Born in NYC, Adler became a lawyer and moved to Washington DC to get involved in energy policy and climate matters, working with an alternative fuels lobbying group, establishing a new nonprofit (Positive Transportations), and eventually running a group of companies that developed low pollution automotive technology. Together with PBS, he co-produced a film on the President of the Maldives and his work on climate change (The Island President, with music by Radiohead, winner of the Toronto Film Festival Audience Award, etc). He was co-backer of the first synthetic biology company incubator (Launchpad on the Ames campus of NASA), co-founder of the first synthetic biology investment fund (Bioeconomy Capital), and creator of the Advanced Biosequestration Summit (ABsummit.org). Together with a team from Cornell University, he co-created the SRM Primer (SRMprimer.org). He is on the advisory board of the Woodwell Climate Research Center (WoodwellClimate.org), which the International Center for Climate Governance named the world’s top climate change think tank.