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132243 Business & Social Responsibilities Ethics and the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
132243 Business & Social Responsibilities Ethics and the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
132243 Business & Social Responsibilities Ethics and the Environment 1 Introduction Industrial technology has enabled us to manipulate and control nature, but has also polluted our environment and depleted our natural resources.
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Introduction (cont.)
Environmental Issues
What damage produced by industrial technology? How large does this affect our welfare? What must be sacrificed to slow down such damage? Whose rights are violated by pollution? Who should be responsible for polluting? What obligations do firms have to future generation?
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The Dimensions of Pollution and Resource Depletion
Pollution: the undesirable and unintended contamination of the environment by the manufacturer or use of commodities
Air pollution Water pollution Land pollution
Resource depletion: the consumption of finite or scarce resources
Depletion of species and habitats Depletion of fossil fuels and minerals
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Air Pollution
Global Warming
Causes: the industrial release of greenhouse gases (e.g. co2, nitrous oxide, methane, and CFC) into the atmosphere, particularly by the burning of fossil fuels Consequences: deserts expanded, polar ice melted, sea levels risen, several species extinct, farming disrupted, distribution and severity of diseases increased Solutions: difficult (expensive) to solve, perhaps we could try to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases already in the air
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Air Pollution (cont.)
Ozone Depletion
Causes: the industrial release of CFCs (particularly via the use of aerosol cans, refrigerators, air conditioners, industrial solvents, and industrial foam blowers) into the air Consequences: ultraviolet rays increased, skin cancer developed, crops destroyed, plankton destroyed Solutions: we could try to reduce the release
- f CFC gases, however the already existing
CFC gases in the air will continue their danger and will persist for many years
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Air Pollution (cont.)
Acid Rain
Causes: the industrial release of sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides (from the combustion of fossil fuels used by utilities to produce electricity) into the atmosphere Consequences: acidity of the water raised, aquatic organisms died, forest and wildlife species destroyed, drinking water contaminated, buildings damaged Solutions: need international cooperation
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Air Pollution (cont.)
Airborne Toxics
Causes: the industrial release of airborne toxic substances (e.g. phosgene used in warfare, methyl isocyanate, carcinogens such as benzene and formaldehyde released from the chemical brew, neurotoxins such as toluene and trichloroethylene released from the chemical brew) Consequences: cancer developed Solutions: less catastrophic because levels of most airborne toxics have been reduced gradually as a result of the strict regulation, but still highly worrisome
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Air Pollution (cont.)
Air Quality
Causes: gases and particulates spewed out by autos and industrial processes (e.g. carbon monoxide released by autos, sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides released by electrical plants, ozone or photochemical smog, particulates, and airborne lead) Consequences: lung function deteriorated, infant deaths (caused by sulfur oxides) increased, deaths from pneumonia and influenza (caused by particulates) increased, acid rain produced, people’s health deteriorated Solutions: the last decade has seen a considerable improvement in the air quality as a result of environmental legislation and regulation
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Water Pollution
Water pollutants: organic wastes, dissolved salts, metals, radioactive materials, and suspended materials such as bacteria, viruses, and sediments Salt brines from mines and oil wells drain into water sources, where they raise saline contents.
High saline levels kill organisms inhabit in water sources.
Water drainage from coal mines contains sulfuric acid as well as iron and sulfate particles.
High acid levels are lethal to most organisms living in the aquatic environment
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Water Pollution (cont.)
Organic wastes (largely untreated human wastes, sewage, and industrial wastes from processing various food products, from the pulp and paper industry, and from animal feedlots) deplete oxygen. The household and industrial releases of phosphorus compounds found in cleansing detergents give rise to explosive expansions of algae populations. Inorganic pollutants (e.g. mercury, kepone, cadmium, asbestos fibers) pose serious health hazards
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Water Pollution (cont.)
Heat from water used as a coolant in various industrial manufacturing processes is also a water pollutant. Oil spills, which result from offshore drilling, discharges of sludge from oil tankers, and oil tanker accidents, is also a water pollutant.
Oil spills are lethal to sea life.
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Water Pollution (cont.)
Radioactive wastes (e.g. plutonium, cesium, etc.) in seawater are hazardous. Underground water supplies are contaminated by organic chemicals, inorganic chemicals, radioactive wastes, and microorganisms. Today many people lack access to safe water. Summary: water pollution is very costly, and benefits from removing it is extremely high
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Land Pollution
Toxic Substances
Causes: the household and industrial releases of acidic chemicals, inorganic metals (such as mercury or arsenic), flammable solvents, pesticides, herbicides, phenols, explosives, and so on, into the land Consequences: reproductive defects in animals increased, abortions increased, people’s health deteriorated Solutions: toxicity of some substances is known but that of many is still unknown and difficult to determine
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Land Pollution (cont.)
