Consumption resists change because it is profitable and shielded from environmental costs

Evidence

Although perpetual economic growth is unsustainable, it is difficult to modify excessive consumption even in the short term because it is vigorously promoted and profitable. Some industrial methods pollute and degrade the environment and annihilate species by destroying their habitats. Corporations are essentially exempted from these costs to the environment. There is little evidence that high-consumption lifestyles, in large part unfriendly to the environment, enhance people’s satisfaction with their lives. Quality-of-life indicators may shift the focus from material values to environmental and human values that enhance people’s sense of well-being. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2986

Categorization

• XREF: The externality-freeing of corporate pollution parallels the legal exemptions literature in ‘Opting out of the Legal System’ — private actors shielded from costs of their conduct. — connects to: The corporate-backed ‘standard of living’ concept framed welfare as consumption — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 192; Amazon deforestation is economically rational under existing incentives — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 319; A mere duty to warn can outperform formal emission limits through market pressure — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 504 (+5 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: moral disengagement as the hidden driver of why the climate consensus fails — corporations disengage precisely at the cost-shifting locus, so consumption keeps growing regardless of stated values.