Worthy-purpose framing legitimizes environmentally harmful practices

Evidence

Social and moral justifications in the environmental domain are designed to confer moral legitimacy on harmful practices by investing them with worthy purposes. These justifications take a variety of forms: gaining societal benefits or economic advantages in the competitive global marketplace, strengthening national security, protecting the free enterprise system, and curbing intrusive government. National, constitutional, and economic justifications also do heavy duty in promoting production processes that are hazardous to the environment and to human health (White, Bandura, & Bero, 2009). The benefits that industries depict usually are accompanied by dire warnings of the costs to society and human well-being were those practices subjected to governmental regulation or halted altogether. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2630

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the social-conservatism argument mechanism in the vault — framing harmful policy as protecting free enterprise or national security. Also echoes how the Frankfurt School saw ideology serving economic power. — connects to: Mainstream environmental groups legitimize pollution by litigating marginal measures; Corporate-funded specialization disguises toxicity and blocks environmental research — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 10; Biblical justifications supplied governing rationale for EPA regulatory rollbacks — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 175 (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2630