, “Smart Energy: Science, Technology and Politics,” on Thursday, Sept. 15. The event, at the University of Vermont’s Ira Allen Chapel, 5 p.m., is free and open to the public.

Regardless of the hopes of many environmentalists, Scarlett doesn’t anticipate that any federal climate change legislation will pass for at least five years -- probably longer.

But she does think that a lot can happen in the marketplace and laboratory to address global warming. And she’ll speak about how she sees regional innovations -- like Vermont’s push for “smart grid” electricity delivery -- as a key trend.

Lynn Scarlett is an avid hiker, birder, and conservationist -- and she was a top official under President George W. Bush, helping to lead the Department of the Interior’s pushback against what she saw as overreaching environmental regulations.

An expert on climate change and large-scale land conservation -- she served as president of the libertarian Reason Foundation and has long made a vigorous case for market-based approaches to many environmental challenges.

Scarlett is currently a senior visiting scholar at Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. As an environmental analyst, she focuses on a range of areas including: climate change adaptation, green business, energy and landscape-scale conservation and decision making.

From 2005 to 2009, Scarlett served as Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Interior where she chaired the Department's Climate Change Task Force. In 2009, she was a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer on climate change at the University of California Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. She is a former president of the Reason Foundation and director of the Reason Public Policy Institute.

She is a former president of Executive Women in Government, a member of the national Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests and was chair of the federal Wildland Fire Leadership Council. She also serves on the boards of the American Hiking Society and the Continental Divide Trail Alliance and is a trustee emeritus of the Udall Foundation.

UVM’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Science will host Scarlett’s visit to Vermont.

For more information about UVM’s Aiken Lectures, visit www.uvm.edu/aiken.