Mainstream Economics and Conventional Environmental Policies

Abstract

Is mainstream economics only about growth, efficiency, and sustainability? Many critics contend so, but the recent state of the art in economics suggests not. Respectively drawing on reformist neoclassical economics, neoclassical microeconomics “proper,” and behavioral economics, major studies show that mainstream economics provides theories of inequality and unsustainability. However, the theories of causation utilized remain largely neoclassical. Similarly, the bases for repairing the harms are grounded in neoclassical reasoning, while the mechanisms for restoration—ranging from minimalist interventions and income and substitution effects to behavioral nudges—are still mainstream. Fundamentally, they say little or nothing substantial about ecological imperialism, at the heart of which are rent theft and ecological debt, two critical cornerstones of world ecological crises. Therefore, mainstream economists certainly have, use, and apply theories of inequality and unsustainability, but mainstream economists neither have, use, nor apply transformative theories of social stratification, nor ecological imperialism generally. The overall effect of this disconnect from real‐world ecological crises is not simply that conventional environmental policies are incomplete, but that mainstream economics and conventional policies deflect attention from ecological imperialism behind veils of rhetoric, prices, and behaviors.

Slavery, Colonialism, and Ecological Imperialism: Insights from Stratification Economics

“…Its adaptation models do not recognize the centrality of racism in driving Black people to ecologically hazardous locations and keeping them there. (For a critical review of such economic models in this issue, see Obeng‐Odoom 2022.) Traditional environmental and climate justice movements often describe the circumstances under which such unequal effects arise, such as socioeconomic inequities, but they fail to draw a clear picture of how these follow directly from slavery, colonialism, and the racist history of the United States.…”