The economics of climate change and the change of climate in economics

Kevin Maréchal ()

ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: Economics is an unavoidable decision-making tool in the field of climate policy. At the same time, traditional economics is being challenged both empirically and theoretically by scholars in different fields. Its non-neutrality in dealing with climate-related issues-which is illustrated by the controversy over the "no-regret potential"-would thus call for an opening of economics to insights from other disciplines. Within that context, we show that an evolutionary-inspired line of thought coupled with a systemic and historical perspective of technological change provides a very insightful alternative to traditional economics. More particularly, it follows from that framework that the picture of the climate challenge ahead looks very different from what traditional economic analyses would suggest. For instance, the lock-in process makes it unlikely that traditional cost-efficient measures (such as carbon taxation or tradable emission rights) will be sufficient to bring about the required radical changes in the field of energy as they fail to address structural barriers highlighted in our approach. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Climate change; Evolutionary economics; Technological lock-in (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-10
Note: SCOPUS: ar.j
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published in: Energy policy (2007) v.35 n° 10,p.5181-5194

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: The economics of climate change and the change of climate in economics (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/176653

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... lb.ac.be:2013/176653

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().