The NDSU Department of Environmental and Conservation Sciences has planned a Green Bag Lunch Seminar for Monday, Nov. 16, at noon in Memorial Union Century Theater. Steve DeCanio, professor emeritus of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will present "Economics: Climate Change and Climate Stewardship – the Economics and Moral and Ethical Implications of Responding to Climate Change."
DeCanio’s research focuses on global environmental protection. He has written about contributions and misuse of economics and debates over long-run policy problems, such as climate change and stratospheric ozone layer protection. He 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," discusses some of the limitations of conventional general equilibrium models when applied to climate policy.
From 1986-87, DeCanio was the senior staff economist for 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 has 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.
DeCanio directed the UCSB Washington Program from 2004-09. He also is on the steering committee of Economics for Equity and the Environment Network.