First, look over this list to get a brief description of all seven potential basic causes. Then go to the separate pages for each basic cause to learn more (by clicking on the cause title):
- Goal: to maximize short-term private financial profits -- and externalize environmental costs
- Compare with ecological goal: to minimize long-term environmental threats
- Corporate capitalism is perhaps the most basic basic cause --tends underlay and perpetuate the other "basic" causes
2. Ignorance, misinformation
& disinformation 
Ignorance
- Selective knowledge
- Misinformation
- Disinformation
- "Greenwashing"
- Western culture: arrogance is dominant attitude toward nature
- Other examples
- Driven by economic and social inequity
I = P x A x T (see Miller textbook)- "people overpopulation" (P large)
- "consumption overpopulation" (A & T large)
5. Technology 
- Increased power to change environment (quantitative)
- Created new kinds of threats to nature (qualitative)
- Growing corporate influence on what technology is developed and used
6. Militarism 
- Human aggression and "conflict resolution" can cause environmental degradation
- Many resources diverted to militarism which could be applied to environmental and social problems
7. Synergism 
- Different agents interact to produce an unexpectedly large effect
- Examples
A major reason why it is important to understand basic causes of an environmental stress: Basic solutions reside in identifying and correcting basic causes!
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Thomas Detwyler maintains this page (tdetwyle@uwsp.edu)
Last updated 19 August 2000
� Copyright 1998-2001 by Thomas Detwyler
