However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics; ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.
An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.
Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
Incommensurables cannot be compared.
But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.
The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it.
