Over the years, readers, I have had numerous occasions to be irritated with economists, particularly economists acting as political pundits. I thought today I would explain why. There are those in climate circles who lay most of the blame for the failure of climate action to date at the feet of economists. I’m not one of those people. I just lay … some of the blame at their feet. The fact is, rapidly transforming the entire industrial base of every country on earth was always going to be difficult — lots of extremely powerful interests stand to lose a great deal of money and power — and was probably going to go slowly no matter what economists did.Nonetheless, I think there’s a good argument to be made that, when it comes to the interface of economics and politics, climate economics and climate economists have blown it pretty comprehensively — and have not necessarily learned all the lessons they should have learned. I’ll start by recounting a notable episode and then contemplate two sorts of lessons that might be learned from it, one of which seems like it’s sinking in and and one of which … less so.The case of carbon pricingThis is a familiar story, so I’ll keep it short.The theoretical benefits of carbon pricing, as explored ad nauseam by economics over the last several decades, are well-understood. If you have all the stocks and flows of an economy in a giant spreadsheet, and you tweak the “price of carbon” variable, changes cascade throughout the spreadsheet. Every column in which carbon plays a part (which is almost every part of the US economy) adjusts.Modern neoliberal economics tends to seek the optimally efficient policy, and on that score — maximum results from minimum intervention in the economy — a price on carbon is the winner. It’s one variable you can adjust to optimize your whole spreadsheet. These arguments on behalf of carbon pricing are, I hasten to emphasize, valid. In a spreadsheet economy, turning the carbon-price knob is the most efficient way to reduce carbon emissions.But the economy isn’t a spreadsheet and carbon pricing isn’t just another knob on some policy console. Carbon pricing faces political-economy problems that are, at this point, almost as well-understood (at least by those who have been paying attention) as its theoretical merits. In fact, the closer a carbon price gets to the economist’s ideal — pegged to the social cost of carbon, equal across sectors, covering the whole economy — the more political-economy problems it faces. Its efficiency varies in inverse proportion to its feasibility.The more sectors are roped in under the carbon price, the more simultaneous enemies the policy makes. Different industries have different levels of power and influence and need to be compensated in different ways for their political acquiescence, but a carbon price applies to all industries equally, so it can not compensate any of them in particular. Thus, it has no friends (except economists).Carbon pricing policies can be and have been tweaked to overcome these difficulties, but with every tweak, optimal efficiency recedes in the rearview mirror. For one thing, pretty much every extant carbon price is the world is too low, well beneath the social cost of carbon. In the real world, other sector-specific industrial policies that are more politically manageable, like feed-in tariffs and renewable energy standards, have prevented far more emissions.Anyway, I won’t rehearse all these arguments again. If you want to read up, start with this piece I did for Vox, this piece from Jesse Jenkins, or this three-part interview I did with David Victor and Danny Cullenward, who wrote a whole book on the subject. For years, economists acted like serious grappling with political-economy constraints was beneath them, and they bullied big environmental groups into becoming economist wannabes, preaching their “market-friendly” gospel. The entire decade of the 2000s was spent preparing for a national climate-pricing push i