Published Research
Meeting
the Demand: An Estimation of Potential Future Greenhouse Gas Emissions
from Meat Production - Ecological Economics, 2008, 67(3), 412-419.
Current production processes for meat products have been
shown to have a significant impact on the environment, accounting for
between 15% and 24% of current greenhouse gas emissions. I separate
meat into beef, chicken and pig products and
estimate the elasticities associated with each product in order to
forecast the world demand for meat. I find that meat production in the
future will still be a large
producer of greenhouse gases, accounting for up to 6.3% of current
greenhouse gas emissions in 2030.
Measuring Sustainability:
Why
the Ecological Footprint is Bad Economics and Bad Environmental Science
- Ecological Economics, 2008, 67(4), 519-525.
The ecological footprint is a measure of the resources necessary to
produce the goods that an individual or population consumes. It is also
used as a measure of sustainability, though evidence suggests that it
falls short. The assumptions behind footprint calculations have been
extensively criticized; I present here further evidence that it fails
to satisfy simple economic principles because the basic assumptions are
contradicted by both theory and historical data.