E-commerce is growing and environmentalists should be happy. At first glance, Internet-based shopping seems to have benefits for both the consumer and the environment.
Consumers believe they are getting better prices and greater convenience.
Environmentalists believe that transportation and collateral costs are reduced because there are fewer trips to shopping malls. In practice, shoppers in the physical world bundle their errands together. The marginal effect on, say, traffic, of buying a book at the mall is small if, as part of the trip, other items are bought or other things are done, such as picking up the kids. That there is a social cost there is no doubt, but the wider effect of ordering products over the Internet is not zero. Electricity generation is one of the largest national sources of many pollutants.