It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.
It bothers me when people smoke three packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years and then stick me with their health bill.
If you're in a system where you must make profit in order to survive. You are compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.
When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren't factored in to the pump price - among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents.
In the U.S., society and the environment have to pick up the tab produced by capitalist activity.
The biggest tab the public picks up for fossil fuels has to do with what economists call 'external costs,' like the health effects of air and water pollution.
If it turns out that global warming and ocean acidification are consequences of capitalism's carbon-based energy system, the entire world could end up dead from the external costs of capitalism.
Most Americans are like me and drink relatively little, yet we all pay for alcohol-related crashes.
