Weekly Journal 6

            This week, we talked about the policies part of the arch. (About time, methinks, because it was getting so gloomy and sad in MHC 200.) One of the things that struck out to me the most were the clips of the Nike sneaker sweat shops and Guyanese independent gold miners, and what little we could do about it. We could boycott whichever companies generating the most negative PR, but what of it? Other companies do it, too. There is no ideological change caused, and I doubt anything would come of boycotting a single company, even when people stick to it.

This reminded me of Naes’ Deep Ecology. Shallow Ecology is environmental ethics for the benefit of the affluent few, while Deep Ecology is for all living things. Perhaps this distinction could be made for human right, as well. I brought up a point in class that I want to elaborate on—that whatever we do as consumers will probably have no effect on the large-scale operation of corporations, and whatever we do is really to clean up the blood on our hands than to actually help these people.

For example: the blood diamonds. Professor Alexandratos said that we now are going for diamonds from reputable sources because of the negative PR it generated. But what of it? We’re merely treating what we the consumers chose rather than what the laborers do. It’s similar to end-of-pipe treatment: there is no radical change in the manufacturing process. (In this case, manufacturing process refers to the actual process as well as the conditions that brought on these manufacturing to the struggling people.) If we truly cared about the poor people laboring, dying, and poisoning themselves to meet our demand for gold and drapes and fineries, we would be trying to change the societies themselves rather than what comes out of it.

Some people argue that well, without the jobs we are providing for them, they are in a bad place without a job rather than a bad place with a job. Some people argue that they don’t want this kind of blood on their (gold-ringed) hands, and would rather not buy from the poor independent workers. And then they leave it at that. I suppose the first group of people is worse (since they don’t seem to extend empathy toward other humans very well), but the second kind of people isn’t helping, either. They’re merely removing themselves from the problem.

Well, fine, yes. They can shift the gold and diamond and garment industry, but only by consolidating the workers under a brand they can trust. But are they willing to pay the extra costs of having middlemen and humanely treated team of workers? I don’t plan on holding the breath for any corporations to cut into their exorbitant profits to keep the prices reasonable for the buyers. Look at the brands that sell a worsted t-shirt labeled “US Made” and “sweatshop-free” for $30. I’m sure they can cut into profits and make their clothes slightly more reasonable. But they won’t, because of the nature of the organizations. (Unless we go for an industry-wide boycott—but we discussed in class how that’s hard to do.)

(I also have a thought I’ve yet to fully form– perhaps “good-for-you-workers-and-environment” brands don’t want to lower costs partly because of the “brand image” they’re trying to sell. I think environmentalism and philanthropy became a mark of the affluent somehow, especially among the wealthy liberal college-educated crowd. I think that’s why people living near TriBeCa shop at Whole Foods and go for organic food chains named “Organique”. It’s a mark of who they are, how caring they are despite their privileges. Will they be so willing to buy worsted t-shirt labeled “US Made” and “sweatshop-free” if it became so cheap that, say, the middle-aged woman from Harlem with empty gaps in her smile could afford it? What if it’s so cheap that it’s become ubiquitous in poor parts of NYC, almost as ubiquitous as Hollister is among frat boys? It’s an exaggeration, for the sake of making a point, but still. I wonder.)

Now we’re approaching a new region of the arc – the solutions. Things are already beginning to come together. We spent the first section of the class talking about the environmental problems created by people, corporations, and governments. We’ve stepped back through longer timescales and to larger regions, until we reached the problems of global air and water pollution. Here we become even more abstract.

People, and the institutions they create, generally worry about short term before short term. So if one option is cheaper in the short term, then that is what will be done – barring intervention. Taking and processing natural resources is almost always cheaper than recovering materials from waste, and so that’s why we haven’t pursued these processes with greater fervor. Valorization and “closing the loop” will not happen until resources in nature become more expensive than materials recovered from waste.

