This is a slightly edited version of my comment on Andy Revkin’s NY Times Dot Earth blog, on “Rationalization masquerades as reason”

The odd rationalization of them all is that what we ask the economy to do by spending money has no environmental impact… if we don’t see it. It’s illogical, but is actually how nearly everyone thinks, that you have no responsibility if you have no information about it.

For example, the real total impacts of using money are naturally going to be an equal share of the world total per dollar, on average. That’s just a mathematical tautology. Everyone will agree in principle, but most then still count the impacts of *their* spending as “0″, instead of “average”, because they don’t see what to count. Continue reading The oddest rationalization of all – “in misinformation we trust” →