Moreover, markets can continue to function as
they do because of their reliance on the unpaid
work that is allocated to caring for children,
the sick and the elderly and the domestic work
that sustains households and communities
(UNRISD, 2010). Economic growth could not take
place without this unpaid and often invisible
work. Dominant growth models also rely on
the exploitation of natural resources as if these
were unlimited. The environmental costs of
production, such as pollution, toxic waste and
greenhouse gas emissions are externalized. That
is, “climate change, like other environmental problems, involves an externality: the emission
of greenhouse gases damages others at no
cost to the agent responsible for the emissions”
(Stern, 2006). Such patterns of development
create profits at environmental expense, whether
through the entrenched fossil fuel systems that
supply industry, energy and automobiles, or
through industrial agriculture that generates
short-term gain by mining soils and depleting
water resources. Such patterns are unsustainable,
compromising future production and consumption
and threatening the integrity and resilience
of ecosystems and biodiversity (Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, 2005).