Ethics and the Environment

The ethical issues raised by pollution from

commercial and industrial enterprises.
Business and Environment
• Global Warming
• Overpopulation
• Natural Resource Depletion
• Waste Disposal
• Loss of Biodiversity
• Deforestation
• Water/Air Pollution
• Urban Sprawl
• Public Health Issues
Fundamental Questions

• Why should we care for the environment?

• Should we care about the species that are disappearing (panda)? Why?

• Is it right to force household cleaners into the stomachs of animals or

squirt chemicals into their eyes or spraying hairsprays into their lungs
for testing cosmetic products?

• Where do we draw the line?

 Environment & Business: Traditional View
1. Environment (e.g., air and water) treated as free goods. As no one owns
them, they can be used by businesses as free goods.
2. Environment seen as an unlimited good with large carrying capacity.
3. Each firm’s contribution of pollution to these resources seems relatively
small and insignificant.
• Therefore, it doesn’t matter what I do.
• Businesses vs Consumers
• Consumers are also responsible (population, demands, waste management)
• Production Model of Late Capitalism (Perishable Items)
Environment & Business: Anthropocentric View
• Concern for environment based on how it affects interests of humans.
• Nature valuable only to the extent it serves human interests.
• Aristotle: Nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man.
• Aquinas: Nonhumans “ordered to man’s use”
• Kant: “Cruelty to animals is contrary to man’s duty to himself , since it
deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings and thus
weakens a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation
to other humans.”
Environment & Business: Anthropocentric View

• Do you agree?

• Should we care for nonhumans?

• Is nature something that is there to serve us? Or does it have a value

in its own self?

• Many people still hold this view and are only concerned about
pollution because it could compromise humans interests.
Critique

• Holding an anthropocentric view is itself part of the problem.

• If we do not change our anthropocentric views we will continue to

exploit, pollute, and consume nature until it is too late.

• We will take care of nature only if we accept the view that nature is
valuable in itself and that by virtue of its intrinsic value we are
obligated to respect and preserve it.
Environment & Businesses: Systems Perspective
• Ecological Systems: An ecological system is an interrelated and
interdependent set of organisms and environments.
• Business firms and humans are part of a larger ecological system.
• Due to inter-dependence, the activities of one of part of the ecological
system will affect all the other parts and the well-being of each part
depends on the wellbeing of the other parts.
• No one survives alone.
Ecological Ethics

• Deep Ecology: The ethical view that nonhuman parts of the

environment deserve to be preserved for their own sake, regardless
of whether this benefits human beings.

• Non-humans have intrinsic value.

The Last Man Argument
• Asks us to imagine a person who is Earth’s last survivor. Suppose this
last person had the power to do something that would ensure that
every other living thing on Earth, and all Earth’s landscapes, would be
destroyed after they died.
• Would it be morally wrong for the person to do so?
• We recognize it is wrong for the last man to destroy all nonhumans.

• So we must recognize some nonhumans have intrinsic value apart

from human.
• Is the pain experience by an animal as great an evil as the pain experienced
by a human?
• Singer: Pain experienced by an animal is as great an evil as a comparable
pain experienced by a human being.
• Humans may be more sensitive to pain so an animal’s pain may have to be
more intense to be comparable to a human’s pain.
• If it is morally wrong to inflict pain on a human, it is equally wrong to inflict
the comparable pain on an animal.
• A form of speciesism (prejudice against other species).
Deep Ecology
• Broader versions of ecological ethics extend our duties to plants.
• It is arbitrary and hedonistic to confine our duties to creatures that can feel
pain.
• Plants also deserve consideration.
• In addition to plants, natural structures like lakes, mountains and entire
biotic community have an intrinsic value and a right to integrity, stability
and beauty.
• Your thoughts?
Critique
• Extreme forms of ecological ethics hard to justify according to some
authors.
• If something is alive, why it ought to be alive?
• Why do we have a duty to keep it alive?
• Why does a river or a mountain ought to exist in the same way?
• How can we say animals or plants have rights or intrinsic value?
Virtue Ethics
• Respect for nature an integral part of being a morally virtuous person.
• The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give to
every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He
experiences that other life in his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve
life, to promote life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of
development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life
which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental
principle of the moral.
Critique: Cost of Environmental Ethics
• May incur significant costs on the industry.

• Members of Earth First! have driven nails into randomly selected trees of
forest areas scheduled to be logged so that power logging saws are
destroyed when they bite into the spiked trees in order to protect forests.

