53 Over time scientific analyses on global climate change have found that the production or use of practically all fossil fuels, including oil and natural gas, and human-processed chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons, methane and nitrous oxides, to mention a few, has lead to an unprecedented growth in the stock of cumulative pollutants trapped in the atmosphere.5 More recent scientific inquiries pertaining to human-induced global climate change have focused on a number of long-term patterns of climate destabilization given a set of premises, parameters and analytical tools, including: biophysical constraints, uncertainty, irreversibility and the complex modeling of ecosystem resilience and adaptability to sudden perturbations and feedback loops from nonlinear systems perspectives (Orr, 2009, pp. 192-94). What seems rather new in this debate, however, is the range of instruments policy makers wish to embrace in order to circumvent (at best) or insure society (as a precaution) against potential catastrophic phenomena should the effects of climate destabilization lead the Earth on paths that become less suitable for life. Yet, social and economic policy implications aimed at lessening the impact of continued increases in the stock of cumulative pollutants in the Earth’s biosphere have had far less time to reconcile mounting facts and uncertainties associated with the going scientific evidence on global climate change. In spite of the increasing scientific rigor behind the latest studies linking greenhouse gas emissions and climate destabilization, the going discourses often reflect an acquiescent support for further deterministic and nihilistic analyses whereby corollary policy responses are summoned to action. Although there are numerous conflicting views on the predictions climate scientists offer in terms of the range and extent of potential climate-destabilizing outcomes the opportunity to reexamine some scientific presuppositions in light Economics of the Greenhouse. London, uk: Earthscan. 5 Harris, J. (2006) Environmental and Natural Resources: A Contemporary Approach. 2nd edition. Boston, ma: Houghton Mifflin Co. of volition for non-deterministic and non-nihilistic values is long overdue.6 Volition is ubiquitous throughout the economic process. Economics is concerned with how societies choose to use scarce resources amongst competing ends.7 For the most part, Neoclassical Economics or Mainstream Economics embraces the idea of markets and the mechanism of the price as the cornerstone for an efficient allocation of resources. Neoclassical economics focuses on aggregate individual volition across markets as a catalyst for its consequentialist ethical basis. Teleological or consequentialist ethical theories, such as ethical egoism and utilitarianism, “focus on the consequences of actions and the achievement of a desired end, such as utility maximization” (Anderson, 2004, pp. 87-101). Deontological or non-consequentialist theories of rights, justice and virtue, on the other hand, focus on a sense of duty or obligation behind the decision.8 Borrowing lopsidedly from 6 Two recent examples come to my mind. One deals with the conflicting scientific predictions on expected changes in surface temperatures across the Earth as reported by the latest Ipcc report, the ipcc Fourth Assessment Report “Climate Change 2007”; the 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (after N. Stern) regarding the effects of global warming; and the dice global-warming model spearheaded by William Nordhaus (2007). Conceivably, there is a wealth of varying modeling techniques and premises behind these three assessments, and Nordhaus maintains that some predictiondiscrepancies between the dice and the Stern Review are due to differences in discounting. The second example, which draws from the predictions of the just mentioned assessments, comes from a recent issue of a newspaper: The Economist. (2010) “Briefing the Science of Climate Change: The Clouds of Unknowing”, March 20th- 26th, pp. 83 – 86. 7 While acknowledging numerous and growing topics within the field, Samuelson, P.A. and Nordhaus, W. D. (2001, p. 4) offer the following fairly standard definition of economics: “Economics is the study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people.” 8 A superb analysis that teases out non-consequentialist ethics vis-à-vis the “virtues” of markets is found in Kanbur, R. (2004) “On Obnoxious Markets”, in Cullenberg, S. and P. Pattanaik, eds., Globalization, Culture and the Limits of the Market: Essays in Economics and Philosophy. New York, ny: Oxford University Press. economic classical liberalism, neoclassical economics blends individualism (ethical egoism) with utilitarianism to see in selfishness the act that sanctions social wellbeing. From this point of view, and to the extent volition is driven by incentives determined by consequences of actions, e.g., focusing on expected outcomes rather than virtue, individuals may pay far greater concern for human-imposed constraints rather than constraints arising from nature (i.e.: biophysical constraints). By invoking rational, individualistic, value-free deterministic approaches to scarcity and efficiency, neoclassical economics calls for greater doses of determinism meshed with the aggregation of individual choices to craft policy instruments most suitable to improve upon inefficient market outcomes. Lo-and-behold, neoclassical economics reiterates premises and deterministic outcomes in check with markets and price signals so policies come to the rescue should markets fail to deliver efficient allocations of “valuable commodities” and resources. Yet not all economists would agree with this type of volition and methodological individualism espoused by neoclassical economics. Not only has this neoclassical view distanced itself from the problem of distribution (which was so critical to classical political economists), but it also fails to address volition facing the scale of economic activity relative to the ecosystem in which it is contained. To resist acquiescence with solely deterministic outcomes and consequential ethics, non-neoclassical economists have begun to assert the need to reexamine economics from its basic premises.9 Section two outlines the basic views on how neoclassical economics treats nature versus the ways in which ecological 9 Refer to Daly, H. (1992) “Elements of Environmental Macroeconomics”, chapter 3 in R. Costanza, ed., Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability. New York, ny: Columbia University Press; and Kanbur, R. (2004) “On Obnoxious Markets”, in Cullenberg, S. and P. Pattanaik, eds., Globalization, Culture and the Limits of the Market: Essays in Economics and Philosophy. New York, ny: Oxford University Press.
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