Solid Wastes
Causes: the release of residential garbage Consequences: several toxic substances released from the garbage dumps (e.g. cadmium from rechargeable batteries, mercury and lead from car batteries and TV picture tubes, vanadium, copper, zinc, and PCBs from refrigerators, stoves, engines, and appliances built and dumped) are hazardous to public health and the environment Solutions: costly to solve
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Land Pollution (cont.)
Nuclear Wastes
Causes: the release of radioactive materials (e.g. carcinogens such as strontium 90, cesium 137, barium 140, and iodine 131, plutonium, ) from nuclear plants Consequences: various types of cancer developed Solutions: make sure that our descendants will never accidentally reach nuclear repositories
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Depletion of Species and Habitats
Human beings have depleted dozens of plant and animal species to the point of extinction.
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Depletion of Fossil Fuels
Fossil Fuels include coal, oil, and natural gas. Exponential depletion
The rate at which resources were being used had doubled with the passage of a regular fixed time period. The amount consumed can be represented by a parabolic curve.
Peaked depletion rate
The extraction will peak and then continue, but at a declining rate coupled with rising prices. The amount consumed can be represented by a Hubbert curve with no definite depletion point.
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Depletion of Minerals
Minerals
E.g. aluminum, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, tungsten, zinc, copper, lead The depletion of these minerals can be predicted on the basis of an exponential growth model or on the basis of a peaked growth model.
Conclusions: there are physical limits to our natural resources. More substitute materials may be found for many of these resources, but not all of them. Whatever substitutes are developed will also be limited.
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The Ethics of Pollution Controls
Ecological approach: non humans have intrinsic value Environmental rights approach: humans have a right to a livable environment Market approach: external costs violate utility, rights, and justice
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History of Pollution
For centuries, businesses have seen the environment as a free and unlimited good, and ignored the damages they have inflicted on it. Pollution problems are not rooted only in business activities, but also in the use of customer products and from human waste
- products. In fact, every human being
pollutes.
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Ecological Ethics
Ecological system: an interrelated and interdependent set of organisms and environments
Fish and aquatic organisms in a lake Business firms and natural environment
Ecological ethics: the view that nonhuman parts
- f the environment deserve to be preserved for
their own sake, regardless of whether this benefits human beings
non humans (e.g. animals, plants, and natural species) have intrinsic value and humans have a duty to respect and preserve them
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Ecological Ethics (cont.)
Utilitarian: the pain of an animal is equal to the pain of a human Non-utilitarian: each animal has a certain moral rights (e.g. right to be treated with respect) Virtue lovers such as Paul Taylor: to be a person who has reverence for life is to see life itself, in all its forms, as having inherent worth, a worth that inspires an unwillingness to destroy and a desire to preserve
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Ecological Ethics (cont.)
Attempts to extend moral rights to nonhumans are highly controversial
Difficult to see why a river or a mountain exists implies that it should exists Controversial whether animals have rights or intrinsic value
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Environmental Rights and Absolute Bans
William T. Blackstone: a livable environment is something that others have a duty to allow us to have, i.e. human beings have a moral right to a decent environment
This right should become legal and should
- verride people’s legal property rights.
Absolute bans on pollution can secure this right.
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Environmental Rights and Absolute Bans (cont.)
Questions unanswered by Blackstone
How much pollution control is really needed? Should we have an absolute ban? What goods should we cease manufacturing? Who should pay to preserve? What if the costs of removing certain amounts of pollution are high in comparison to the benefits? Any hidden costs (e.g. businesses shut down and jobs lost) associated with the removal?
Maybe a cost-benefit approach is better.
Regulations are cost-benefit analyzed before they are implemented
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Market Approach
Private cost: the cost an individual or company must pay out of its own pocket to engage in a particular economic activity Social cost: the private internal costs and the wider external costs of engaging in a particular economic activity When private costs and social costs diverge, markets no longer price commodities accurately. As a result they no longer allocate resources efficiently, and therefore social welfare declines. In other words, pollution violates utilitarian principles that underlie market system.
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Market Approach (cont.)
When PC < SC, and the external costs are not taken into account
Market price (output) of the commodity when all costs are taken into account is higher (lower) than when only private costs are incorporated.
Inefficient allocation of Resources
Resources are being used more than the optimal level. Firms are not motivated to reduce these costs.
