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Chapter10TheGreenOfficeEconomicsandtheEnvironment.pptxChapter 10: The Green Office Economics and the Environment
Business Ethics MGT531
College of Business administration
AlYamamaH University, Riyadh, Ksa
Learning Objectives
This chapter explores the multiple relations linking business, the environment, and environmental protection. The question of animal rights is also considered.
What Is the Environment?
Harm to the natural world is generally discussed under two terms: the environment and the ecosystem. The words’ meanings overlap, but one critical aspect of the term ecosystem (Composed of living and nonliving elements, it’s a web of balanced interactions allowing the continuation of each element) is the idea of interrelation. An ecosystem is composed of living and nonliving elements that find a balance allowing for their continuation. The destruction of the rain forest doesn’t just put an end to some trees; it also jeopardized a broader web of life: birds that needed limbs for their nests disappeared when the trees did. Then, with the sturdy forest gone, Hurricane Gilbert swept through and wiped out much of the lower-level vegetation. Meanwhile, out in the sea, the disappearance of some small fish meant their predators had nothing to feed on and they too evaporated. What makes an ecosystem a system is the fact that the various parts all depend on each other, and damaging one element may also damage and destroy another or many others.
What Kinds of Damage Can Be Done to the Environment?
While it’s true that damaging the natural world’s ecosystems is one of nature’s great specialties, evidence also indicates that the human contribution to environmental change has been growing quickly. It’s impossible to measure everything that has been done, or compare the world today with what would have been had humans never evolved (or never created an industrialized economy), but one way to get a sense of the kind of transformations human activity may be imposing on the environment comes from extinction rates: the speed at which species are disappearing because they no longer find a habitable place to flourish.
What Kinds of Damage Can Be Done to the Environment?
In an economics and business context, the kinds of damage our industrialized lifestyles most extensively wreak include:
Air pollution
Water pollution
Soil pollution
Contamination associated with highly toxic materials
Resource depletion
Air pollution is the emission of harmful chemicals and particulate matter into the air. Photochemical smog(Better known as smog, it’s a cocktail of gases and particles released into the air that react with sunlight to make a harmful cloud.)—better known simply as smog—is a cocktail of gases and particles reacting with sunlight to make visible and poisonous clouds. Car exhaust is a major contributor to this kind of pollution, so smog can concentrate in urban centers where traffic jams are constant. In Mexico City on bad days, the smog is so thick it can be hard to see more than ten blocks down a straight street. Because the urban core is nestled in a mountain valley that blocks out the wind, pollutants don’t blow away as they do in many places; they get entirely trapped. During the winter, a brown top forms above the skyline, blocking the view of the surrounding mountain peaks; the cloud is clearly visible from above to those arriving by plane. After landing, immediately upon exiting the airport into the streets, many visitors note their eyes tearing up and their throats drying out. Greenhouse gasses (Gasses that absorb and hold heat from the sun, preventing it from dissipating into space.), especially carbon dioxide released when oil and coal are burned, absorb and hold heat from the sun, preventing it from dissipating into space, and thereby creating a greenhouse effect, a general warming of the environment.
What Kinds of Damage Can Be Done to the Environment?
Heat is, of course, necessary for life to exist on earth, but fears exist that the last century of industrialization has raised the levels measurably, and continuing industrial expansion will speed the process even more. Effects associated with the warming are significant and include:
Shifts in vegetation, in what grows where
Rising temperatures in lakes, rivers, and oceans, leading to changes in wildlife distribution
Flooding of coastal areas, where many of our cities are located
Another group of chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), threaten to break down the ozone layer in the earth’s stratosphere. Currently, that layer blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation from getting through to the earth’s surface where it could cause skin cancer and disrupt ocean life. Effective international treaties have limited (though not eliminated) CFC emissions.
