About

Lisa Jacobson is a cultural historian specializing in the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. Her research interests include consumer culture, food and alcoholic beverages, capitalism and the senses, as well as childhood, gender, and the family. Her work focuses on cultural reinvention, examining how goods and practices that were once considered illicit or disreputable gained mainstream acceptance. Her first book, Raising Consumers, explores how various actors helped shape modern consumer society and legitimize a distinctive children’s consumer culture in the early twentieth century. Her current project, Intoxicating Pleasures, investigates how alcoholic beverages, once banned under Prohibition, were redefined as respectable pleasures through advertising, public relations campaigns, and consumer and wartime influences during the Great Depression and World War II. Jacobson’s scholarship emphasizes the role of industry, government, and ordinary consumers in the cultural reinvention of alcohol, contributing to broader understandings of American social and cultural history.

Research topics

• Physics
• Computer Science
• Biology
• Astrobiology
• Natural resource economics
• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Economics
• Environmental resource management
• Astronomy

Selected publications

• Thresholds of significant harm at global level: The journey of the Earth Commission

  Earth System Governance · 2025-06-09 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  The planetary boundary framework proposes ‘safe’ boundaries, but these boundaries are not necessarily ‘just’. Hence, we ask: How has the Earth Commission defined just boundaries building on the concept of minimizing significant harm and how many people are currently exposed to harm above the safe and just threshold? We document the work of the Earth Commission to address these questions using our Earth System Justice framework. We conclude that: (a) from a justice perspective, nine criteria need to be considered when defining just boundaries; (b) the proportions of populations exposed to harm from exceeding safe and just boundaries today range from 11 to 84 % for the five domains studied (climate, biosphere, water, nutrients, aerosols); and (c) argue that the absolute upper limit for significant harm is possibly harm to 1 % of the population, which although not stringent enough to leave no one behind, would require radical transformations, given the populations currently already above the threshold.

  PublisherDOI

• Charting a transformational course toward a safe and just future: the Earth Commission’s contribution

  2025-08-11 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Humans are now operating well outside the planetary conditions that enabled stable and equitable development. The situation is urgent — we need a swift and profound shift in direction — a collective transformation. In response, the Earth Commission has developed a science-based framework that integrates biophysical limits with justice considerations, aiming to secure a liveable and dignified future for all. The Earth Commission’s first assessment showed that multiple safe and just Earth system boundaries have already been transgressed, threatening the resilience of the planet and the well-being of billions. This paper outlines the vision and scientific strategy for the Earth Commission’s second phase (2024–2027), which focuses on advancing this framework and translating it into actionable budgets and exploring transformation pathways to a safe and just space. Key components include expanding the safe and just boundary assessment to currently under-assessed Earth system processes (e.g., novel entities and ocean change), integrating justice more deeply into the framework, modelling interactions between boundaries and tipping points, and developing practical approaches to cross-scale translation and transformation. Special attention is given to the structural inequalities and power dynamics that shape both environmental degradation and our capacity to act. Through coordinated research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and stakeholder engagement, the Earth Commission seeks to provide knowledge to guide collective efforts toward transforming to a safe and just space for both people and the planet.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A just world on a safe planet: a Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations

  The Lancet Planetary Health · 2024-09-12 · 140 citations

  reviewOpen access

  The health of the planet and its people are at risk. The deterioration of the global commons—ie, the natural systems that support life on Earth—is exacerbating energy, food, and water insecurity, and increasing the risk of disease, disaster, displacement, and conflict. In this Commission, we quantify safe and just Earth-system boundaries (ESBs) and assess minimum access to natural resources required for human dignity and to enable escape from poverty. Collectively, these describe a safe and just corridor that is essential to ensuring sustainable and resilient human and planetary health and thriving in the Anthropocene.

