My Environmental Economics professor stated that consumption is pollution- would Karl Marx approve?

Question

She also stated that since the US consumed the most, that we polluted the most. Funny, who has a cleaner environments, western countries or China and India?

Answer 1

i would ask your teacher about the link between economic prosperity and clean enviroment.  There is a direct correlation.

Answer 2

the way consumption is done by trying to make a profit is pollution, but not consumption of and by itself. While the cow creates CO2s and is the worst pollutor and doesn't even come close to what cars emit, animals probably consume more than humans and humans by far pollute the most. Cows BTW are used by humans to make profit while wild animals consume more than humans making no profit and don't  pollute. Food is the only thing animals consume, outside of air, so extraneous consumption of goods and services like buying cars, refrigerators, etc, by humans are unnatural consumer items that pollute but still those items are produced by negligent capitalist who's driving force is profit, not consumption by consumers.

So, the real pollutor isn't consumption but trying to make a profit, or namely: greed. The biggest pollutor for humans is their cars, but it's the greed of big oil in collusion with auto makers that makes it so we don't have cars running on water-making hydrogen engines, which we could have and should have if it werent for the greed and collusion that goes on in our govt buracracy between big oil, automakers and our govt. Our govt is telling big oil that their greed is more important than a livable environment and killing a certain percentage of people on Earth is actually desirable to keep the population down.

Answer 3

Consumption IS pollution.  Energy is used to create stuff, there are raw materials used, processed, and waste leftover, packaging, shipping, etc and the more we consume, the more trash there is at the end.

There's nothing inaccurate about that statement.  Now as far as the most pollution, that depends.  Some types of energy use is dirtier than others.  If you look at all of history, we've probably produced more pollution than others, but if you look at right now, probably not.

China doesn't use the energy we do, but all that production and manufacturing that we used to do, that feeds into the pollution caused by consumption, that creates so much pollution, is now done, because it's cheaper, in China, India, Mexico, etc.  It's also cheaper because we have standards for controlling waste and pollution that they don't, which by definition means manufacturing here would be cleaner, even if we still did it.

Generally, she's not inaccurate, but it seems like she over-simplifies.

Think back to our rivers and Great Lakes being so polluted as to be unusable, and sometimes catching on fire (before the EPA was created, in the 60s and early 70s).... if you don't recall that or know about it, then you aren't informed on the facts, and probably should be before making comparisons to other nations.  We're only cleaner now because we got to riddled with filth previously, and acted upon it.

Of course, if we were currently in that situation, conservatives would oppose such action, just like they do on global warming, so we're probably lucky that happened during more "liberal" times.

Answer 4

Our environment isn't exactly sparkling clean by the way.  We do serious environmental degradation right here at home.  That is why we have the highest rates of autism, children are being contaminated by water supplies in Iowa, we have an extremely high rate of cancer, etc....

No Karl Marx would not approve of such consumption or pollution.  China and India may not have the same environmental standards as us, but we aren't exactly setting the bar high now are we?  Our President told the G8 summit last month, "goodbye from the most polluting nation on the planet".  Yeah, that's something to be proud of.