Economics and Environmentalism: Belief Systems at Odds

نویسنده

  • ROBERT H. NELSON
چکیده

E conomics and environmentalism are belief systems that shape their adherents’ way of thinking about the world. We might just as accurately characterize them as secular religions, which most theologians count as real religions (see, for example, Tillich 1963), but many people prefer to regard them as competing belief systems. Many (not all) economists and environmentalists thus function in the world as advocates for their belief systems and associated values, albeit often more implicitly than explicitly (Nelson 1991, 2001, 2010). This view admittedly is not the usual understanding of the social sciences and ecological science, which have long professed to seek “value neutrality.” Depending on the audience, however, people often agree to a surprising extent that economics and environmentalism are actually religions. When the subject comes up informally in conversations with economists (and with policy analysts, if perhaps less predictably), I find little disagreement with the idea that environmentalism is a religion—to most economists, the claim seems fairly obvious. Environmentalists often react similarly, but the other way around: economics, for most environmentalists, is a religion. Neither group, however, is comfortable with the characterization of their own thinking as religious (and the economists are more uncomfortable with it than the environmentalists).

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تاریخ انتشار 2012