Market-driven consumer economics omits environmental costs from its calculations

Evidence

The ethics of extravagant and wasteful consumerism, rooted in a market-driven model, also warrants comment. This type of lifestyle degrades ecological systems, sometimes with extinction of plant and animal species. It is promoted by striving for perpetual economic growth with exemption from the environmental costs. The cost/benefit analyses omit the pollution, health, and environmental costs. Critics describe this calculus of benefits relieved of environmental costs as economics overruling ecology (Humphrey, 2010). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2656

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader theme of human self-harm and rationalization — cost/benefit analyses that externalize costs mirror the moral disengagement machinery of earlier chapters. — connects to: Sustainability accounting quantifies some impacts while obscuring hard-to-measure ones — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 88; Cheap energy and 1950s consumer culture defeated the conservation ideal — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 246; Consumer environmentalism failed because both rich and poor buyers chose energy waste — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 292 (+3 more)