Poll after poll suggests that what ordinary citizens want is more environmental protection if it means a cleaner environment and a healthier society. Most citizens want the environment protected, but Congress and the states are giving us the opposite. Legislators are beholden to the individuals and corporations who provide mountains of cash for election campaigns. The solution to that problem is public financing of elections. But the full answer is a bit deeper than that.
Profit is the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions.
It takes precedence over community well-being, worker health, public health, peace, environmental preservation or national security. Corporations live or die by whether they can sustain growth. On this depends relationships to investors, to the stock market, to banks and to public perception. The growth imperative also fuels the corporate desire to find and develop scarce resources in obscure parts of the world. Corporations place every person in management in fierce competition with each other.