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Poisonous Business

Posted on September 24, 2012 by tom hart

In this week’s session we began along the same line of thought as last time, discussing the case of the Mobil company’s barge cleaning business. After being caught dumping waste without a permit, the company lied and subsequently dumped their waste directly into the Arthur Kill rather than properly store it or dispose of it.

This seems outrageous, as if Mobil deliberately flaunted the law merely for its own gain. It seems insulting to the public, shortsighted irresponsible. But in the end, when Mobil finally agreed to a settlement with the EPA, it was fined only $11 million – an insignificant sum to a company of that size. A public company is beholden to its shareholders, not the American people, and it makes its decisions based on costs and benefits. If Mobil can operate a business making tens, hundreds, or thousands of millions of dollars by avoiding paying for cleanup, it will gladly pay $11 million in fines. If the fine is smaller than the benefits of avoiding cleanup, which is assuredly is, the fine is nothing more than a small tax (and the company didn’t even need to admit wrongdoing!) The business is still worthwhile, and any smart business owner would make the decision to dump in the future if the opportunity arose.

In recent times awareness campaigns have brought attention and criticism to companies that do things like this, so businesses have to consider a bit more scrutiny when deciding whether to obey environmental restrictions or not, or risk the curse of bad public relations. But there’s no guarantee that even an educated consumer base will choose to, or even be able to avoid doing business with shady companies. People have their own cost/benefit analyses to do when deciding where to buy from, and an economy that is often oligopolistic in nature makes it hard to avoid a company even if they wanted to. We can’t rely on such considerations when determining how to stop companies from placing unpaid for costs on the public. If we want companies to make the right decision for the environment, the fine for breaking rules must be higher than the profit they get from breaking them, adjusted for time and the risk of getting caught.

Later that day we delved into the details of air-borne pollutants. Such pollutants are not really subject to bioaccumulation like water-borne pollutants are, but they also have a much greater ability to harm us directly. We can separate our reservoirs from the ocean, but we can’t separate the atmosphere we’d like to breath from the atmosphere we try to avoid.

We also have to consider how much each polluting source contributes to overall public health  problems. Banning a product is a big deal; it means disrupting an industry, ending jobs related to that product, and ultimately raising prices as a more expensive or less effective replacement is used, which may have its own negative side effects. So products should not be banned unless the scientific evidence shows that they have significant negative side effects. Even if we know a harmful chemical is present within the population, we must study how it got there before we jump to conclusions.

If we know that lead is a poison, and lead is found in gasoline, it does not necessarily mean that banning leaded gasoline will improve public health by a significant amount. Lead was used (until the 1980s) in myriad products, much of which entered the atmosphere or otherwise. If, for example, 90% of the lead found in people can be traced to lead paint in buildings, and the lead concentration in humans is 50% higher than the safe level, banning lead paint will have a much strong effect on public health than banning leaded gas.

Corruption and Delay

Posted on September 19, 2012 by tom hart

            Now that we’ve begun getting into some of the specifics of the issues of environmental protection and the history of implementation, I feel a bit more comfortable. I think the philosophical questions distract me from what’s important: making changes in our government and society to improve quality of life for everyone.

            Rio de Janeiro makes a poignant model for ecological destruction . It’s amazing how much money could be wasted to no effect. After thinking about it over the course of the day, the example makes me think of United States examples from a century ago. I don’t know much of the situation in Brazil beyond what we covered in class, but it seems to follow the pattern for a developing nation. High economic and/or population growth and insufficient infrastructure lead to a horrendous accumulation of trash and waste. And of course corruption accompanies all of this, leading to the waste of a billion dollars trying to fix the mess.

Someone mentioned the fact that it isn’t just the fault of the government, but the fault of society. This is true, but the government also serves as an instrument of society. The situation in Rio de Janeiro is a classic example of the tragedy of the commons, where the value of the rivers that everyone in the vicinity makes use of is slowly eroded as everyone makes use of it. It seems that the government must either make use of the river less convenient (by enforcing a fee for littering, for example), or preferably by creating a better alternative. It seems ludicrous to expect a city the size of Rio de Janeiro to remain livable without sufficient waste disposal and sewage infrastructure.

