Unraveling the ties of emissions and human activities

As told to Josie Garthwaite

I work on energy and food systems – how to reduce their environmental impacts and make them more resilient. My projects almost always begin with a specific question that I think, if answered, would help someone make a better decision.

I’ve always enjoyed writing, and studied political science and philosophy in college. But jobs philosophizing are hard to come by, so I went to law school. 

I wound up a lawyer here in Silicon Valley, working with startup companies. But while the world of venture capital and public offerings was interesting, it never felt like what I wanted to do "when I grew up."

Meanwhile, my wife was a grad student studying physical oceanography at Stanford, and from the outside it looked like she was having way more fun. I’ve always loved being outdoors – especially in the mountains, which are still awe-inducing for a kid from flatland Florida. 

So I decided to take a leap, and somehow managed to convince Earth and planetary sciences professor Page Chamberlain to take me on as a PhD student. After a fair bit of remedial math and chemistry, my PhD thesis reconstructed the hydrology of the Rocky Mountains as they rose more than 50 million years ago. 

It was a ton of fun, with summers spent driving around the western U.S. picking up rocks and the rest of the year analyzing them in the lab. I learned a lot of Earth system science, and a lot about climate. But decision makers weren’t exactly clamoring for my results, and that began to bother me.

I wanted my science to be more relevant for addressing global challenges like climate change. So, in my last year of grad school, some labmates and I started a non-profit to evaluate the carbon footprint of consumer products – a green labeling scheme.

We taught ourselves life-cycle analysis and advised companies on how different choices might reduce their emissions. In the process of assembling an advisory board for our nascent venture, I met Ken Caldeira, a renowned climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution. He suggested that I come do a postdoc with him, and that we could analyze not individual products but how much carbon is embodied in all the goods traded internationally.  

At the time, a lot of fingers were being pointed at China for its surging CO₂ emissions and our work put numbers on how much of those emissions were related to stuff that was getting consumed in places like the U.S.

That started me down the path of research at the intersection of human and natural systems. Since then, I've drifted in all sorts of directions, tackling questions as critical as how much future emissions are locked in if we don’t retire existing fossil infrastructure early – and as trivial as how climate change could affect beer.

I might get an idea from a podcast or a book I read, or a conversation that I have in the halls. Sometimes it means that I have to go out and find collaborators who have expertise and have the tools available to them that I don’t. That’s what I love about academia: Next week, I could start a new project on a topic that I haven’t even thought of yet, and maybe it could make a difference in the world.

Related: Steven J. Davis, Professor of Earth System Science