Footprints on the Earth: The Environmental Consequences of Modernity
采用生态足迹指标，检验了人类生态学、现代化和政治经济学三种环境影响理论，发现人口、经济产出和城市化等基本物质条件是环境退化的主要驱动因素，而政治自由和环保主义等现代化因素没有显著影响。
Growing evidence demonstrating clear threats to the sustainability of the ecosystems supporting human societies has given rise to a variety of sociological theories of human-environment interactions. These environmental impact theories fall into three general perspectives: human ecology, modernization, and political economy. These theories, however, have not been empirically tested in a common analytic framework. Here, a framework that relies on ecological principles is adopted and modified. Using a revised stochastic formulation of that framework and the most comprehensive measure of environmental impact to date—the ecological footprint—the factors driving the environmental impacts of societies are assessed. The overall findings support the claims of human ecologists, partially support the claims of political economists, and contradict the claims of modernization theorists. Basic material conditions, such as population, economic production, urbanization, and geographical factors all affect the environment and explain the vast majority of cross-national variation in environmental impact. Factors derived from neo-liberal modernization theory, such as political freedom, civil liberties, and state environmentalism have no effect on impacts. Taken together, these findings suggest societies cannot be sanguine about achieving sustainability via a continuation of current trends in economic growth and institutional change.