Consumer Psychology Lies Behind Environmental Damage

Reader James Deardorff points out:

Conserving energy and natural resources can reduce economic waste by 40 percent or more. The problem is that conservation is counterproductive to our current production based economy. I’m working on a new paper “Corrosion Economics, The Psychology of Paint” that explains how this modern trend affects the $60 billion per year coating industry.

Thanks, Jim, but I’m not sure if this really is a modern trend. Consumers tend to have huge “discount rates,” i.e., overvaluing the present at the expense of the future. This unfortunate phenomenon lies behind a great deal of the pain we’re causing our environment: favoring cheap but dirty fuels, postponing global climate change mitigation, and maintaining the status quo with internal combustion engine transportation.