Article: Pollution as Theft: Accounting for Systemic Externalities | OpEdNews
Noam Chomsky calls these un-included or ignored factors externalities. A simple example is the cost of producing a product in a factory that dumps toxic waste into a river-- the waste, and the cost of preventing pollution, is an externality that is ignored, or intentionally omitted. The affect of coal burning on climate change is another externality-- a cost that is not factored in to the total cost to the ecosystem. Living in and supporting a materialist culture where acquisition of things is embraced as a positive value, where production of more and more is seen as a positive economic parameter is another externality which ignores the weight the consumption of goods and packaging, which make up half of the material we produce, upon the ecosystem.
a chemical plant juxtaposed with fractal tree branches
(image by rob kall)