As an interlude, I’d like to mention a wonderful aspect of the class environment that Professor Alexandratos creates: a sense of wonder and appreciation for knowledge and learning. The idea that you should always leave the room smarter than you came in is a great motivating factor to learn, and presents an attitude that makes life (and school in particular) much more enjoyable. Personally, I very much enjoy learning almost any bit of information (such as the beginning of “modern times”) because it enriches my understanding of the subject, and because I know these sort of things come back again and again. As such I find it sad, and slightly appalling when someone replies “No!” to the question, “don’t you want to know…?”

On Thursday we finally did learn what exactly PCB is. As I just started Organic Chemistry I don’t yet know enough to really relate its properties to its shape, but I’ll keep it in mind as my knowledge grows. For now it’s probably enough to know that the compound is toxic and needs to be removed from the Hudson River environment if we want a clean fish supply.

GE’s ability to delay cleanup is reminiscent of the situation in Rio de Janeiro, except perpetrated by a private company rather than a corrupt government. The issue of an extensive and lengthy appeals process seems incredibly difficult. With money to spend in the courts, the company delayed cleanup for thirty years, allowing it to make large profits on its investment essentially at the expense of the public and the fishing industry. When GE finally began the job in 2008, much of the PCBs had likely dissipated naturally. GE will spend a billion dollars cleaning up what’s left, but how much did they avoid paying over the last several decades? And even if GE is fined for every dollar it wasted in the appeals system or saved by not cleaning up at the taxpayers’ expense, most of the GE shareholders, employees, and executives who profited from the issue have probably retired. The expenses will have been passed on to a new generation.

Sustainability and Deep Ecology

Posted on September 6, 2012 by tom hart

This week’s discussion centered around the idea of sustainability. We covered a number of instances where humans are not acting sustainably, from the huge amounts of carbon we release into the atmosphere each year, the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon to make way for cattle ranches, and the creation of oceanic dead zones. We learned all sorts of numbers about the extent of the damage, but the main theme seems clear. Despite popular environmentalist solutions like recycling and energy-efficient appliances, we are not doing enough to make our existence sustainable.

It’s clear that we cannot keep living like we are indefinitely. Desertification will lower crop yields, overfishing and acidification of the ocean will hurt another critical food source, and a warming planet will cause all sorts of other complications.

But simply decreasing our usage means slowing growth.  Oil fuels our economy, and any increase in its price will continue down the supply chain to every good that needs to be transported or needs power. Decreasing fertilizer use means smaller crops and more expensive food. And telling developing nations not to take advantage of their natural resources, putting environmentalism over the fight against poverty, is a tough thing to do.

I agree with Professor Alexandratos that whatever regulations are put in place must be mandatory, not voluntary. But beyond that, they must be nuanced. Regulation must take into account the needs of the community it affects, as well as all of the possible alternatives.

During the second session of the week, we delved deeper into the discussion, beginning with a summary of Deep Ecology. I’ve been conflicted about the philosophy since I first heard of it several months ago. On the one hand, Deep Ecology proposes the sort of change that may lead to increased quality of life. I think it’s very possible that a deeper appreciation for nature and a transition to a sustainable economy based on providing for core needs might be better than the growth-based/luxury-driven one we have right now. If people have less cluttered days with more time to walk in the park and tend to their own needs rather than that of the workplace, we might better appreciate the time we have.

On the other hand, I have a hard time getting my mind around the philosophical principles of Deep Ecology. Diversity is aesthetically pleasing and healthy for a community, but I don’t see why we should value it for its own sake. Similarly, the idea that all life has inherent value is something I can’t immediately agree with. As I brought up in class, this seems to imply that every disease causing bacterium is valuable, as well as every malaria-laden mosquito. I understand that these organisms fill a vital role in their ecological niche, and that eliminating them can and does lead to great disruption in their community. But eventually we reach a new equilibrium, which may be better or worse for each participant – it seems a matter of practical concern, and I do not see where inherent value comes into the matter.

I come from a Secular Humanist background, so I might have a bit of an emotional reaction to things I perceive as “spiritual” or “supernatural”. I value humans because I can empathize with them much better than other animals,  and I admit that I am an anthropocentrist – but the little I know of Deep Ecology hasn’t convinced me that that’s a bad thing. I want what’s best for humans, but it seems that our prosperity depends on the prosperity of all inhabitants of the earth. I respect and admire the methods and visions of the Deep Ecologists, but I can’t agree with their philosophy.

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