Ability to be Ambitious : Influence of Aggressive Environment
Having consideration for the environment is, in fact, extremely important than the goods and services of economic growth and excess financial gain. The earth, today is still going through a tough time in how we inhabitants are demolishing and wasting a great deal of natural resources, such as water, destroying rainforests with fires, and pollution with our trash. Saving our natural resources is important because our daily needs still depend greatly upon it. These resources are very much limited and if we continue to damage and misuse our resources, then the quantity of our sources, such as food and other needs, will continue to decrease before our eyes and as a result of this, it can backfire and harm us into malnourishment. We must maintain and protect the earth in order to have balance in our everyday lives. For the time being, the earth is really the only home that we have to live in as it grounds us, produces our food and water and it is also a living entity.
Our textbook states that this is an externality, which is defined as “any cost that a corporation can push onto some other person, group, or entity”. Another important piece that I have learned in our textbook is that the Stakeholder Theory expresses that our environment is also considered to be a stakeholder because it has a stake. Our environment can be tarnished or profited by choices concerning the discarding of waste. Chemical waste can be stored safely and if it is not stored safely, then it can harm our environment. There are so many examples that can be discussed within this case study about exporting pollution, such as chemical waste, gas and air pollution, rainforest fires, oil waste disposal, etc. The Triple Bottom Line view of corporate responsibility expresses that externalizing the cost of waste by just disposing of waste into the earth is not a smart thing to do because the earth handles these dangerous substances steadily.
The earth is a part of us and we are a part of it. Our connection with the earth and how it continues to be an important factor for not just only for our well-being, but also for the rest of the animals living in it. In laying down the environmental policy regulations, the government can have a lot of control over this. According to a report from CIESIN.org, it states that “by setting environmental requirements and forcing costs on polluters, governments can help to decrease environmental breakdown”. Also, it states that pollution and environmental loss are known to be negative externalities, which are the costs not carried by their originators but put on third parties including the population altogether. The main purpose of environmental policies is to keep the environment safe from harm and for the age to come and not getting in the way of the productivity of companies and mess up other people’s freedom and help the ones who are going through the environmental costs of it all. The government along with various corporations would need to sit down and figure out exactly how much pollution should be tolerated and how much of the assets is permitted to use. For example, how eco-friendly a business is can have a major impact on the environment itself. When a building uses a lot of energy for air conditioning to cool down buildings and using heat to warm up buildings, bringing many products into the machines and while removing waste can majorly affect the earth in many ways. One way would be that air conditioning and heating systems release greenhouse fuel from different places of business in the air and use too much energy. A great deal of buildings have been mounted from non-refurbished materials. Another would be that offices use up a great amount of energy for heat, air conditioning, lighting, and for technology devices such as for printing, photocopying and for their company computers. With computers, they are always being upgraded year after year and because of this happening, the old computers are thrown into landfills and this can drain toxic substances and chemicals into our oceans, lakes, rivers and land. The waste of paper is also another huge issue. Even when they recycle unused paper, in the end, it still gets sent to the landfills. Another way how we affect our environment is by trying to get to work early in the morning and being consistently stuck in a traffic jam. Whether we believe it or not, this causes us to always waste our gas in our vehicles while polluting the air around us. We, the public, vote every year to make sure that our laws are fair and that we all live in a safe world from various toxic chemicals.
It is our responsibility as public citizens and buyers to create the rules for doing so. Businesses, in general, are just too focused on making money to really take the time to consider how they are affecting the environment that they live in. Milton Friedman stated before that, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business, that is to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits” . Businesses have a social responsibility to protect the economy by connecting to the socio-environmental system. They also have the responsibility to factor in negative externalities, such as contamination for example. The economic system will continue to increase as well as businesses everywhere. The philosopher, Norman Bowie, believes that “businesses have no special obligation to the environment except those defined by the letter of the law”. Bowie also has expressed in his article titled Morality, Money, and Motor Cars, that corporations have only one responsibility, which is to respond to consumer demand. He explains that businesses tend to feud that it is the government's control to correct these types of issues and use their capital finances to win against the regulations set in fighting for our ecosystem. Businesses depend upon the government to keep our ecosystem secure, but businesses also have an influence to our environment’s safety. By informing consumers about the damages that is done to our environment as well as the benefits of the products being used in order to boost accountable public actions to help save our environment. This can be a good idea to fix the market crash of the environment’s products in result to not always depending on the government to always fix our issues. As for managers, if they do not want this to be placed on them under strict laws, then they will have to take up some responsibility towards saving our environment as well. They should also prepare their consumers about how important it is to protect our environment.
The main ethical theory that we have studied so far in this course that can be applied to this case study in caring for our environment’s needs and concerns pass the already legalized requirements is the ethics of care and morality from rights. The ethics of care suggests that there is an importance of right and wrong of relationships and the need for human life. The morality from rights, our textbook states that our government protects our rights and penalizes the ones who go against those rights as much as it can . Legal rights and moral rights differ from one another. Even if the government does not choose to defend certain rights, there would have to be some rights to go by . There are just some things that are considered to be wrongful acts even if there was no government in place to call them lawbreaking acts. Littering is one example. Littering is proven to have profitable, lawful and environmental effects, such as spending a lot of money just to clean up waste and if a person is caught littering from their car, then they would have to pay a fine as a punishment. Littering can really damage even our animals habitats and plants and can also have a major effect on the tourism business. With all of these issues taking effect, it is not too late for us to save the earth from contamination.
We, the earth’s inhabitants, and businesses are constantly gaining control over the earth and using resources at a high speed than they can be renewed. Both the earth and businesses suffer alike. In making sure that our environment is clean and safe, next to the social development and economic development, is very important for our welfare and success and it also makes plenty of sense businesswise. Being much wiser in our consuming and improving our producing methods play an important role in defending our natural prosperity and helps by supplying to our economic and civil prosperity. More businesses need to come upfront with the issues that our environment is experiencing. They can help us to avoid, at all costs, the effects of the lack of resources and environmental harm.
Works Cited
- Externalities and the environment – phi 361: https://learn.uncg.edu/courses/learn/phi361/module-4-business-and-the-environment/externalities-and-the-environment/
- Our relationship to the environment – phi 361: https://learn.uncg.edu/courses/learn/phi361/module-4-business-and-the-environment/our-relationship-to-the-environment/
- Ciesin.org http://www.ciesin.org/docs/008-067/chpt3.html
- Understanding Friedman’s thesis – phi 361: https://learn.uncg.edu/courses/learn/phi361/module-2-why-does-business-need-ethics/understanding-friedmans-thesis/
- Morality, Money, and Motor Cars – phi 361: https://learn.uncg.edu/courses/learn/phi361/module-4-business-and-the-environment/morality-money-and-motor-cars/
- Morality from rights – phi 361: https://learn.uncg.edu/courses/learn/phi361/module-1-what-is-ethics/morality-from-rights/
