Talking a Lot, Yet Little to Say: Economics Imperialism in the Economics of Climate Change

Mainstream economics is ill equipped to deal with systemic issues such as the climate crisis. Yet there is no shortage of approaches that extend neoclassical principles to nature-economy relations, and they hold considerable currency in policy discourses. This article interrogates neoclassical thought on climate change from the perspective of economics imperialism, the expansion of economic analysis onto new subject matter at the expense of other approaches. Drawing on the work of William Nordhaus and Nicholas Stern, I argue that climate change economics has been underpinned by economics imperialism in its second “market imperfection” and third “suspension” phases. Economics imperialism has thus contributed to excluding considerations of power, race, class, gender, and other systemic inequalities from the field, and underpins solutions that delay radical climate action. JEL Classification: B41, B50, Q50, Q54