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Our environment has been the forefront of heated debates for many years now. Not only was it one of the major topics in the 2004 election it has since grown to its own global movement ‘going green”. For a long time now we have been trying to figure out the role business in our environment. The attitudes that are prevalent in our society suggest that businesses have increased our environmental problems.
Business seems to think that the environment is a “free and unlimited good”, which is something that they can exploit, or squander without any consequence or regard to the future. For some time now businesses have thought the environment to be a free limitless good. For example the air free to pollute with hazardous vapors and toxins, water to dump hazardous and toxic waste and land to cut down all our precious trees without any cause to replanting them. With the rapid rates are forest are moving extinction is eminent and with that further polluting the air.
Our book says that the belief that both sorts of resources are free and unlimited promotes wasteful consumption of them. We have come to find that business have started polluting in third world countries. Because of US regulations against dumping and the fines. Big Business has sought to dump in these under-developed third world countries where they have little or no pollution regulations. As for the inhabitants of these countries they rarely complain because in a way the smell of the harmful gases is a smell of jobs and a better life for them.
Ethically how can we value one human life from another? Or case study 7. 2: Poverty and pollution states that the poor pay the price of pollution. Lawrence Summers the director of the National Economic Council has argued that banks should encourage dirty polluted industries to poorer less developed countries. In many Third World nations, pollution is unrestricted. Countless other environmental problems are also not addressed by the government. Usually creating and enforcing environmental regulations would be economically disastrous for a poor county.
As a result, it is forced to choose between buying food and having a clean environment. The most important concern is always the fact of facing starvation it is very often that rich western entries such as the United States take advantage of the dilemma of third world countries. They dump garbage and hazardous waste in developing countries. First companies might also build plants, which emit considerable pollution, in Third World nations to avoid the regulations these companies would face at home.
Some transnational corporations that produce chemicals deemed overly dangerous in the First World find a market in the Third World. There, governments cannot restrict usage of these chemicals because it would be too costly to citizens trying to make a living. Countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia are the greatest victims of this environmental inequality. In addition to problems created by development and industrialization, poorer nations also suffer environmental difficulties caused by poverty and war, among other causes.
Many environmental problems arise in the Third World. Air pollution, water pollution , deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, and poisoning of the environment are among the largest of these. Third World nations are aware of these problems and are working to solve them. The Ignited Nations and there international organizations have looked into preventing foreign companies from dumping waste in developing nations, making transnational corporations pay for the pollution they produce, and enlisting the First World in helping to clean up the Third World’s environment.
I think this entirely unethical, that a company would cost the lives of poor uneducated peoples. Does the cost of 1 American life equal up to that of 4 lives from a third world country? Absolutely not. From an ethical standpoint should business even view life from a per capita income is the question. One would argue that easiness are here to make money that their sole obligation. Looking from that view and that view only then in their eyes it is ethical. Polluting should be done in areas with the lowest costs which add up to the lowest wages.
Third world countries are far less polluted then place like Houston, TX and they would welcome the rise in income because they do not have the education to understand the long term cost on their health. Also with places in Africa being far less populated it makes it easier for the business to dump with less financial burden of imposed health risks because less people to get exposed. Companies can also export industrial hazards by moving their plants to countries with less restrictive pollution control laws than industrialized nations.
This was the case with Union Carbine, which moved its chemical manufacturing plant to Opal, India, to manufacture a product it was not allowed to make in the United States. As Western nations enact laws promoting environmental and worker safety, more manufacturers have moved their hazardous and polluting factories to less developed countries, where there are little or no environmental or occupations laws, or no enforcement agencies. Hazardous industries such as textile, petrochemical, and chemical production, as well as smelting and electronics, have migrated to Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe.
We as human beings are entitled to the same rights to live in a pollution free environment. Regardless of our financial resources. We have business like IBM, General Motors, and Sony who have established manufacturing plants in Mexico, and some Of these have created severe environmental problems. At least 10 million gallons of the factories’ raw sewage is discharged into the Tijuana River daily. Because pollution threatens San Diego beaches, most of the cleanup is paid for by the United States and California governments.
Its is not cleaned up in Mexico because we are considered more financially stable as a government and more forward if you will so we don’t care to think of the effects that pollution will have on the inhabitants in those countries. This is a very big issue among humanitarians as well. Although consumers pay less for goods from these companies, they are paying for their manufacture in the form of higher taxes for environmental cleanup. Industries with plunging markets in plopped countries due to environmental concerns have begun to advertise in the Third World.
For example, EDT production, led by united States and Canadian companies, is at an all-time high even though it is illegal to produce or use the pesticide in the United States or Europe since the 1 sass. Since this pesticide has evidence of causing cancer and tumors Western civilizations such as America and Europe have outlawed it. We still see that EDT is widely used in the Third World, especially in Latin America, Africa, and India. Industrial waste is handled very recklessly in underdeveloped countries.
The New River, for example, which flows from northern Mexico into southern California before dumping into the Pacific Ocean, is generally regarded as the most polluted river in North America due to lax enforcement of environmental standards in Mexico. If this river were considered American there would be an entirely different situation. The river would be cleaned and there would be laws against dumping. Countries such as Mexico welcome the economical opportunities that these businesses bring to their country. They see jobs which means more financial advancement for its country. In the
Third World, the effects of water pollution are felt in the form of high rates of death from cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and diarrhea from viral and bacteriological sources. According to Oracle, more than 1. 7 billion people in the Third World have an inadequate supply of safe drinking water. In India, for example, 1 14 towns and cities dump their human waste and other untreated sewage directly into the Ganges River. Of 3, 1 19 Indian towns and cities, only 209 have partial sewage treatment, and only eight have complete treatment. Assemblies industrialization has created pollution problems in OTOH urban and rural areas.
Several lakes have experienced transportation because of the discharge of untreated sewage and industrial waste. In Bangladesh, degradation of water and soil resources is widespread, and flood conditions result in the spread of polluted water across areas used for fishing and rice cultivation. Heavy use of pesticides is also a concern there.