Michael K. Dorsey, Ph.D.
Visiting Fellow
Energy and Environment Program

Dr. Michael K. Dorsey is assistant professor in Dartmouth College’s Environmental Studies Program and the Director of the College’s Climate Justice Research Project. He is a co-founding board member of Islands First—a multilateral negotiating capacity building organization for small island developing states facing disproportionate threats from unfolding climate change. Since 2008, Dr. Dorsey has been an Affiliated Researcher on the Sustainability and Climate Research Team at Erasmus University’s Research Institute of Management inside the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM-ERIM, The Netherlands).

For more than a decade Dr. Dorsey has provided strategic guidance and advice to governments, foundations, firms and a multitude of others on the interplay of multilateral environment policy, finance and economic development matters. In 1992, he was a member of the U.S. State Department Delegation to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, “The Earth Summit.” From 1994-96 he was a task force member of President William Jefferson Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development. Over the past decade Michael has considered how and why institutions like transnational corporations, non-governmental organizations, multilateral agencies, inter alia, seek to manage carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) at local to global scales, explicitly using and promoting neoliberal market techniques. Michael’s publications on climate policy have sought to analyze and illustrate how expert and popular opinion shape climate science and justice-based policies. Working in transnational teams, with collaborators from across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America Michael contributed to the 2005 Trouble in the Air: Global Warming and the Privatised Atmosphere (Durban, South Africa and Amsterdam, The Netherlands: UKZN Press and TNI Press); and the recent 2009 Climate Change and Energy Insecurity: The Challenge for Peace, Security and Development (London: Earthscan). These pieces, and others, help better understand both limitations and alternatives to market-based climate management techniques. Michael’s current role as Director of Dartmouth’s Climate Justice Research Project helps further track and elaborate the case for “climate justice solutions” as viable heuristics to avoid climate catastrophe.

From April 2007 until November 2008 Dr. Dorsey was a member of Senator Barack Obama’s energy and environment Presidential campaign team. In July 2010 Lisa Jackson, the US Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) Administrator, appointed Dr. Dorsey to the EPA’s National Advisory Committee.

Dr. Dorsey is also a Joint Center subject matter expert. Details on his areas of expertise can be found here.