Chapter 11 addresses the moral duties businesses and businesspeople have to the environment. When businesses have to choose, as Baxter puts it, between “people or penguins,” who should they choose and why? What practices can businesses follow so as to avoid the dilemma of “good business or good environment steward”? And when does being a good environmental citizen turn into environmental posturing? Are “green” companies actually only “selling out” to a consumer base?

Aldo Leopold opens the chapter with a classic mediation on the American wild and new business technology. Mark Sagoff continues with a famous argument that many political questions, especially those concerning the environment, should not be decided on the basis of their economic impact alone (or on their economic impact at all). We should not substitute efficiency for safety, and we should never victimize our citizens or treat them like pawns to serve the interests of those in power.

William F. Baxter argues that the best way to settle environmental questions (and especially questions about pollution) is to recognize the trade-offs that are involved: What are the costs and benefits of the available options? Once we are clear on the costs and benefits, we will be in a much better position to decide, in any given environmental policymaking decision, whether the environmental price we will pay for satisfying some want or need is too high or justified. Avoiding pollution is a legitimate human desire, he argues, but so are many other things that can result from processes that create pollution.

Norman Bowie argues that business does have environmental obligations, such as educating the consumer and not opposing environmental regulation in politics, and that satisfying those obligations could result in great good both for business and for society at large. Business does not, however, have the obligation to conserve natural resources or to pollute less than the levels required by law.

Peter Singer argues that nonhuman animals also deserve moral consideration, because (among other arguments he offers) like humans, they experience pleasure and pain. Therefore, when we are making decisions about what happens to nonhuman animals, we must bear in mind that we have moral duties to them. They are not “objects” to be used as we please.

The final reading of this chapter compiles the most common moral arguments put forward for and against the growth of genetically modified (GM) crops. These arguments concern the impact of GM crops on both human beings and nonhuman nature.

By the close of Chapter 11, you should:

• Understand the duties companies may have to the environment, as well as several different arguments for those duties 
• Understand the arguments for and against evaluating environmental concerns in economic terms 
• Understand when and why moral duties to humans and nonhumans may conflict
• Understand the arguments for and against the use of GM crops
• Understand how the concept of the environment has changed over time 
• Understand how companies may use environmental friendliness as part of their marketing appeal

  

Suggested Readings

Robin Attfield. Environmental Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.

Dale Jamieson, ed. A Companion to Environmental Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.

Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston, III, eds. Environmental Ethics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2003.

Lisa Newton, Catherine Dillingham, and Joanne Cody. Watersheds: Classic Cases in Environmental Ethics. Belmont, MA: Wadsworth, 2006.

Mark Sagoff. The Economy of Earth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Peter Singer. Animal Liberation. New York: Random House, 1990.

James Sterba, ed. Earth Ethics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.

 

Websites

Visit the Environmental Protection Agency and learn about the most recent developments in environmental policy at www.epa.gov/

Read a more recent travel writer’s account of his visit to the Flambeau for Audubon Magazine at http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/senseofplace/senseofplace0001.html

Forbes reports on the 100 best corporate citizens of 2012 at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/04/18/the-100-best-corporate-citizens/

Newsweek ranks the world’s greenest companies at http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/2012/newsweek-green-rankings.html

Peruse Cruelty Free Investing’s list of companies that do and do not exploit nonhuman animals at http://crueltyfreeinvesting.org/

Read one take on a Native American worldview, including some thoughts on relating to the earth, at http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~mmagouli/worldview.htm