The Environment in the Ideology of Growth and Consumption - Clive Hamilton

Belief in the power of growth and consumption is buttressed by an instrumentalist attitude to the natural world, an attitude in which the environment is characterised as providing “resources” that have value only because, and to the extent that, they contribute to human welfare as measured through market activity. This ideology conceives of the natural world as a more or less infinite source of material inputs into the production process and a more or less infinite sink for absorbing wastes, so that exploitation of it is not only a right but almost a duty.
This reflects an approach to Nature whose genesis lie deep in the cultural roots of Western Society, streching back at least as far as the foundations of Christianity.

Clive Hamilton, Grothw Fetish, Pluto Press, 2004, p.120