natural world that inevitably go into making products of almost any
kind, or go into providing services. The air, the water, the land used
in the production process have traditionally been left out of the eco-
nomic calculus, as have the many costs that go into cleaning up air
and water and other parts of nature, once they have been fouled in the
process of making products. These natural elements used in the
production process are called ‘externalities’. As the name indicates,
traditionally they have been considered as external to the production
process, and therefore presented little interest to the discipline of eco-
nomics, which for some time did not known how to think about them
and how to attribute costs to them.^3
For example a logging company may establish itself on a river and
use that river for energy, for transportation, and also as a way to dis-
pose of the toxic by-products of the production processes, such as those
created in the making of paper. The river in traditional capitalist eco-
nomics is not part of the economic calculus, and business is not taught
to think about it, in terms of trying to price it, either as an element of
production – transportation, energy etc – or as an economic loss, in
terms of the many costs of spoiling the river in the short and long term.
It is hardly surprising that as a consequence, business does not think
about its responsibility to maintain the quality of the water in the river,
or about the costs associated with doing so, and, when it is finished with
the river, often the business simply moves or closes, and never takes eco-
nomic or moral responsibility for the effect of poisoning the river.
Natural elements that go into the production process are also more
or less plentiful and more or less likely to be exhaustible or finite.
Since economics has not really known how to think about natural
resources, it does not know either how to think about finite natural
resources and about larger issues such as sustainability.^4 Thus for
example, oil is a finite resource. Automobile companies continue to
make cars which rely on oil, and they have little economic incentive
to think about alternative forms of automobiles which are not
dependent on this finite resource. Recently they have begun to look
for alternatives, since the price of oil is high, and the outside pressure
is mounting both because of prices and because of the pollution oil
produces. Public pressure and finite resources are blunt instruments
for change in the automobile industry, and come late in the day.
Greater attention to the wider society and to the consumer would
have motivated change much earlier, and perhaps the creation of a
greater range of options as well. While perhaps unintentionally so,
this ignorance (and egoism) induced by the sole drive for profit, ends
up creating behaviour that is morally irresponsible in relation to the
natural environment.
This irresponsibility is compounded by the inability of the economic
calculus to think in the long term.^5 Since profits are measured in the
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