  PublisherDOI

• Applying earth system justice to phase out fossil fuels: learning from the injustice of adopting 1.5 °C over 1 °C

  International Environmental Agreements Politics Law and Economics · 2024-02-26 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract The Paris Agreement has seen the adoption of a 1.5° to 2 °C climate target, based on the belief that climate change becomes ‘dangerous’ above this level. Since then, the scientific community and the countries most affected by global warming have reiterated that the maximum limit to be reached should be 1.5 °C. This paper goes one step further by questioning the reasoning behind the adoption of these targets, arguing that the fossil fuel-dependent political context in which they were adopted has undermined justice concerns. We highlight the political influence of the fossil fuels industry within target-setting negotiations, analyzing the evolution of climate targets and fossil fuel lobbying. We then harness published scientific evidence and the Earth System Justice framework to analyze the impacts of the 1.5 °C target, and the injustices that have so far been implicitly deemed acceptable. We argue that 1 °C would have been a far more just target and was undermined by vested interests and status quo maintenance. Finally, we propose just supply-side policies to ensure an adequate placement of responsibility on the fossil fuel industry. This way we (a) identify political influences and scientific blind spots that have and could continue to hinder climate action, (b) reveal how these influences delayed more ambitious climate objectives, contributing to the adoption of an unjust climate target, and (c) promote a focus on supply-side measures and polluting industries in order to break free from the impasse in the energy transition and foster more just outcomes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How can we live within the safe and just Earth system boundaries for blue water?

  Research Square · 2023-05-02 · 11 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Safe and just Earth System Boundaries (ESBs) for surface and groundwater (blue water) have been defined for sustainable water management in the Anthropocene. We evaluate where minimum human needs can be met within the surface water ESB and, where this is not possible, identify how much groundwater is required. 2.6 billion people live in catchments where groundwater is needed because they are already outside the surface water ESB or have insufficient surface water to meet human needs and the ESB. Approximately 1.4 billion people live in catchments where demand side transformations are required as they either exceed the surface water ESB or face a decline in groundwater recharge and cannot meet minimum needs within the ESB. A further 1.5 billion people live in catchments outside the ESB with insufficient surface water to meet needs, requiring both supply and demand-side transformations. These results highlight the challenges and opportunities of meeting even basic human access needs to water and protecting aquatic ecosystems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Living within the safe and just Earth system boundaries for blue water

  Nature Sustainability · 2023-11-16 · 69 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for surface water and groundwater (blue water) have been defined for sustainable water management in the Anthropocene. Here we assessed whether minimum human needs could be met with surface water from within individual river basins alone and, where this is not possible, quantified how much groundwater would be required. Approximately 2.6 billion people live in river basins where groundwater is needed because they are already outside the surface water ESB or have insufficient surface water to meet human needs and the ESB. Approximately 1.4 billion people live in river basins where demand-side transformations would be required as they either exceed the surface water ESB or face a decline in groundwater recharge and cannot meet minimum needs within the ESB. A further 1.5 billion people live in river basins outside the ESB, with insufficient surface water to meet minimum needs, requiring both supply- and demand-side transformations. These results highlight the challenges and opportunities of meeting even basic human access needs to water and protecting aquatic ecosystems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Earth system justice needed to identify and live within Earth system boundaries

  Nature Sustainability · 2023-03-02 · 196 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Safe and just Earth system boundaries

  Nature · 2023 · 1217 citations

  • Environmental science
  • Natural resource economics
  • Environmental resource management

  . The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dan Malleck and Cheryl Krasnick Warsh(eds), <i>Pleasure and Panic: New Essays on the History of Alcohol and Drugs</i>

  Social History of Medicine · 2023-07-05

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Journal Article Pleasure and Panic: New Essays on the History of Alcohol and Drugs Get access Dan Malleckand Cheryl Krasnick Warsh(eds), Pleasure and Panic: New Essays on the History of Alcohol and Drugs. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022. Pp. x + 313. £33. Pbk. ISBN 978-0-7748-6752-8. Lisa Jacobson Lisa Jacobson University of California, Santa Barbara, USA jacobson@history.ucsb.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social History of Medicine, hkad046, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkad046 Published: 05 July 2023

  PublisherDOI

• Chapter 4 Altered States and Gustatory Taste: The Sensory Synergies of Whiskey Marketing in the Mid-Twentieth- Century United States

  University of Pennsylvania Press eBooks · 2023-06-30

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Juan Rocha

  26 shared

• Steven J. Lade

  Stockholm University

  22 shared

• Joyeeta Gupta

  University of Amsterdam

  21 shared

• Johan Rockström

  Stockholm University

  21 shared

• Peter H. Verburg

  Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  19 shared

• David Obura

  Coastal Oceans Research and Development in the Indian Ocean

  17 shared

• Dahe Qin

  Chinese Academy of Sciences

  16 shared

• Ricarda Winkelmann

  Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

  15 shared

Labs

• Lisa Jacobson LabPI

Education

• Bachelor, Journalism, media and communications

  Stockholm University

  2000