Coal-burning plants—many of which produce electricity—release sulfur compounds into the air, which later mix into water vapor and rain down as sulfuric acid, commonly known as acid rain. Lakes see their pH level changed with subsequent effects on vegetation and fish. Soil may also be poisoned.
Conclusion. Technically, there’s no such thing as preserving the environment because left to its own devices the natural world does an excellent job of wreaking havoc on itself. Disruptions including floods, combined with wildlife battling for territory and food sources, all that continually sweeps away parts of nature and makes room for new species and ecosystems.
The Law
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970 to monitor and report on the state of the environment while establishing and enforcing specific regulations. Well known to most car buyers as the providers of the mile-per-gallon estimates displayed on the window sticker, the EPA is a large agency and employs a workforce compatible with its mission, including scientists, legal staffers, and communications experts.
Other important legal milestones in the field of environmental protection include:
The Clean Air Act of 1963 and its many amendments regulate emissions from industrial plants and monitor air quality. One measure extends to citizens the right to sue companies for damages if they aren’t complying with existing regulations: it effectively citizenries law enforcement in this area of environmental protection.
The Clean Water Act, along with other, related legislation, regulates the quality of water in the geographic world (lakes and rivers), as well as the water we drink and use for industrial purposes. Chemical composition is important, and temperature also.
The Wilderness Act, along with other legislation, establishes areas of land as protected from development. All wilderness and national park areas are regulated to protect natural ecosystems.
The Endangered Species Act and related measures take steps to ensure the survival of species pressed to near extinction, especially by human intrusion.
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 requires that an environmental impact statement (A report on how a project will impact both the natural and human worlds.) be prepared for many major projects. The word environment in this case means not only the natural world but also the human one.
Ethical Approaches to Environmental Protection
Ethical attitude taken toward the environment generally; it depends on how much, and how, value is assigned to the natural world. Reasonable ethical cases can be made for the full range of environmental protection, from none (total exploitation of the natural world to satisfy immediate human desires) to complete protection (reserving wildlife areas for freedom from any human interference). The main positions are the following and will be elaborated individually:
The environment shouldn’t be protected.
The environment should be protected in the name of serving human welfare.
The environment should be protected in the name of serving future generations’ welfare.
The environment should be protected in the name of serving animal welfare.
The environment should be protected for its own sake.
The Environment Shouldn’t Be Protected
Should individuals and businesses use the natural world for our own purposes and without concern for its welfare or continuation? The “yes” answer traces back to an attitude called free use6, which pictures the natural world as entirely dedicated to serving immediate human needs and desires. The air and water and all natural resources are understood as belonging to everyone in the sense that all individuals have full ownership of, and may use, all resources belonging to them as they see fit. The air blowing above your land and any water rolling through it are yours, and you may breathe them or drink them or dump into them as you like. This attitude, finally, has both historical and ethical components.
The Environment Shouldn’t Be Protected
The history of free use starts with the fact that the very idea of the natural world as needing protection at all is very recent. For almost all human history, putting the words environment and protection together meant finding ways that we could be protected from it instead of protecting it from us.
They were afraid because the wind and storms blowing off the sea actually threatened their existences; it capsized their boats and sent water pouring through roofs and food supplies. Going further, not only is it the case that until very recently nature threatened us much more than we threatened it, but in those cases where humans did succeed in doing some damage, nature bounced right back.
Today, at a time when our power over nature is significant, there are two basic arguments in favor of free use:
The domination and progress argument
The geological time argument
The domination and progress argument (The argument that the natural world doesn’t need to be protected because it’s not important and because technology will resolve problems caused by nature’s corruption.) begins by refusing to place any necessary and intrinsic value in the natural world: there’s no autonomous worth in the water, plants, and animals surrounding us. Because they have no independent value, those who abuse and ruin nature can’t be automatically accused of an ethical violation: nothing intrinsically valuable has been damaged. Just as few people object when a dandelion is pulled from a front yard, so too there’s no necessary objection to the air being ruined by our cars.