This will happen on its own eventually, but the transition will be yet another problem that will cause strife and instability amid many others we will undoubtedly encounter over the next hundred years or so. Eventually new industries based on resource recovery will emerge, but we would prefer to start the process earlier so that the infrastructure is in place. We could do his by taxing raw resource production and subsidizing resource recovery. Unfortunately, many important metals and minerals are found primarily in foreign countries. We can tax imports of these materials, but then we are asking other countries to buy them up instead (at least in the minds of politicians).

At some point we need to step up to the plate and make a commitment. This is something we can take advantage of right now, if we are willing to invest in our infrastructure. Many parts of our country are opposed to deficit spending, but its use to increase GDP and invest in our future seems like a good idea in a time of low growth and high unemployment.

This is just one step in the process of creating a sustainable economy, but it would give us a jump-start in the process of sustainable development. With new infrastructure we can increase efficiency and take advantage of our greater understanding of humans and the environment.

If voluntary standards are ineffective for self-interested industry, it seems just as likely that they would be ineffective for self-interested nations. On the international scale, all standards are voluntary, at least until other nations put sanctions on trade or threaten war. International agreements cannot be enforced unless they are tied to some sort of material “carrot” or “stick”. Are environmental agreements ever tied to trade agreements?  It seems that such an arrangement, if it were diplomatically possible, might do more to help than UN declarations.

Sustainable development requires a significant investment, and it seems like it would be very hard for developing nations to acquire the capital (and see that it is put to use). But a nation that is currently developing represents a wonderful opportunity to build an infrastructure that is modern according to our current knowledge and understanding of the environment – it is almost the ability to skip a step in development that first-world nations went through a hundred years ago. Unfortunately it seems like developing nations will have an extremely hard time fulfilling the triple bottom line – economic growth is usually the first priority, along with social stability. Environmental regulations are meaningless if the black market operates freely.

William Arguelles

Spiro Alexandratos

Seminar 3

October 15, 2012

Opinion Paper 6

            So breaking with my tradition of pointing out the “supervillian” corporation and then ranting about how ridiculous the supervillian is, I think I’m going to focus on something else for once. Not because there wasn’t a supervillian this time, because Lord knows that Nike came across as pure unadulterated evil in their treatment of those Bengali workers. I mean I’ve sadly come to expect corporations outsourcing their manufacturing to impoverished countries to increase their profits. But to me, Nike is only occupying a niche made available by the utter neglect and economic exploitation of the world’s population.

Nike however, decided that just outsourcing wasn’t exploitative enough, so they decided to trick some poor Bengali men and women into signing these contracts which basically treated them like 17^th century indentured servants.  These men and women would sign contracts in a language they couldn’t read that would have them move to another country (I think it was Malaysia) and then forfeit their passports to the company. Without a passport, the workers were effectively trapped in the country working for Nike until they fulfilled their contract and bought back their own passports with all the money Nike had paid them over the three or so years they worked for Nike. In short, Nike is essentially acting as a New World plantation owner, tricking the poor starving peasants into signing years of their lives away to work on plantations in horrific conditions.

Now, Nike is obviously in the wrong here. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights among practically every State’s constitution and/or bill of rights states that slavery and indentured servitude is illegal and immoral. There is no excuse for what Nike is doing to these men and women, and they should be punished for it to the fullest extent of the law. However, like the 17^th century plantation owner, Nike is more emblematic of the underlying problem; the despicable living conditions and abject poverty in these states that drives these workers to sign such horrible deals.

For example, let’s look at Bangladesh, the most densely populous nation in the world. There are some significant downsides to being ridiculously overcrowded, so that millions of Bengali people live in abject poverty. I remember watching a Natural Geographic special about these Bengali women who lived in these villages comprised of a bunch of hastily constructed makeshift shacks on the side of a major thoroughfare and were basically a harem of prostitutes for the passing truckers. The women were brought there at the age of eight or nine, sold by relatives into this slavery, and forced to have sex with anyone who paid their madam about twenty U.S. dollars. After however many years of this abuse, the women were granted their “freedom” to make money themselves,  but they still had to pay a ridiculous exorbitant rent. I think all and all, the women made approximately a dollar or two for each John.

