If full environmental costs were embedded into consumer product pricing, then the price of high environmental cost consumer products would rise, making them less affordable and so consumption would fall and so reduce the impact on the planet.

Conspicuous consumption and decadence deserves taxing, because its real costs are destructive on the planet and need to be curbed for the planet's health and ours.

How we can reduce our wasteful over-consumption of natural resources whilst retaining or even improving our quality of life?

See also Valerie Yule's home page at home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas including Economic & Political Ideas, Planned Obsolescence of 27 May 07, Cutting waste - saving the planet without destroying economies of 7 Feb 08, Unchecked consumption will waste the planet of 31 Oct 07, Rubbishing on about plastic bags of 30 Apr 08, Climate Change at Animal F of 28 Feb 08.

Does globalised big-business infotechnology AIM to waste the time of intellectuals so that they cannot contribute to politics? I don't know, but it sure is a side effect of the increasingly lousy personal energy returns on increasingly expensive overly complex STINGY computer hardware and software products.