Climate Economics Taskforce - Members
Frank Ackerman
Senior Scientist, Stockholm Environment Institute – U.S. Center
Founder and steering committee member of Economics for Equity and the Environment Network
Frank Ackerman is an economist who has written extensively about the economics of climate change and other environmental problems. His book, Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, is a widely cited critique of cost-benefit analysis and its abuse in U.S. environmental policy. His latest books are Poisoned for Pennies: The Economics of Toxics and Precaution (Island Press, 2008), and Can We Afford the Future? Economics for a Warming World (Zed Books, 2009). He has written numerous academic and popular articles, and has directed policy reports for clients ranging from Greenpeace to the European Parliament. At Tufts University since 1995, he worked for many years at the university’s Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), and is now at the Stockholm Environment Institute’s U.S. Center, based at Tufts. He is a founder and member of the steering committee of Economists for Equity and Environment (the E3 Network), and a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform. Frank received his BA in mathematics and economics from Swarthmore College and his PhD in economics from Harvard University, and has taught economics at Tufts University and at the University of Massachusetts.
James Barrett
Economist/Consultant
Chair of the Board of Directors, Redefining Progress
Jim 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. Now an independent consultant, Jim was the executive director of Redefining Progress. He was also 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.
James Boyce
Professor of Economics
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Founder and steering committee member, Economics for Equity and the Environment Network
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.
Christopher Busch
Policy Director
Center for Resource Solutions
Chris Busch is an economist and director of policy at the Center for Resource Solutions. His research focuses on the economics of global warming and global warming solutions. Chris Nusch was recently appointed to the California Air Resources Board's Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee, one of two advisory bodies explicitly called for in the legislation that established California's landmark climate legislation, the Global Warming Solutions Act. Prior to joining CRS, Busch was a Climate Economist in the Climate Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. From this post he was deeply involved in implementation of the California Global Warming Solutions Act (Assembly Bill 32) and development of the Western Climate Initiative. In 2006, Chris co-authored the report Managing Greenhouse Gas Emissions in California while he was with U.C. Berkeley's California Climate Change Center. He also served as Senior Research Associate in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's International Energy Studies Group and worked in the Lab's Appliance and Lighting Standards Group. Busch holds two graduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley: a Ph.D. in environmental economics from the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and a Master's in public policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy.
Rachel Cleetus
Climate Economist, Union of Concerned Scientists
Rachel Cleetus is an economist with the Climate program at UCS. The focus of her work is designing and advocating for effective global warming policies at the federal, regional, state and international levels. These policies include both market-based approaches (such as cap-and-trade programs) and complementary, sector-based approaches (such as efficiency, renewable energy and clean technology R&D). She also analyzes the economic costs of inaction on climate change. Prior to joining UCS, Dr. Cleetus worked as a consultant for the World Wildlife Fund, doing policy-focused research on the links between sustainable development, trade and ecosystems in Asia and Africa. She also worked for Tellus Institute in the energy and environment program, under the mentorship of Steve Bernow. Dr. Cleetus holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Economics from Duke and a B.S. in Economics from West Virginia University.
Stephen DeCanio
Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Steering committee member, Economics for Equity and the Environment Network
Steve DeCanio is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor DeCanio’s research focuses on global environmental protection. He has written about both the contributions and misuse of economics to debates over long-run policy problems such as climate change and stratospheric ozone layer protection. Professor DeCanio has written extensively on corporate organization and behavior as it pertains to the adoption of energy-efficient technologies. His most recent book, Economic Models of Climate Change: A Critique (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003) discusses some of the limitations of conventional general equilibrium models when applied to climate policy. From 1986 to 1987 DeCanio was Senior Staff Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has been a member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Economic Options Panel, which reviewed the economic aspects of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and served as Co-Chair of the Montreal Protocol’s Agricultural Economics Task Force of the Technical and Economics Assessment Panel. He participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and was a recipient of the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007. In 1996 he received a Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award, and in 2007 a “Best of the Best” Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Professor DeCanio has been Director of the UCSB Washington Program since 2004.
Peter Dorman
Evergreen State College
Peter Dorman is an economist teaching in the Masters of Environmental Studies program at Evergreen State College in Washington. His primary research areas include: transition to sustainability, labor standards and public health, international trade and the global economy. His specific research issues involve: valuation of life and health, precautionary principle, occupational safety and health, child labor, the theory of international trade. Peter has consulted widely with the International Labour Organization on issues surrounding child labor. Peter received his B.A. in Economics, University of Wisconsin, 1977; Ph.D., Economics, University of Massachusetts, 1987.
Eban Goodstein
Professor of Economics
Lewis and Clark College
Founder and steering committee member, Economics for Equity and the Environment Network
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 directed a national educational imitative on global warming solutions for America, Focus the Nation.
Charlie Heaps
Senior Scientists and Center Director
Stockholm Environment Institute – U.S. Center
Charlie Heaps is the Director of SEI's U.S. Center and a senior scientist in SEI's Climate and Energy Program. Charlie is the developer of LEAP: the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning System developed at SEI, a leading energy and environmental planning tool used in hundreds of organizations and dozens of countries worldwide . For the last 15 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, a five year 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 has also been a major contributor to the development of other SEI software tools including WEAP and PoleStar. Charlie received a Ph.D. from the Centre for Environmental Technology, Imperial College, London in 1990.
