Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2021
Abstract
Water on the earth is a precious resource. However, over 99% of the water on the earth is not available as drinking water. Further issues such as uneven distribution, depletion and contamination of aquifers, excess demand, and climate change challenge the current scarce resources that are currently available to humans on the earth. Thus, humans have contaminated and polluted the limited freshwater available through toxic chemicals and human waste and in many parts of the world, leading to limited availability of clean water (Robertson, 2014). One of the biggest threats in the United States and globally the chemical contamination of underground aquifers that make people sick and cause other issues such as sinkholes (Scharping & Garey, 2021). This study will review the U.S. Department of Defenses (DoD) ecological damage and its responses to contaminating this valuable resource using social costs, Polyani’s (1944) fictitious commodities, and the Veblenian dichotomy. Overall, this paper finds that while the Department of Defense attempts to mitigate its ecological damage, it fails to essentially address the social costs in an attempt to create an efficient remediation process using ceremonial tools and effectively commoditizes the process.
Is Part Of
Student Papers in Local and Global Regional Economies
Repository Citation
Cooper, J.
(2021). Inadequate Accounting, Commoditization, and Ceremonial tools: The Department of Defense’s Environmental Remediation Process. .
https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/econ_student_papers_economies/22