The Environment Shouldn’t Be Protected
Next, moving on to the other of the two arguments in favor of free use, there’s the idea that we might as well use everything without anxiety because, in the end, we really can’t seriously affect the natural world anyway. This sounds silly at first; it seems clear that we can and do wreak havoc: species disappear and natural ecosystems are reduced to dead zones. However, it must be noted that our human view of the world is myopic. That’s not our fault, just an effect of the way we experience time. For us, a hundred years is, in fact, a long time. In terms of geological time (Time understood relative to the earth’s history instead of humanity’s.), however, the entire experience of all humanity on this earth is just the wink of an eye. Geological time understands time’s passing not relative to human lives but in terms of the physical history of the earth. According to that measure, the existence of the human species has been brief, and the kinds of changes we’re experiencing in the natural world pale beside the swings the earth is capable of producing. We worry, for example, about global warming, meaning the earth’s temperature jumping a few degrees, and while this change may be seismically important for us, it’s nothing new to the earth.
This geological view of time cashes out as an ethical justification for free use of the natural world for a reason nearly the opposite of the first. The argument for free use supported by convictions about domination and progress borders on arrogance: it’s that the natural world is unimportant, and any problems caused by our abusing it will be resolved by intelligence and technological advance. Alternatively, and within the argument based on geological time, our lives, deeds, and abilities are so trivial that it’s absurd to imagine that we could seriously change the flow of nature’s development even if we tried. We could melt nuclear reactors left and right, and a hundred million years from now it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. That means, finally, that the idea of preserving the environment isn’t nobility: it’s vanity.
The Environment Should Be Protected in the Name of Serving Human Welfare
The free-use argument in favor of total environmental exploitation posits no value in the natural world. In and of itself, it’s worthless. Even if this premise is accepted, however, there may still be reason to take steps in favor of preservation and protection. It could be that the ecosystems around us should be safeguarded not for them, but for us. The reasoning here is that we as a society will live better and happier when lakes are suitable for swimming, when air cleans our lungs instead of gumming them up, when a drive on the freeway with the car window down doesn’t leave your face feeling greasy. Human happiness, ultimately, hinges to some extent on our own natural and animal nature. We too, we must remember, are part of the ecosystem. Many of the things we do each day—walk, breathe, find shelter from the elements—are no different from the activities of creatures in the natural world. When that world is clean and functioning well, consequently, we fit into it well.
Wrapping this perspective into an ethical theory, utilitarianism—the affirmation that the ethically good is those acts increasing human happiness—functions effectively.
Another way to justify environmental protection in the name of human and civilized life runs through a rights-based argument. Starting from the principle of the right to pursue happiness, a case could be built that without a flourishing natural world, the pursuit will fail.
It must be emphasized that the responsibility isn’t to the water or the animals thriving in its ecosystem. They’re irrelevant, and there’s no obligation to protect them. What matters is human existence; the obligation is to human rights and our dependence on the natural world to exercise those rights.
The Environment Should Be Protected in the Name of Serving Future Generations’ Welfare
The idea that the environment should be protected so that future generations may live in it and have the choices we do today is based on a notion of social fairness (The doctrine that societies in different places or times should be treated equitably). Typically in ethics, we think of fairness in terms of individuals. Fairness is the imperative that all those applying get equal consideration, are subjected to similar criteria for selection, and the selection is based on ability to perform job-related duties. When, on the other hand, the principle of fairness extends to the broad social level, what’s meant is that groups taken as a whole are treated equitably.
One hypothetical way to present this notion of intergenerational fairness with respect to the environment and its protection. One hypothetical way to present this notion of intergenerational fairness with respect to the environment and its protection. Fairness, however, obligates us to think of others, including future others, and the veil of ignorance provides one way of considering their rights on a par with the ones we enjoy now. There’s also a utilitarian argument that fits underneath and justifies the position that our environment should be protected in the name of future generations. This theory grades acts ethically in terms of their consequences for social happiness, and with those consequences projected forward in time. To the extent possible, the utilitarian mind-set demands that we account for the welfare of future generations when we act today. Of course the future is an unknown, and that tends to weigh decisions toward their effects on the present since those are more easily foreseen. Still, it’s not difficult to persuade most people that future members of our world will be happier and their lives fuller and more rewarding if they’re born onto an at least partially green earth.