• Members of Sea Shepherd Conservation society have sabotaged whale

processing plants, sunk several ships, and otherwise imposed costs on the
whaling industry to protect whales.
Critique: Cost of Environmental Ethics

• The decision of US Fish and Wildlife Service to bar timber industry

from logging old-growth forests of California to save the habitat of
dark-brown northern spotted owl cost the industry millions of dollars
and workers as many as 36,000 jobs.
Ethics and the Environment
The ethical issues raised by pollution from
commercial and industrial enterprises.
Environmental Rights
• Is possession of a livable environment a fundamental human right?
• A person has a moral right to a thing when possession of that thing is
“essential in permitting him to live a human life.
• Should this moral right override people’s right to do business free from
any regulation?
• Humans have a right to fulfill their capacities as free and rational beings
and a livable environment is essential to such fulfillment.
• So humans have a right to a livable environment and this right is
violated by practice that destroy the environment.
Critique
• How much pollution control is really needed? Should we have an
absolute ban on pollution?
• At what point is the environment “safe enough” for us to be able to
live a healthy life?
• The U.S. government has often decided that when exposure to
pollution during one year poses
• a risk of death of 1 in 1 million or less, it is safe enough.
• a risk of death of 3 in 10,000 or more, it is unsafe and must be cleaned up.
• risks that lie in-between are handled on a case-by-case basis.
• Is that fair?
Critique
• Some people argue that even if 1 person out of a million dies every
year from exposure to pollution, then the pollution is still too high
since that person’s right to life was violated.
• Such environmental rights can lead to absolute bans on pollution
even when the costs far outweigh the benefits.
• It seems unrealistic to demand the complete elimination of absolutely
all risks to life and health because fulfilling that demand would
impose unacceptable costs and burdens on all of us.
• What then is the appropriate level of pollution& who should pay for
it?
Private and Social Costs

• 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 plus the external costs of
engaging in a particular economic activity.

• Not a just society if only private costs are included. Why?

Markets and Pollution
• Total costs of making a product include a seller’s internal private costs
and the external costs of pollution paid by society.
• A supply curve based on all costs of making a product lies higher than
one based only on sellers’ internal private costs.
• The higher supply curve crosses the demand curve at a lower quantity
and a higher price than the lower supply curve.
• When sellers’ costs include only private costs, too much is produced
and price is too low.
• This lower utility, violates rights, and justice
 Why it is not a just society?
• First, allocation of resources in such markets is not optimal because more commodity
is being produced that society would demand if it had to pay the actual cost.

• Second, producers ignore these costs and make no attempt to minimize them like
they minimize their other costs.

• Third, goods are no longer efficiently distributed to consumers (and overall society).
Some end up paying more than others (medical bills etc.).

• Fourth, the consumer rights protected in a free market are not protected anymore.

• Fifth, capitalist justice is not being achieved.

Solution: Internalization of the costs of pollution
• Absorption of external costs by the producer desirable, who then
takes them into account when determining the price of goods.
• Option 1: polluting agent to pay to all of those being harmed,
voluntarily or by law, an amount equal to the costs the pollution
imposes on them.
• Problem: When several polluters are involved, not easy to determine
share of everyone. High administrative burden of calculation.
• Option 2: Stop pollution at the source by installing pollution-control
devices.
Pollution and Distributive Justice
• If a firm pollutes, its stockholders benefit.
• The consumers of the product also potentially benefit.
• Those who cannot afford (or do not use) the product bear the
external costs of pollution.
• External costs of pollution are borne largely by the poor and the
minorities.
• The poor are more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods.
• The internalization of costs of pollution helps achieve distributive
justice by shifting the costs to the wealthy.
Pollution and Justice
• Retributive justice requires that the costs of pollution control should
be paid by those who cause pollution and who have benefited from
pollution activities
• Compensatory justice requires that the benefits of pollution control
should flow to those who have had to bear the external costs of
pollution.
• If a firm makes basic goods for which the poor must allocate a larger
portion of their budget, then internalizing costs may place a
proportionately greater burden on the poor than on the affluent.
• If costs of pollution rise so high that unemployment rises, the poor
again disproportionately suffer.
“Optimal” Level of Pollution?
• But the question remains. How do we decide the right level of
pollution?
• Suppose the pollution from a certain firm causes $100 worth of
environmental damage, and that the only device that eliminate this
pollution would cost the firm at least $1,000.
• What would a utilitarian have us do?
• Should pollution removal be based on cost-benefit analysis?
Optimal Level of Pollution Removal
• Costs of removing pollutants rise as benefits of removal fall.
• Optimal level of removal is point where its costs equal its benefits.
• When costs and benefits are not measurable, utilitarian approach
fails.
• How do you measure the cost of damages to human health & life?
• What if risks are uncertain?
• How much weight to give to a risk of a new technology in C-B
analysis?
• Cloning, AI

• Suppose the government decides to go ahead with this technology after a C-B
analysis even though the public disagrees. Is that fine?

