Climate Economics Taskforce - Members
Frank Ackerman, Ph.D.
Research Director
Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University
Frank Ackerman is the director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. He has written widely on the limitations of cost-benefit analysis of health and environmental protection, and has worked closely with environmental groups including NRDC, Riverkeeper, Greenpeace, the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow (Massachusetts), and the Farmworker Justice Fund. His recent books include Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing (The New Press, 2004, jointly with Lisa Heinzerling), and The Flawed Foundations of General Equilibrium: Critical Essays on Economic Theory (Routledge, 2004, jointly with Alejandro Nadal). Some of his recent work on precautionary approaches to toxic chemicals has been supported by European governments and NGO's. Ackerman is a Member Scholar at the Center for Reform. He received a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Paul Baer, Ph.D.
Research Director
EcoEquity
Paul Baer is an interdisciplinary scholar-activist with expertise in ecological economics, ethics, philosophy of science, risk analysis, and simulation modeling, specializing in climate science and policy. He completed his Ph.D. in 2005 at UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group; his dissertation examined the interconnection between equity, risk and scientific uncertainty, three topics at the heart of the climate problem. He also has a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a Masters in Environmental Planning and Management from Louisiana State University. He recently completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at Stanford University's Center for Environmental Science and Policy, addressing the interaction of climate change and forest fire in Alaska. He is currently the Research Director for EcoEquity, a climate-advocacy organization he co-founded in 2000 with Tom Athanasiou, with whom he also co-authored the 2002 book Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming (Seven Stories Press).
Jim Barrett, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Redefining Progress
Dr. Barrett has worked on a variety of issues concerning energy and environmental economics, including the impacts of carbon reduction programs on the U.S. economy, the economic implications of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, and the technical and economic feasibility of hydrogen production. Prior to joining Redefining progress, Dr. Barrett was an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, senior economist on the Democratic staff of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and staff economist at the Center for the Advancement of Genomics and the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives. Dr. Barrett earned his B.A. in economics from Bucknell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Connecticut.
Dave Batker
Founder & Executive Director
Earth Economics
David Batker directs Earth Economics, a Seattle-based NGO that is devoted to promoting ecosystem health and ecological economics and to halting the globalization of unsustainable economic policies. He also serves on the board of the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics. He completed his graduate training in economics under Herman Daly, one of the world's foremost ecological economists. Batker has taught in the Training Department of the World Bank, and has worked for Greenpeace International, specializing in trade and international finance. He also worked for two years with the Rural Reconstruction Movement, a Philippine non-profit group dedicated to ecologically sound, community-based development.
James Boyce, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Jim Boyce is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he directs the program on development, peacebuilding, and the environment at the Political Economy Research Institute. He is the author of The Political Economy of the Environment (Edward Elgar, 2002), and co-editor of Natural Assets: Democratizing Environmental Ownership (Island Press, 2003). His current work focuses on strategies for combining poverty reduction with environmental protection, and on the relationship between economic policies and issues of war and peace. He received his B.A. from Yale University and his Ph.D. from Oxford University.
Stephen DeCanio, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Stephen DeCanio served as Senior Staff Economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers. He has been a member of the Economic Options Panel convened by the United Nations Environment Programme to review economic aspects of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and was Co-Chair of the Montreal Protocol's Agricultural Economics Task Force of the Technical and Economics Assessment Panel. He was co-recipient of the 2007 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. His research focuses on the economics of climate change, protection of the stratospheric ozone layer, factors affecting the diffusion of energy-efficient technologies, and the impacts of greenhouse gas reduction policies. His most recent book, Economic Models of Climate Change: A Critique, is available from Palgrave–Macmillan.
Eban Goodstein, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
Lewis and Clark College
Portland, OR 97219
Eban Goodstein is Professor of Economics at Lewis and Clark College in Portland Oregon. He is the author of a college textbook, Economics and the Environment, (John Wiley and Sons, 2004) now in its fourth edition, as well as The Trade-off Myth: Fact and Fiction about Jobs and the Environment (Island Press, 1999). His current research focuses on the economics of global climate change, a subject on which he has spoken widely. Articles by Goodstein have appeared in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Land Economics, Ecological Economics, and Environmental Management. His research has been featured in The New York Times, Scientific American, Time, Chemical and Engineering News, The Economist, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He received his B.A. from Williams College and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He serves on the editorial board of Environment, Workplace and Employment, and is a Member Scholar at the Center for Progressive Reform. From 2006 to 2008 Goodstein is directing a national educational imitative on global warming solutions for America, Focus the Nation.
Charlie Heaps, Ph.D.
Director
Stockholm Environmental Institute — U.S. Center
Charlie Heaps is the Director of SEI's U.S. Center and a Senior Scientist in the Climate and Energy Programme. Charlie is the developer of LEAP: the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning System, a leading energy and environmental planning tool used by many hundreds of organizations in over 150 countries worldwide. For the last 17 years, Charlie has worked around the world conducting workshops, undertaking energy studies and providing training and assistance to users of LEAP. Charlie is also the manager of COMMEND, an initiative to foster a web-based community among developing country energy planners. In addition to developing LEAP, Charlie has developed a range of other software tools and web sites for energy and environmental planning including GreenTrips (a web based tool for households to plan their transport emissions), and IDENTIFY (a spreadsheet-based tool for industrial climate mitigation project planning developed for UNIDO). Charlie received a Bachelor of Science degree (first class) in energy studies from the University College of Swansea in Wales, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Technology from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London in 1990.
Rich Howarth, Ph.D.