The Environment Should Be Protected in the Name of Serving Animal Welfare
Those arguments place all intrinsic value in human existence: to the extent we decide to preserve the natural world, we do so because it’s good for us. Preservation satisfies our ethical duties to ourselves or to those human generations yet to come What now changes is that the natural world’s creatures get endowed with a value independent of humans, and that value endures whether or not we enjoy or need to fit into a web of healthy, clean ecosystems. Animals matter, in other words, regardless of whether they matter for us. This treatment is a subject of tremendous controversy, one orbiting around the following two questions:
Are nonhuman animals worthy of moral consideration? What do they do, what qualities do they possess that lead us to believe they should have rights and impose obligations on you and me?
Granting that nonhuman animals do hold value in themselves and impose obligations on humans by their very existence, how far do the obligations go? If we’re given a choice on a speeding highway between running over a squirrel and hitting a person, do we have a moral obligation to avoid the person (and run down the squirrel)?
Questions about whether animals have rights and impose obligations are among the most important in the field of environmental ethics. They will be explored in their own section of discussion that follows. In this section, it will simply be accepted that nonhuman animals do, in fact, have autonomous moral standing. It immediately follows that their protection is, to some extent, a responsibility.
In terms of an ethics of duties, the obligation to protect animal life could be conceived as a form of the duty to beneficence, a duty to help those who we are able to aid, assuming the cost to ourselves is not disproportionately high. Protecting animals is something we do for the same reason we protect people in need. Alternatively, in terms of the utilitarian principle that we act to decrease suffering in the world (which is a way of increasing happiness), the argument could be mounted that animals are, in fact, capable of suffering, and therefore we should act to minimize that sensation just as we do in the human realm.
The Entire Environmental Web Should Be Protected for Its Own Sake
The environment as a whole, the total ecosystem including all animal and plant life on Earth—along with the air, water, and soil supporting existence—should be protected according to a number of ethical arguments. The least difficult to persuasively make is the case that the obligation flows from human welfare: we’re happier when our planet is healthy.
It’s more difficult, but still very possible, to make a reasonable case that the obligation to protection attaches to the autonomous value and rights of nonhuman animals creature.
Finally, the most difficult case to make is that humans are obligated to protect the total environment—all water and air, every tree and animal—because all of it and every single part holds autonomous value.
If We Decide to Protect the Environment, Who Pays?
The question for ethical consideration is, who should pay? These are three basic answers:
Those who contaminated the natural world
Those who enjoy the natural world
Those who are most able
The answer that the costs should be borne by those who damaged nature in the first place means sending the bill to developers and resort owners, to all those whose ambition to make money on tourism got roads paved, forests cleared, and foundations laid. The proposal that those who enjoy and depend on the natural world should bear primary responsibility for protecting and renewing it also makes good sense. This reasoning is to some extent implemented in America’s natural parks where fees are charged for entry. Finally, the response that those most able to pay should bear the brunt of the cost for protecting the natural world is a political as much as an environmental posture.
Three Models of Environmental Protection for Businesses
The Role of Businesses in Environmental Protection
Protecting the environment is itself a business, and many organizations, especially nonprofits, take that as their guiding purpose. Three common attitudes are;
accelerate and innovate,
monetize and count,
express corporate responsibility
Business and Environmental Protection: Accelerate and Innovate
There’s a subtle difference between environmental conservation and protection. Conservation means leaving things as they are. Protection opens the possibility of changing the natural world in the name of defending it. One way for a business to embrace the protection of nature is through technological advance. Examples of the progressive approach(As an approach to environmental protection, the attitude that technological advance will resolve problems) to environmental protection—as opposed to the conservative one—include solar and wind power generation. Both are available to us only because of the explosion of technology and knowledge the industrialized, contaminating world allows. The idea, in other words, is that electricity produced by this company’s windmills will be as cheap (or cheaper) than that produced from fossil fuels, including coal. To reach that point, the development of very strong yet lightweight materials has been necessary, along with other technological advances.