• What if the public doesn’t understand the costs & benefits adequately and
media biases their opinion? What should the government do in such a case?

• C-B analysis ignores the question whether the costs involved are voluntarily
accepted by those who must bear them or whether they are unilaterally
imposed on them by others in violation of their rights. Nuclear waste for
example.

• When costs and benefits are subjective, this is an important distinction.

When Utilitarianism fails
• When costs and benefits are not measurable, utilitarian approach
fails.
• Precautionary principle: If a practice carries an unknown risk of
catastrophic and irreversible consequences, but it is uncertain how
large that risk is, then the practice should be rejected until its certain
the risk is nonexistent or insignificant.
• Strong version: burden of proof on those who want to adopt the
technology
• Weak version: burden of proof on those want to reject the
technology.
When Utilitarianism fails
• Others suggest when risks cannot be assessed, justice requires we
identify those who are most vulnerable and who would have to bear
the heaviest costs if things should go wrong
• Choose the option that will protect them from having to bear these
costs.
• Maximin Rule: First
assume the worst is
going to happen and
then choose the
option that leaves us
best off when it
does happen.
• For example, in
greenhouse gas
emissions.
Alternatives: Social Ecology
• Cost-benefit and rights-based theories are based on a calculative way of
thinking that is responsible for environmental crisis in the first place.
• Such thinking will generally lead to the more degradation because of
inherent valuation of humans more than non-humans.
• The environmental crises we face are rooted in the social systems of
hierarchy and domination that characterize our society. (Social Ecology)
• Unless these are abolished, nothing is going to change.
• Our culture encourages domination in many forms, including the domination
of nature.
• Success is associated with domination: The greater the number of people
who work for a person, the greater that person’s wealth, power, and status,
and the more successful the person is deemed to be.
Alternatives: Social Ecology
• Success becomes dominating nature through science, technology, and
agriculture.
• The ideal society is one that rejects all domination and in which all
power is decentralized.
• Activities restricted to those that allow us to live in harmony with
nature.
Alternative: Ecofeminism
• The root of our ecological crisis lies in a pattern of domination of
nature that is tightly linked to the social practices and institutions
through which women have been subordinated to men.
• The logic of dominations sets up dualisms that are used to
characterize men and women.
• Masculine-feminine, reason-emotion, artificial-natural, mind-body,
objective-subjective.
• Masculine characteristics seen superior to feminine and used to
justify subordination of women to men.
• Women seen closer to nature (“mother nature”) whereas men as
conquerors of nature.
Alternative: Ecofeminism
• Nature has often been presented as the feminine object which was
somehow to be disciplined by the masculine scientist.
• As Bacon (in)famously noted, the pursuit of scientists as “the true
sons of knowledge” was to try to “find a way at length into [nature’s]
inner chambers” (Bacon, 1858, p.42 as cited in Walters, 2017, p.62-
63).
• Bacon went on to suggest that nature had a “female body to
penetrate and violate by male reason for the pursuit of knowledge”
(Walters, 2017, p.62).
Alternative: Ecofeminism
• Stewards, not masters, of nature.
• Creation of an androgynous culture that eradicates traditional gender
roles and does away with the distinction between feminine and
masculine that justifies destructive domination of nature.
• Alternative women’s culture based on revaluing, celebrating and
defending what patriarchy has devalued, including the feminine,
nonhuman nature.
Ethics of care
• Applying ethics of care towards nature.
• “When my caring is directed to living things, I must consider their
natures, way of life, needs, and desires. And, although I can never
accomplish it entirely, I try to apprehend the reality of the other.”
• Nature must be seen as an “other” 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.
Ethics of Conserving Depletable Resources
• Conservation:
• Saving or rationing of natural resources for later uses.
• Applies more to natural resources that might be depleted father in
future.
• Pollution primarily concerns “renewable” sources while resources are
primarily “non-renewable.”
• We should conserve resources for future generations? How much
should we conserve?
Rights of Future Generations
• Do future generations exist now? Will they exist?
• First, future generations do not have rights because they do not exist.
• I may be able to think about them but I can’t hit them, punish them,
treat them wrongly.
• Since they don’t exist, they don’t possess rights.
• How are our future generations different than future AI generations?
Rights of Future Generations
• Second, if they do have rights, we might be led to the absurd
conclusion that we must sacrifice (even our entire civilization) for