Richard Howarth
Professor of Environmental Studies
Dartmouth College
Editor-in-chief Ecological Economics
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).
Jonathan Isham
Professor of Economics
Middlebury College
For the last several years, Jon Isham’s collaborative work with Middlebury students and others has focused on building the climate movement, as summarized at the ''What Works' project. Based on this work, Island Press published in June 2007 and Ignition: What You Can Do to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement, which he co-edited with Sissel Waage. He currently serves on advisory boards for Focus the Nation, Climate Counts, and the Vermont Governor’s Commission on Climate Change. He is also a volunteer leader for Vice President Gore’s Climate Project and an advisor to the Presidential Climate Action Project and 1Sky. Jon also co-edited Social Capital, Development, and the Environment with Tom Kelly and Sunder Ramaswamy (Edward Elgar Publications); published articles in Applied Financial Economic Letters, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of African Economies, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Rural Sociology, Society and Natural Resources, Southern Economic Journal, Social Sciences Quarterly, Vermont Law Review, World Bank Economic Review; and World Development; and published book chapters in volumes from Cambridge University Press, The New England University Press, and Oxford University Press. He completed his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Maryland in 2000.
Laurie Johnson
Chief Economist, Climate Center
Natural Resources Defense Council
Laurie Johnson is the lead economist on climate change at the National Resources Defense Council in Washington DC. Prior to joining the NRDC, Laurie was a professor in the economics department at the University of Denver. Her research interests include environmental and natural resource economics, experimental economics, and poverty and welfare. Articles by Laurie have appeared in Ecological Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization Journal of Economic Education. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. Laurie received her PhD, Economics, University of Washington, Seattle.
John A. "Skip" Laitner
Director of Economic Analysis
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 Nelson
Department of Economics
University of Massachusetts Boston
Julie Nelson holds a B.A. degree in Economics from St. Olaf College (1978), and M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1986) degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin. She is currently an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University. She has served as a Research Economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and has taught at the University of California-Davis, Brandeis University, Harvard University, and Bates College. She is author of Economics for Humans (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and Feminism, Objectivity, and Economics (Routledge, 1996), co-editor of Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics (University of Chicago Press, 1993) and Feminist Economics Today: Beyond Economic Man (University of Chicago Press, 2003), and co-author of Microeconomics in Context (M.E. Sharpe, 2008), Macroeconomics in Context (M.E. Sharpe, 2008), and Introducing Economics: A Critical Guide for Teaching (M.E. Sharpe, 2007). Her peer-reviewed journal publications span 20 years, covering a broad range of topics ranging from technical issues in econometrics and labor economics, through feminist economics, ethics, and related questions; her most recent article is “Economists, Value Judgments, and Climate Change: A View from Feminist Economics,” (Ecological Economics, 2008). She was a founding board member of the International Association for Feminist Economics, and is currently an Associate Editor of Feminist Economics.
Richard Norgaard
University of California Berkeley
Richard Norgaard is Professor of Energy and Resources Group and of Agriculture and Resource Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his B.A. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, M.S. in agricultural economics from Oregon State University, and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1971. Among the founders of the field of ecological economics, his recent research addresses how environmental problems challenge scientific understanding and the policy process, how ecologists and economists understand systems differently, and how globalization affects environmental governance. He has field experience in the Brazilian Amazon, Alaska, and Vietnam with minor forays in other parts of the globe. Dr. Norgaard is the author of one book, co-author or editor of three additional books, and has over 100 other publications spanning the fields of environment and development, tropical forestry and agriculture, environmental epistemology, energy economics, and ecological economics. Though an eclectic scholar, he is also among the 1000 economists in the world most cited by other economists (Millennium Editions of Who's Who in Economics, 2000) and was one of ten American economists interviewed in The Changing Face of Economics: Conversations with Cutting Edge Economists (Colander, Holt, and Rosser, University of Michigan Press, 2004). He is currently writing on how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment facilitate collective understandings of complex systems.
Shelley Norman
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
Vice President, Knowledge Systems Ecotrust
Founder and steering committee member, Economics for Equity and the Environment Network
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
Executive Director
Economics for Equity and the Environment Network
Kristen Sheeran is the director of Economics for Equity and the Environment Network (E3), a nationwide network of economists developing new arguments for environmental protection with a social justice focus. Prior to her role with E3 Network, she was an Associate Professor of Economics at St. Mary's College of Maryland, Maryland's public honors college. Her research is primarily focused on the tension between equity and efficiency in climate change mitigation. She has published articles in Environmental and Resource Economics, Ecological Economics, Climatic Change, Journal of Economic Issues, Eastern Economic Journal, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, and Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. Her book, Saving Kyoto with Graciela Chichilnisky, will be published later this year by New Holland Press. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in economics and political science from Drew University, and received her Ph.D. in economics from American University.
Liz Stanton, Ph.D.
Staff Scientist
Stockholm Environment Institute – U.S. Center
Liz Stanton is an Economist at SEI-US with experience in both technical and popular writing about economic and environmental policy issues. Her research focuses on the economics of climate change and environmental policy, and the relationship between inequality and human well-being. She was the lead author of SEI’s recent review of integrated assessment models and of SEI’s widely acclaimed study of the costs of climate change for Florida. She is currently the principal researcher on studies of the economics of climate impacts and policy in Armenia and in Macedonia, both sponsored by the United Nations Development Program. Dr. Stanton holds a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. In addition to many SEI publications on climate change, she 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.