" Climate change is slow, but a cumulative process. Individual human lifespan is only an infinitesimally small fraction of the life of environmental resources and ecosystem services. Hence, the self- centric and this-worldly view of life is incompatible with the concerns of sustainability and socially responsible behaviour. Rather, the dogmatic commitment to self-centric worldview results in the inevitable proliferation of pollution as a right and product to be bought and sold in the market economy. It is ironic, but inevitable to see measures such as ‘statistical value of life’. On the action and policy front in capitalistic democracies, voter ignorance as well as the public-good nature of any results of political activity tends to create a situation in which maximizing an individual’s private surplus through rent seeking can be at the expense of a lower economic surplus for all consumers and producers. "

― Salman Ahmed Shaikh ,