their sake.
• Suppose that all future generations (potentially infinite) have equal
right to world’s supply of oil. Should we try to divide oil equally
among them?
• If we equally divide oil among them, our share would be a few quarts
at the most.
Rights of Future Generations
• Third, we can say that someone has a certain right only if we know
that he or she has a certain interest which that right protects.
• But we don’t know the interests of future generations.
• Science might come up with technologies for creating new products
from other raw materials in abundance (minerals in seawater) or they
might find potentially unlimited energy sources such as nuclear
fusion.
• We also do not know which resources might be important with future
technologies.
Justice to Future Generations
• Rawls: Original position and veil of ignorance.
• Leave the world no worse than we found it.
• Care Ethic: We at least have a relationship of care with the next
generation (our children).
• Leave our children a world no worse than we received.
• Utilitarian: Each generation must leave for future generations a world
whose output capacity is no less than that generation received from
previous generations.
Justice to Future Generations
• We at least have an obligation to avoid those practices whose harmful
consequences for the generation that immediately follows us are
certain to outweigh the beneficial consequences our own generation
derives from them.
• Unlikely to happen in a competitive market. Why?
Justice to Future Generations
1. Businesses try to consume resources quickly before competitors.
2. Businesses have short time horizons.
3. Future is difficult for businesses to predict.
4. Businesses tend to ignore externalities.
• Adoption of voluntary or legal ways to prevent resource depletion.
Sustainability
• The capacity something has to continue to function into the future.
• Environmental sustainability: The capacity of the natural
environment to continue to meet the needs of present generations
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
needs from that environment.
• Three (interdependent) pillars of sustainability
• Our economic activities
• Our social activities
• Our environmental activities
Sustainability
• Our economic activities
• Pursue economic growth through manufacturing processes that
rapidly deplete our natural resources and pollute the world.
• Our social activities
• Our life style, the number of children we have, etc.
• Our environmental activities
• Renewable resources should not be depleted at a rate that is greater
than their rate of replacement.
• Emission rate of pollution should not exceed the capacity of the
environment to cleanse and assimilate that pollution.
• Non-renewable resources should be depleted at a rate no greater
than the creation of renewable alternatives.
Environmental sustainability
• Non-renewable resources should be depleted at a rate no greater
than the creation of renewable alternatives.
• Technology Optimists: Science will find substitutes so sustainability
requires neither conservation nor reducing consumption.
• Technology Pessimists: Science will not find substitutes for all
renewable resources. So we must conserve.
Economic growth
• It will lead to environmental degradation.
• Is there a point where we stop?
• Club of Rome Predictions
Post-colonialism & Business Ethics
• Systemic
• What kind of ideologies the society espouses?
• Corporate
• What kind of ideology we serve as an organization? Framing organizational
identity.
• Individual
• Who is an ideal employee?
Key Concepts
• Mimicry:
• Imitate the language, dress, politics, or cultural attitude of the
colonizers.
• Ultimate ideal: Be like the master.
• Oh look at the way s/he speaks English! Etc.
• Generally present in the “been-tos” but pervasive elsewhere also.
• Assumption: One copies the person in power, because one hopes to
have access to that same power oneself. Presumably, while copying
the master, one has to intentionally suppress one’s own cultural
identity,
• You can mimic but not “become.”
Key Concepts
• Hybridity:
• Fusion of two traditions creating double identities or hybrids.
• Idea of the “desi liberal” “katha angraiz” etc.
• Linguistic
• Literary
• Cultural
• Religious
Key Concepts
• Ambivalence
• Simultaneous abhorrence and adoration.
• Disruption through tools of the master.
• Third Space
• Neither here nor there.
• Multi-nationals
• West or Saudia?
• Al-Bakistan
• What about LUMS?
Key Concepts
• Positivism/Universalism
• The view that Western experiences, values, and knowledge claims are
standards for all humanity.
• Forecloses possibility of original thought in the proverbial orient.
• Orient as the passive other which simply receives knowledge from the
colonizers.
• Hierarchy of identities
• Dress codes, moral purity, gender relations etc.
• Nostalgia
• The nostalgic vs the angraiz vs the molvi
• Restorative vs reflective
• Mental health: Carving out identity in a hybrid space.
Key Concepts
• Mimicry: Education
• Hybridity
• Ambivalence
• Third Space: Multi-nationals
• West or Saudia?
• What about LUMS?
• Positivism and Colonialism
• Recent incidents
• Mental health: Carving out identity in a hybrid space.