An academic rift in climate policy? Agreement and controversies among scholars and disciplines on climate mitigation strategies

Climate mitigation policies have effectively slowed down the increase of carbon emissions and reduced them in some countries. However, to effectively implement the Paris Agreement, the ambition level of climate mitigation policies must substantially increase, especially in sectors like transport and industry, and in both the Global North and the Global South. Concerning the policy mixes and strategies needed for total decarbonization, several questions remain unanswered and are a source of controversy among climate scholars. Disagreement exists around issues such as the necessary policy instruments and their actual effects on decarbonization, economy-wide versus sector-specific strategies, international harmonization of policies and the appropriate strategies for the Global South, and metrics for assessment transition progress. Here we investigate to which extent climate mitigation scholars' policy recommendations differ around the dimensions above and possible explanations for such discrepancies. To this aim, we conduct a global survey among climate policy scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds, countries, and seniority. The findings highlight points of agreement but also several controversies among scholars around two dominant approaches. The first one derives from environmental economics and consists in pricing carbon, to internalize the environmental externality caused by GHG emissions. Penalizing the polluting technologies would promote the deployment of clean technologies and trigger innovation in new ones. These scholars also prefer policy harmonization among countries and economy-wide instruments. A second approach based mainly on transitions theory and political and environmental sciences offers different policy recommendations. This approach frames climate change mitigation not as a negative externality but as a technological and institutional lock-in problem, requiring stronger government interventions. Sector- and often country-specific policies are required to facilitate the development, diffusion and ultimate breakthrough of new technologies that allow transitions to happen. These researchers perceive carbon pricing not as a central policy but as one complementary instrument in a broad mix of policies. Because of foundational differences in ontological assumptions, full integration of these approaches at a theoretical level seems unrealistic. However, we argue that in practice, a smart combination of policy recommendations from both approaches can facilitate the emergence of feasible, just, and cost-effective strategies to decarbonise our societies.