Inefficient distribution of goods
External costs introduce effective price differentials into markets.
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Market Approach (cont.)
Pollution violates justice and fairness of PC markets
Capitalism justice is not achieved
Pollution violates rights of PC markets
Producers impose costs on people they did not voluntarily choose. Victims of pollution cannot freely leave the market. Producers dominate the market that they can force others to accept their terms.
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Remedies
Internalization of the costs of pollution
Absorption of costs by the producer, who takes them into account when determining the price of goods.
The polluting firm may pay those on whom its manufacturing processes impose costs.
Consequences: Price determination includes these costs and thus would truly reflect the true costs of
- production. Market mechanisms then lead firms to
come up with ways of cutting down pollution to cut down their costs.
The polluter may stop polluting by installing pollution-control devices.
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Justice
Pollution violates egalitarian justice
Pollution benefits the firm’s stockholders and customers, but costs the poor.
Environmental injustice: the bearing of external costs of pollution largely by those who do not enjoy a net benefit from the activity that produces the pollution. Internalization may not work if firms make basic good needed by the poor.
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Justice (cont.)
Internalization is consistent with retributive and compensatory justice
The costs of pollution are borne by stockholders and customers. The benefits of pollution control flow to those neighbors who had to put up with the firm’s pollution.
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Costs and Benefits
Optimal amount of pollution control
A society should remove the pollution as long as the costs from removing it < the benefits from removing it.
Problems
Measurement difficulties arise when the pollution involves damage to human health and life. Measurement difficulties arise when the effects of pollution are uncertain. Cost-benefit analysis ignores the question of whether the costs involved in some polluting technology are voluntarily accepted.
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Social Ecology
Social ecology: the environmental crises we face are rooted in the social systems of hierarchy and domination that characterize our society Success in the system of hierarchy and domination becomes identified with the level of dominance and control, and also with the domination of nature. Social ecologists argue that humans should see themselves as stewards of nature, not as masters who should dominate nature.
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Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism: belief that subordination of what is feminine in turn is transferred to nature, which is seen as feminine (mother nature) and with which women are felt to be more closely associated. Ecofeminists argue that women should strive for an androgynous culture, which eradicates traditional gender roles and does away with the distinction between feminine and masculine that justifies a destructive domination of nature. In particular, the destructive masculine perspective
- f domination and hierarchy must be replaced
with the feminine perspective of caring.
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Demands of Caring
Karen Warren: concepts of utilitarianism, rights, and justice are not enough. An adequate environmental ethic must also take into account in a central manner the perspectives of an ethic
- f care. Nature must be seen as an other than
that can be cared for and with which one has a relationship that must be nurtured and attended
- to. Nature must not be seen as an object to be
dominated, controlled, and manipulated.
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The Ethics of Conserving Depletable Resources
Conservation: the saving or rationing of natural resources for later use Pollution control VS conservation
Pollution control benefits present generations, whilst conservation benefits future generations. Pollution is a problem concerned with renewable resources, whilst conservation deals with nonrenewable resources.
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Rights of Future Generations
We have an obligation to conserve resources for future generations because they have an equal right to the limited resources. Arguments against this view
Future generations do not now exist and may never exist We must have to sacrifice our entire civilization for
- ur future generations
Our ignorance of the interests of future generations
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Justice to Future Generations
John Rawls: we should put ourselves in the “original position”, and without knowing what generation we belong to, we should leave the world no worse than we found it Ethic of care: leave our children a world no worse than we received Robin Attfield: leave the world as productive as we found it, although not necessarily with the same resources.
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Justice to Future Generations (cont.)
Some utilitarians: we have a duty to maximize the (discounted) future benefits
- f our actions, and to minimize the
(discounted) future costs of our actions. Market mechanisms (e.g. an increase in price) cannot ensure conservation, but voluntary or legal measures can.
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Economic Growth?
E. F. Schumacher: industrialized nations must convert from growth-oriented, capital-intensive technologies to much more labor-intensive technologies Others: economic growth must be abandoned if society is to be able to deal with the problems of diminishing resources
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Economic Growth? (cont.)
Doomsday scenarios of the Club of Rome (Figure 5.6)
The standard world model run restrictedly assumes no major change in the physical, economic, or social relationships that have historically governed the development of the world system. Food, industrial
- utput, and population grow exponentially until the
rapidly diminishing resource base forces a slow down in industrial growth. Because of natural delays in the system, both population and pollution continue to increase for some time after the peak of
- industrialization. Population growth is finally halted
by a rise in death rate due to decreased food and medical services. The decline in industrial output causes a decline in pollution.
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