Since the environmental crisis has been generated by the war between the two worlds that human society occupies, it can be properly understood only in terms of their interplay. Of course, as in a conventional war, the issues can be simplified by taking sides: ignoring the interests of one combatant or the other. But this is done only at the cost of understanding. If the ecosphere is ignored, it is possible to define the environmental crisis solely in terms of the factors that govern the technosphere: production, prices, and profits, and the economic processes that mediate their interaction. Then, for example, one can concoct a scheme, as recently proposed by President Bush, in which factories are allotted the right to emit pollutants up to some acceptable level and, in a parody of the "free market," to buy and sell these rights. But unlike the conventional marketplace, which deals in goods-things that serve a useful purpose-this scheme creates a marketplace in "bads"-things that are not only useless but often deadly. Apart from the issue of morality, it should be noted that such a scheme cannot operate unless the right to produce pollutants is exercised-hardly an inducement to eliminating them.