Business and Environmental Protections: Monetize and Count
A cost-benefit analysis(The summing of an action’s costs and its weighing against summed benefits) is, theoretically, a straightforward way of determining whether an action should be undertaken. The effort and expense of doing something is toted on one side, and the benefits received are summed on the other. If the benefits are greater than the costs, we go ahead; if not, we don’t.
Three Models of Environmental Protection for Businesses
Business and Environmental Protections: Monetize and Count
Setting a cost-benefit analysis between a business and the environment means adding the costs of eliminating pollution on one side and weighing it against the benefits of a cleaner world. The ethical theory underneath this balancing approach to business and nature is utilitarianism. A cost-benefit analysis makes excellent sense in theory, but it’s as difficult to execute as it is to assign numbers to human experiences. If the attempt is nonetheless made, the technical term for the assigning is monetization(Assigning dollar values to human experiences). As opposed to regulations that essentially force businesses to meet social pollution goals, incentives (Offered by government agencies and other institutions, they provide reasons for organizations to voluntarily cooperate with environmental protection efforts.) seek the same results cooperatively. For example, tax incentives could be offered for environmental protection efforts; money paid for the scrubbers a company places in their smokestacks may be deducted from taxes at a very high rate.
Business and Environmental Protections: Corporate Social Responsibility
The third posture an organization may adopt toward environmental protection falls under the heading of corporate social responsibility. The attitude here is that companies, especially large, public corporations, should humanize their existences: an attempt should be made to see the corporation, in a certain sense, as an individual person. Instead of being a mindless machine built to stamp out profits, the business is re-envisioned as a seat of economic and moral responsibility. Responding to ethical worries isn’t someone else’s concern (say, the government’s, which acts by imposing regulations), instead, large companies including Walmart take a leading role in addressing ethical issues. Sustainability means acting to protect the environment and the people surrounding an operation so that they may continue to contribute to the profitmaking enterprise. As a quick example, a logging operation that clear-cuts forests isn’t sustainable: when all the trees are gone, there’s no way for the company to make any more money. Similarly in human terms, companies depending on manual labor need their employees to be healthy. If a factory’s air pollution makes everyone sick, no one will be able to come in to work.
Three Models of Environmental Protection for Businesses
Stakeholder (All those who have a stake in an organization’s decisions.) theory is another way of presenting corporate social responsibility. The idea here is that corporate leaders must make decisions representing the interests not only of shareholders (the corporation’s owners) but also of all those who have a stake in what the enterprise is doing: the company exists for their benefit too. Along these lines, Walmart encouraged farmers in China to abandon the use of toxic pesticides. The corporation contracted with farmers under the condition that they use only organic means to kill pests and then allowed their products to be sold with a label noting their Walmart-confirmed clean production. technological innovation, by trusting in governmental regulation, and by trusting in a concept of corporate responsibility. It is currently uncertain which, if any, of these postures will most effectively respond to society’s environmental preoccupations.
Conclusion. Businesses can react to a world of environmental concern by trusting in technological innovation, by trusting in governmental regulation, and by trusting in a concept of corporate responsibility. It is currently uncertain which, if any, of these postures will most effectively respond to society’s environmental preoccupations.
Animal Rights
Do Animals Have Rights?
In business ethics, attention fixes on the larger question of whether animals can be understood as possessing ethical rights as we customarily understand the term.
