The economy in the climate impasse: material development, immaterial theory and self-stabilizing utopia.

Summary Why are greenhouse gas emissions not controlled? The thesis interrogates the toolbox of neo-classical economic analysis and asks the question: how does economic theory form an inadequate mental framing of the climate problem? The thesis identifies shifts in the history of resource economics and shows a recurrent neglect of the material substrate of production. The production function, the preferred tool for modeling technical constraints, is based on a misunderstanding, as the Cambridge controversy taught. Cost-benefit analysis, the only supposedly non-normative approach, is preferred to deal with climate change, even if it means modeling unknown relationships. The damage function extrapolates from shared prejudices, and the repeated controversies over discounting highlight the inconsistency of the current macroeconomic framework. The analysis of a contemporary article makes explicit the functioning of this casual relationship to reality: the loose links between the mathematical structure of a model, the words used to describe it and its numerical results give extraordinary margins for interpretation. The relationship between economic system, ideology and academic discipline is studied through the prism of two symbols, homo economicus and the market. The inadequacy of economic theory to deal with climate change has a deeper root in the current market-centered organization of Western societies. The blocking effects can be seen both in the sociological phenomenon of climate skepticism and in the construction of the carbon market.