Thomas Dietz

Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy; Assistant Vice President for Environmental Research

Thomas Dietz is a Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy (ESPP) and Assistant Vice President for Environmental Research at Michigan State University.He is also Co-Director of the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessment Center (glisa.msu.edu). He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis, and a Bachelor of General Studies from Kent State University. At MSU he was Founding Director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program and Associate Dean in the Colleges of Social Science, Agriculture and Natural Resources and Natural Science. Dr. Dietz is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been awarded the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America, the Distinguished Contribution Award of the American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society, and the Outstanding Publication Award, also from the American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society and the Gerald R. Young Book Award from the Society for Human Ecology.

At the National Research Council he has served as chair of the U.S. National Research Council Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change and the Panel on Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making, and currently is Vice Chair of the Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change of the America’s Climate Choices study. (americasclimatechoices.org). He is currently a member of the NRC Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Dr. Dietz has also served as Secretary of Section K (Social, Economic, and Political Sciences) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is the former President of the Society for Human Ecology. He has co-authored or co-edited twelve books and more than 100 papers and book chapters. His current research examines the human driving forces of environmental change, environmental values and the interplay between science and democracy in environmental issues. Dr. Dietz is an active participant in the Ecological and Cultural Change Studies Group at MSU and the Animal Studies Program.

Research Interests

• Human dimensions of global environmental change, environmental values, and valuation, evolutionary theory and the interplay of science, deliberationand democracy

Areas of Specialization: Environment

Selected Publications

Thomas Dietz, Eugene A. Rosa and Richard York.  2012. “Environmentally Efficient Well-Being:  Is There a Kuznets Curve?” Applied Geography  32:21-28.

Eugene A. Rosa, Andreas Diekmann, Thomas Dietz, and Carlo C. Jaeger (eds.) 2009.  Human Footprints on the Global Environment: Threats to Sustainability. Cambridge, Massachusetts:  The MIT Press. (Winner of the Gerald Young Book Award of the Society for Human Ecology, 2009.)
 

Recent Publications

Eugene A. Rosa and Thomas Dietz, Human Drivers of National Greenhouse-Gas Emissions, Nature Climate Change, 2012. (Abstract online link)

"Eugene A. Rosa, Thomas Dietz, Richard H. Moss, Scott Atran, and Susanne Moser. 2012 "Managing the Risks of Climate Change and Terrorisjm." Solutions (March/April):59-65. Read online.

More Publications

Awards and Honors

Sustainability Science Award, Ecological Society of America, 2005

Distinguished Publication Award, American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society, 2004