Frank Ackerman
Director, Climate Economics Group
Frank Ackerman is an economist specializing in climate change. A prominent critic of conventional economic approaches to climate policy and the abuses of cost-benefit analysis, he has written extensively for academic, policy and general audiences and has directed studies for clients ranging from Greenpeace to the European Parliament and U.S. federal and state agencies.
Ackerman’s most recent book, Can We Afford the Future? Economics for a Warming World (Zed Books, 2009), reframes the economics of climate change in terms of insuring the planet against worst-case scenarios, addressing the needs of future generations, and accepting the challenge of global equity raised by the climate crisis. His other recent projects include The Economics of 350: The Benefits and Costs of Climate Stabilization (E3 Network, 2009, with Elizabeth A. Stanton et al.), and Poisoned for Pennies: The Economics of Toxics and Precaution (Island Press, 2008).
Ackerman is a senior economist and director of the Climate Economics Group at the Stockholm Environment Institute’s U.S. Center, an independent research affiliate of Tufts University in Somerville, Mass. He is a founder and steering committee member of Economics for Equity and Environment (the E3 Network) and a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform in Washington, D.C. He is also a senior research fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute of Tufts University, where he led the Research and Policy Program until 2007.
Ackerman earned his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University in 1975 and has taught economics at Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts.
In his free time, he plays the trumpet in the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band, an amateur New Orleans-style band.
Ackerman welcomes media inquiries and invitations to speak and write on climate economics; the costs of inaction; critiques of conservative economic analyses; and international perspectives on climate protection.