Economists and Environmentalists: Why Their Perspectives Matter
Imagine living with chronic pain. One doctor fixes the specific painful spot, repeatedly treating that single symptom. Another practitioner takes a broader view, looking at how the brain and body interact to understand why the nervous system remains on high alert—driven by stress, fear of symptoms, or learned triggers. Because they start from different angles, they end up recommending very different treatments.
A parallel scene unfolds in environmental debates. Experts often clash over which solutions work best and what should take priority, weighing various trade-offs. Recently, my colleagues and I published a study suggesting that the rift may begin even earlier: economists and environmental scientists may be interpreting which environmental problems matter most through distinct lenses.
In a global survey of 2,365 researchers who publish in top economics and environmental science journals, we asked them to name up to nine environmental issues they deem most relevant today. The results show two disciplines looking at the same planet from different viewpoints.
The environmental issues researchers identify tend to shape the solutions they endorse. If climate change is their primary concern, they are more inclined toward conventional, market-based tools (for example, a carbon tax). If they recognize a wider set of concerns—biodiversity loss, pollution, and other systemic problems—they tend to favor broader, more holistic approaches.
Climate change emerged as the single most frequently mentioned issue across the full sample, cited by about 70% of respondents. The second most common category was biosphere integrity, essentially the ongoing loss of nature, mentioned by 51%.
Several pressures deemed critical for planetary stability—such as novel entities (synthetic chemicals and plastics), biogeochemical flows (fertilizers, etc.), and ocean acidification—were highlighted by far fewer researchers, at roughly 43%, 9%, and 8% respectively.
Economists and environmental scientists map the problem differently. When we compared the two groups, environmental researchers listed more categories and a broader range of issues than economists.
Both groups frequently mentioned climate change and related concerns like greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. The gaps appeared for issues less directly tied to carbon, such as biodiversity, land-use change, novel entities, and pollution.
One possible reason for these differences is disciplinary training. Just as photographers frame a scene with what their lens emphasizes, scientists tend to notice what their field prioritizes. Economists focus on prices, incentives, and policy mechanisms around carbon emissions, so climate change naturally becomes a central focal point.
Different solution preferences
We also asked participants to rate seven approaches for mitigating environmental problems. All approaches were viewed as having at least moderate potential.
Overall, technological advances received the highest ratings, while non-violent civil disobedience received the lowest. Economists tended to favor market-based solutions and technological progress more than environmental researchers did. In contrast, environmental researchers gave relatively greater weight to degrowth of the global economy and non-violent civil disobedience.
Next, we examined whether researchers who named a broader set of environmental problems also tended to prefer different kinds of solutions, even after accounting for political leanings and field of study.
A clear pattern emerged: attributing a wider array of issues to the problem was linked to greater support for systemic approaches—such as environmental regulation, degrowth, and non-violent civil disobedience—while it correlated with relatively lower optimism about relying solely on technological innovations.
Economists and environmental scientists frequently advise governments, participate in expert panels, and help define what counts as a solution. If two influential groups start from different lists of what constitutes the problem, it’s unsurprising that they champion different fixes.
This dynamic also helps explain why some debates feel stuck. If climate change is the only issue you see, you may trust cleaner technologies and market incentives. But if you also recognize biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, and land-use changes, the challenge ceases to be a purely engineering problem and becomes a network of interconnected pressures requiring changes in production, consumption, and the way our economy is organized.
This theme appears in our related work on green growth—the idea that countries can expand GDP while reducing environmental harm. Using our survey data, we found that researchers across disciplines were far from convinced that growth in GDP can continue while emissions and resource use decline rapidly enough.
Economists tended to be more optimistic than scientists from Earth, agricultural, and biology fields. Those differences aligned with beliefs in technology and markets.
You can’t agree on the route if you don’t share a map. A more shared picture of the environmental crisis, beyond focusing on carbon alone, won’t automatically resolve disagreements. But it can foster more productive research, richer discussions about trade-offs, and a broader consideration of possible solutions.
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