ABSTRACT
To what extent should the economic analysis of climate change be constrained by or evaluated against external ethical considerations? To what extent should it be subject to moral criticism? In determining appropriate responses to the challenges of climate change, governments and public policymakers have made great use of the tools of economics. Indeed, economic analysis and economic modelling have been central in such policy formation.2 These economic evaluations of and approaches to the problems posed by climate change in the end rely for their efficacy on the pricing mechanism. The thought is that through the ascription of price – either via shadow pricing or the establishment of genuine markets – social goods will be allocated in such a way as to realise environmentally valuable outcomes; that is, outcomes in which the harms of climate change are mitigated. The success of such economic solutions is determined by the extent to which they realise environmental outcome that are better or more valuable than those that would have been realised by other strategies. Within environmental circles, over the past twenty years, disquiet has been expressed by many about the use of economic analysis to capture or adequately represent environmental values. Thus, some critics have spoken of the commodification associated with the pricing mechanisms and the putative inappropriateness of attempting to price what they believe should properly be regarded as priceless. Herein I take a somewhat different approach and explore the relationship between price and ultimate value, which simply means intrinsic value in the moral philosopher’s sense of the value upon which other values ultimately rest.3 The idea of value in question is usefully captured by the philosopher Antony Flew when he says “[a] theory of value is a theory about what things in the world are good, desirable and important”.4