Professor of Environmental Studies
Dartmouth College
Rich Howarth is an economist who studies the normative aspects of environmental policy and governance with applications to issues such as energy use, climate change, and ecological conservation. His research and teaching are based on the view that rigorous economic analysis is essential to understand the causes of environmental problems and to design solutions that effectively balance the multiple objectives of environmental policy. At the same time, however, environmental issues have moral, behavioral, and ecological dimensions that are sometimes in tension with the assumptions of textbook economics. This highlights the need to connect economics with a broad-based, interdisciplinary approach to environmental policy and management.
Professor Howarth graduated summa cum laude from the Biology and Society Program at Cornell (A.B., 1985) before receiving an M.S. in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1987). He completed his Ph.D. at the Energy and Resources Program at the University of California at Berkeley (1990), where his training focused on the economics of natural resources and sustainable development. Prior to his appointment at Dartmouth College, he held positions at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1990–1993) and the University of California at Santa Cruz (1993–1998).
John A. "Skip" Laitner
Visiting Fellow and Senior Economist
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
Skip Laitner is a resource economist with more than 35 years experience in energy and economic impact studies, public policy analysis, and economic development planning. He most recently served 10 years as the Senior Economist for Technology Policy within EPA's Office of Atmospheric Programs. In that capacity, Skip was awarded EPA's 1998 Gold Medal for his work with a team of EPA economists that helped set the foundation for the Kyoto Protocol on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. In 2003 he was acknowledged as a technology leader when given the “CHP Champion” award by the U.S. Combined Heat and Power Association.
In May 2006 Skip resigned his position with EPA to join the American Council for an Energy–Efficient Economy (ACEEE), an established and respected think tank based in Washington, DC. In his current capacity Skip will focus on characterizing the scale and scope of energy efficiency technologies as that larger resource might promote a significant but cost-effective reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. He will also explore more dynamic economic modeling techniques to better reflect and evaluate the macroeconomic impacts of productive energy efficiency investments. Skip has written more than 160 papers and reports in the fields of community and economic development, decision sciences, energy and utility costs, and natural resource issues. He is a widely recognized speaker and has given both technical and public policy presentations in the United States and abroad. Skip has a master's degree in resource economics.
Julie A. Nelson, Ph.D.
Senior Research Associate
Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University
Julie Nelson has been a Senior Research Associate with GDAE since 2001. Formerly an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California-Davis, she has also held appointments at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Brandeis University, the University of Massachusetts Boston, Harvard University, and Bates College. She received her Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1986. She is author of Economics for Humans (University of Chicago Press), Feminism, Objectivity, and Economics (Routledge), coeditor of Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics and Feminist Economics Today (both University of Chicago Press), and author of numerous scholarly articles, including in the journal Ecological Economics. She is co-author of Microeconomics in Context and Macroeconomics in Context, introductory university textbooks that treat environmental and social issues seriously.
Shelley Norman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering
Johns Hopkins University
Shelley Norman has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, since 2005. She received her BA in Economics and Political Science from Drew University, and her Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include understanding links between the natural capital embodied in resource endowments and institutional and development outcomes; economics of international environmental agreements; evaluating linkages between economic growth and environmental quality; environmental policy analysis; and Applied Environmental Microeconomics. She is a member of the Technical and Economic Assessment Panel (Agricultural Economics Task Force) of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (2003).
Astrid Scholz, Ph.D.
Vice President, Knowledge Systems
Ecotrust
Astrid Scholz is Vice President for Knowledge Systems at Ecotrust, a Portland, Oregon–based conservation organization committed to building a future that strengthens communities and the environment from Alaska to California. An ecological economist by training, she conceptualizes and analyzes the linkages between ecological, economic and social systems in the West Coast's emerging conservation economy. In her capacity as a member of Ecotrust's executive team, she is responsible for managing a staff of 12, overseeing several projects and contracts, and fundraising. She is an affiliate faculty member of Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, and is the co-editor of a book on integrated marine geographic information systems, Place Matters (OSU Press, 2005). She serves on the boards of the Pacific Marine Conservation Council, Habitat Media, and the Living Oceans Society, and is a member of the Science Advisory Team to the Marine Life Protection Act in California. She received her M.A. in Economics and Philosophy from the University of St. Andrews, her M.Sc. in Economics from the University of Bristol, and her Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley.
Kristen Sheeran, Ph.D.
Interim Executive Director
Economics for Equity and the Environment
Associate Professor of Economics
St. Mary's College of Maryland
Kristen Sheeran is an Associate Professor of Economics at St. Mary's College of Maryland, Maryland's public honors college. While on sabbatical, Kristen will serve as executive director of Economics for Equity and Environment Network. A political economist by training, her research focuses on the political economy of climate change; specifically the tension between equity and efficiency in international climate control efforts. Articles by Sheeran have appeared in Environmental and Resource Economics, Ecological Economics, Eastern Economic Journal, and The International Journal of Economic Development. She has worked as an economist for the World Resources Institute and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She works with environmental organizations in Maryland, including the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Maryland Public Interest Research Group, and the Maryland Sierra Club. She graduated summa cum laude with her B.A. in economics and political science from Drew University. She completed her Ph.D. in economics from American University.
Liz Stanton, Ph.D.
Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University
Liz is a Researcher with GDAE's Research and Policy Program whose interests include the economics of environmental policy, and the relationship between inequality and human well-being. She also teaches courses in economics in Tufts' Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Department. She holds a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and is the author of Environment for the People, with James K. Boyce, and the editor of Reclaiming Nature: Worldwide Strategies for Building Natural Assets, with James K. Boyce and Sunita Narain. She is also the former Program Director of the Center for Popular Economics, based in Amherst-Massachusetts