There are two principal arguments in favor of understanding at least higher-order nonhuman animals as endowed with rights:
The cognitive awareness and interest argument
The suffering argument
And there are three arguments against:
The lack of expression argument
The absence of duties argument
The anthropomorphism suspicion argument
The cognitive awareness and interest argument in favor of concluding that animals do have ethical rights begins by accumulating evidence that nonhuman animals are aware of what’s going on around them and do in fact have an interest in how things go. As for showing that animals are aware and interested, in higher species evidence comes from what animals do. If these deductions of animal awareness and interest are on target, the way opens to granting the animals an autonomous moral value and standing. Maybe their ethical value should be inferior to humans who demonstrate sophisticated understanding of their environment, themselves, and their interests, but any understanding at all does bring animals into the realm of ethics because determinations about whose interests should be served in any particular situation are what ethical discussions concern. The reason we have ethics is to help those who have specific interests have them satisfied in ways that don’t interfere with others and their attempts to satisfy their distinct interests. So if we’re going to have ethical principles at all, then they should apply to dogs and dolphins because they’re involved in the messy conflicts about who gets what in the world.
Animal Rights
Do Animals Have Rights
The suffering argument in favor of concluding that animals do have ethical rights fits neatly inside utilitarian theory. Within this ethical universe, the reason we have ethical rules is to maximize happiness and minimize suffering. biological studies have shown that pain-associated elements of some animal nervous systems resemble the human version. Of course dogs may not suffer on the emotional level (if you separate a male and female pair, there may not be any heartbreak), and it’s true that absolute proof remains elusive, but for many observers there’s good evidence that some animals do, in fact, feel pain. If, then, it’s accepted that animals suffer, they ought to be included in our utilitarian considerations by definition because the theory directs us to act in ways that maximize happiness and minimize suffering.
On the other side, the arguments against granting animals a moral standing in the world begin with the lack of expression argument. Animals, the reasoning goes, may display behaviors indicating an awareness of the world and the ability to suffer, but that’s not enough to merit autonomous moral standing. To truly have rights, they must be claimed. An explicit and demonstrated awareness must exist of what ethics are, and why rules for action are attached to them.
Another way to deny animal rights runs through the absence of duties argument. Since animals don’t have duties, they can’t have rights. All ethics, the argument goes, is a two-way street. To have rights you must also have responsibilities; to claim protection against injury from others, you must also display consideration before injuring others. The first question to ask, consequently, in trying to determine whether animals should have rights is whether they have or could have responsibilities.
The last argument against granting moral autonomy or value to animals is a suspicion of anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human qualities to nonhuman things. In all these ways, common animals are very similar to humans. Given these indisputable similarities, it’s easy to imagine that others must exist also. If animals look like we do (eyes, mouth, and nose), and if they eat and drink as we do, it’s natural to assume they feel as we do: they suffer sadness and boredom; they need affection and are happy being cuddled.
Dividing Questions about Animal Rights from Ones about Animal Suffering
The debate about whether animals should be understood as possessing rights within the ethical universe is distinct from the one about whether they should be subjected to suffering. If animals do have rights, then it quickly follows that their suffering should be objectionable. Even if animals aren’t granted any kind of autonomous ethical existence, however, there remains a debate about the extent to which their suffering should be considered acceptable. Assuming some nonhuman animals do, in fact, suffer, there are two major business related areas where the suffering is especially notable:
Research
Consumer goods
The case of research—especially medical and drug development—provides some obvious justification for making animals suffer. One example involves a jaw implant brought to market by the firm Vitek. After implantation in human patients, the device fragmented, causing extensive and painful problems. Later studies indicated that had the implant been tested in animals first, the defect would’ve been discovered and the human costs and pain avoided. When animals are made to suffer for human comfort or pleasure—whether the result is nice makeup, or a tasty veal dish, or an enthralling bullfight—two arguments quickly arise against subjecting animals to the painful treatment. The utilitarian principle that pain in the world should be minimized may be applied. Also, a duty to refrain from cruelty may be cited and found persuasive.
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