Why I Am Not An Environmentalist

Name Institutional Affiliation Course Code/Title Instructor Date Why I am not an Environmentalist The article is about environmentalism and the science of economics as compared to the religion of ecology. Over the past few decades, there has been a lot of talk about the environment and people wanting to conserve the environment by making certain choices. However, not everyone believes in conserving the environment. While some people prefer sacrificing some of their lifestyle choices, others believe in doing whatever makes them comfortable without giving much thought to how it could affect the environment. There are several examples that have been used in the article and each example relates to one or more economic principles. The first example is about Jack and Jill. Jack prefers to have woodland on a piece of land while Jill would like to allocate the piece of land for parking (Landsburg, 2). However, the two cannot be done at the same time. Either Jack or Jill would have to compromise his idea so that the other person can go actualize his idea. This brings about the principle of opportunity cost. Opportunity cost can be defined as the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen. For example, if they Jack compromised so that Jill can have his parking space, the Jack’s woodland would be the opportunity cost. The second example is about the idea of environmentalist to recycle paper. According to Landsburg, if there was a way to recycle beef, then the production of beef would have to go down. For the ranchers to continue producing more beef, then people would have to consume it without recycling (Landsburg, 2). The same logic should apply to recycling of papers. If people recycled paper, then the paper companies would not be motivated to plant more trees to make then paper. However, if people did not recycle pape...