And the practice of internalizing costs means that I can't aafford spending money on that food, I can't afford solar panels or goods made with postconsumer material. I can't pay for a hybrid nor could I, living on my own, afford to do any of that with the money I make.

I could afford, and I've budgted this out quite a bit in the last couple of years, a used car that's, 10,000 or less, something like a toyota or honda that won't break often and gets decent mileage. I can afford groceries. 120 a month tops. i can afford a cheap internet connection instead of TV. I can afford rent nd utlities. I could afford one 24 case of yuengling a month. This leaves me something like 50 dollars a month in savings, working 40 hours a week. I make above minimum wage, but not by much.

Even if I group recycling in with utlities, I just can't afford the cost of being environmentally friendly. Its just costs too much cash. At certain income levvels, yeah, you can make sacrifices, but at the moment I work a service job. Thankfully I get to live with my parents so i can actually haave money put away, otherwise I'd be screwed.

Yes its bad that environmentally friendly businesses are outside my income level. But everyone else around me, the people who are less fortunate than I am, they really don't have a choice. When you're presented with a 20 dollar table or no table at all, you go with the 20 dollar table even though its shitty and has massive costs to everyone else.

If there was a company that offered environmentally friendly products that were just a little bit more expensive than a wal mart table sure, I'd be willing to cut some expenses somewhere else. Right now though there's no chance. Environmentalism is still a luxury because it is more expensive for the consumer than a shitty item of the same type, and by a large enough margin that it really can't be justified.

I've got to stress that I'm using myself as an example only based on a budget, because I know I'm actually pretty lucky in terms of finances. I'm friends with many people a lot worse off than I am. So while I'm sorry that its fucking up your air, You can't eat internalized costs, but you can eat food, even if its genetically modified ground beef fed from soy farms built o what used to be a rain forest.