I bring this up because it illustrates my point that while Nike is obviously wrong, to these workers, it could appear as an escape from their horrible lives. Yes, Nike should pay their workers more than two dollars an hour, but when sixteen percent of the world makes approximately a dollar a day, those two dollars might sound like living in the lap of luxury. And if the person has to choose between having barely consensual sex with passing truckers or making shoes in a factory they’re told is much nicer then their shack, I can see droves of people signing up for this without a second thought.

Praying on the weak of the world is disgusting, and Nike should be ashamed of doing it. But what is truly horrific is that such a large portion of the world lives in such a deplorable state. Like the plantation owners, Nike is morally corrupt, but the only reason their practice even exists is because the conditions are so terrible that signing away three years of your life to make shoes for little to no pay sounds better than starving in the streets or being a sex slave. It’s easy to say Nike is wrong, but Nike is only a symptom of the much greater problems plaguing the world.

Emotional engagement is important, yet it can be tricky. In order to be successful, an individual must find a balance between using your emotions as your motivation to fuel you actions and having your emotions cloud or judgment, creating bias and altering your actions.

Outsourcing is an extremely controversial issue. However, I believe that we need outsourcing and I do not see a better alternative. We all need the items created in third world countries, especially now because practically everything is made in third world countries. When I go to school everyday, everything I wear was probably produced outside of the United States. The only reason for this is because it is simply cheaper, and I don’t see anything wrong with this. Yes, in certain scenarios like Nike, the conditions are horrible and unacceptable, but those are most likely few and far between. Efforts should be made to create better living conditions for these people, but the fact remains, the benefits we get from outsourcing will never lead us to want to stop it. No one wants to be paying probably fifty percent more than what they are paying now if items were to be made domestically.

Something I found intriguing was the idea that world leaders recognized the importance of voluntary action. This is ridiculous that this is coming out now, but even more upsetting is how about the importance of mandating certain actions. Why not increase the deposit laws a little? People buy these sodas and do not recycle them half the time. Why not make the deposit a significant amount of money to force the consumers to want to recycle their bottles? If they decide the increase in price is too much to pay for soda, then that is good as well because it will help reduce obesity. These people could then drink water instead of sodas and other sugary beverages. Obviously the beverage companies will not agree to an increase in the deposit laws because sales will decline. The government should give these companies significant tax breaks to convince them to allow it. Another possible idea is just making it a law to recycle bottles, punishable by jail time or hefty fines. This is an example of mandatory action which would be much more effective than voluntary, the only problem being it is much less realistic.

Voluntary action is nice in theory, but few actually take action. In order for voluntary action to be effective, you need masses of people to contribute and take action. You need organized groups and recruitment. A big problem is that many working people do not have the time or at least think they do not have the time to help out. But guess what, if you do not help out, the world is going to go to shit and you won’t have that time anyway. I should not be talking because I am one of those people that understands the problems but does nothing to help. I need to change my attitude. We all do.

