The environmental community is mourning the death of a prominent economist who was stabbed to death in Baltimore over the weekend.
Molly Macauley, 59, vice president of research at the Washington think tank Resources for the Future, was killed late Friday night outside her home in the Roland Park neighborhood in Baltimore.
Baltimore City police are still investigating the homicide, with few leads on who murdered Macauley or why. She was walking her dog when the attack occurred.
On Monday morning, the policy community in Washington mourned Macauley’s passing as a senseless tragedy that came amid the murders of several police officers by a lone gunman in Dallas on Friday.
“Not only were we impacted by the tragedy in Dallas, we in the D.C. policy community suffered our own tragic loss when RFF’s Molly Macauley was tragically lost to senseless violence late Friday,” said Frank Maisano, senior principal at the law firm Bracewell, in his popular weekly energy and environment newsletter. “We offer our sympathies to her family, our friends at RFF and all those who knew her as a colleague. These times are difficult times.”
Resources for the Future President Linda Fisher said the think tank had suffered an “incredible shock.”
“This is devastating and an incredible shock. Molly was a respected, path-breaking economist, an esteemed leader, whip-smart, and profoundly kind,” Fisher said.
The think tank’s economists have been highly influential in assessing the economics of climate regulations and clean energy.
Macauley focused on the use of economic incentives in environmental regulation, climate and earth science, and recycling and solid waste management, according to the Resources for the Future website. She served on a number of special committees for federal agencies and the National Academy of Sciences.
Macauley graduated with a PhD in economics from John Hopkins University in Baltimore.
