Rethinking Economics and Global Climate Change

Abstract

Economics should continue strengthening the ongoing debate pertaining to global climate change, particularly, given the persistent scientific uncertainties in terms of the range and severity of potential outcomes that test the resilience of life on Earth. Part of the challenge on how economics may further inform or shape that debate stems from the type of discourses and disagreements surrounding climate destabilization, which often center on some die-hard presuppositions and deterministic evidence sought after by the hard sciences. Given certain policy implications crafted on both sides of the scientiically-deterministic aisle, i.e.: hard and not-so-hard sciences, it may seem even harder to introduce serious non-deterministic and non-nihilistic attitudes into the climate destabilization debate.