This lesson proved to be my least absorbed of the first half of the semester.  Not to say that I did not learn from the lesson, nor to say that I did not pay attention or take notes, rather, there was so much to absorb I failed to get it all!  This can be proved by my midterm, as the majority of my points were taken off from this lesson.  The triple bottom line, in my notes, reads “A framework by which policy decisions can be made by individuals, corporations and government.”  Past that, the triple bottom line “sustainability includes jobs, poverty, opportunity, safety, social justice, and family sustainability.”  I did not get this question right on the midterm and was wondering if what my notes reads is also incorrect.  Another question I answered incorrectly asked for the four variants of fixing a problem in places like factories.  End of pipe treatment, pollution prevention, design for environment and sustainable development.  I enjoyed this and the three level model, because I like the clear ways in which we impact the world, as well as gaining a better understanding of the conflict of creating a sustainable existence under a budget.  I felt that this lesson helped me better understand why it is nothing is being done about municipal incinerators for example, or any other issue that faces our environment.  End of pipe treatment, while not ideal, may be an effective means of dealing with our problems in the short term.  Since finding billions of dollars is not an easy task, I am glad to hear that at least some temporary changes are being done.  I feel that my opinion on the matter differs from the rest of the class, who at the time seemed to be aggravated by the situation.  Beyond aggravated, my classmates seemed to see no benefit in such means of dealing with our issues.  I do agree that simply adding filters does not fully remove an issue from the scope of a factory, but is it not better to add filters now until we have the funds to replace out of date methods?  I feel that the class sentiment was widely aggressive towards the end of pipe method, but perhaps it can be viewed as a method that has some merit to it? Needless to say it is unanimously agreed that companies must do something about the issue beyond end of pipe treatments, it is my hope that someone out there is working on it while the metaphorical filters are in place.

One of the latter anecdotes in the lesson struck me the hardest.  The issue in places like Guyana of people harming themselves by using mercury to mine gold resonated with me after class.  I find it distressing that there are people who do not have the luxury of free higher education, but rather people my age have no choice but to slowly poison themselves with mercury to make a living, so they do not quickly die of starvation.

The progress that we’ve made since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 shows just how painfully slow change can be. And it’s frustrating. Why should it take twenty years to go from acknowledging a need to actually starting to think critically about how to fulfill it? People’s priorities are elsewhere. Nearly every country in the world is obsessed with the idea of “progress”, and seems to feel that moving towards sustainability would only slow its growth. So, despite giving a nod in its direction, governments—influenced by big business and taxpayer interests alike—pass only the weakest laws and invest only the smallest amounts of money in it.

And part of the reason is that we’re stuck in a Nash equilibrium—none of the entities in the situation see anything to gain by changing. Industry bosses only see a loss of profit; most consumers see only the sting that their wallets would feel. Elected officials are afraid to pass anything comprehensive to the effect of making development sustainable because of the votes and contributions they would lose. This is a problem—people must realize that, ultimately, everybody will have to pay.

Air, water, and land, as I’ve said before, are common resources. The surface may be divided into tracts of private property, but there are no boundaries above and below it. If poisons are placed on one person’s plot, soaked up by the earth, pulled into the groundwater supply and from there taken to who knows where, they become everybody’s problem. As the saying goes, one man’s freedom to swing his fist ends where another’s nose begins. It’s easy to insist on the freedom to do whatever we wish on our own property. But is it really within anybody’s rights to take part in activities that inevitably affect the quality of life in other places? Our little plots of land are not closed systems.

It is possible to achieve total sustainability—social, environmental, and economic. Will it be cheap? Will it be quick? Easy? No. For one thing, sustainable technology is still developing. And it isn’t cheap—or, at least, it looks costly in the short run. For another thing, governments tend to be slow, especially when trying to coordinate international action, as we’ve seen with the UN. And they would be slow even if the majority of people were actively pressing the issue during elections, and even if the media were focusing on it, which they’re not.

This is why the first thing that needs to change is they way that people think. It’s not easy to try and undo the maxims society—family, media, education—has brainwashed people with since childhood. It takes time and it requires constant effort. The Civil Rights movement happened, yes—and yes, the US has elected its first Black president, but racism persists in people’s minds. That’s where the problem begins, and that’s where it needs to be tackled. When people value long-term contentment over short-term pleasure, then they will begin to ask for change. Only when they are dissatisfied with what today’s world gives them will they demand a form of progress that exploits nobody. And to be made dissatisfied, they must first be informed—they must realize the full extent of what they are paying, and what they are getting in return.