Climate Change: New Ethical Dilemma in Business

Climate Change: New Ethical Dilemma of Business

The world is losing its capabilities in every aspect to remain sustainable for the existence of life and the situation gets worse by the day. Sustainability issue is considered at the top of every list of crucial matters in recent times as planet earth has already begun to react on the human contributions on the destruction of environment in the name of development. There are numerous research, predictions, mathematical models that indicates the acute risk of our survival in near future, and yet the term environmental sustainability remains mostly on those research resolutions and recommendations. On the other hand, the endless development and new possibilities in technology also have an unavoidable necessity in modern lifestyle and somehow in between the choice of economy and ecology, economy always wins. However, the negative impacts of climate change iscontinuously warning us about the consequences not only ecologically, but also how it involves society, economy, politics, crimes, and international trade. Therefore, there is no time for to choose between ecology and economy, the world is now turning the ecology into economy. As a result, the term sustainable development is emerging but the real issue remains that is it only a textbook term or the implementation affects in the mitigation process of climate change?

Climate change today is one of the most crucial ethical problems that are posing great risk to mankind and environment. With its multidimensional, complex, slow affect behavior and long-term impacts, it stands as a barrier towards the development of a country. It not only makes some societies and communities vulnerable but it also puts the whole nation in stake by impacting each developmental element such as food security, water security and energy security. The impacts are alarming in developing countries such as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India and so forth that have poor socioeconomic development(Rahman et al., 2007). Further, stringent policies and infrastructures to combat climate change is either not developed or implemented effectively in these countries (Rahman et al., 2007). The impacts of climate change summarizes into but not limited to sea-level rise, occurrence of natural disasters, increasing population resulting in more climate refugees, health issues, lack of food security, damaging infrastructure and so on (Sarwar& Khan, 2007). However, the most affected criteria is the environment as the ecological balance have been lost due to ozone depletion, saline intrusion, unusual seasonal changes, changing patterns of temperature and precipitation, and loss of biodiversity.

The definite stakeholders of this problem are us, we all human. To be specific, factory owners, people who drives car, passengers, general people and other living elements of environment. From the perspective of factory owners, they only focus on profit-maximization theory mostly, because at the end of the what matters within a company is profit. They do everything to cut off every avoidable cost. Most of the factories are situated near river so that they can dump their factory waste to river. A lot of factories diffuse water vapor directly to air; unfortunately, water vapor is the most dangerous greenhouse gas which causes climate change( Hansen, 2008). From the factory owner’s point of view, they are not doing anything wrong because as a businessman his duty is to keep his business running and make maximum profit. Here the ethical dilemma exists. Should a businessman focus on ecological sustainability rather than profit? Another important stakeholder is vehicle drivers. We cannot avoid the necessity of driving motor vehicles now days. In Europe, one fifth of carbon emission comes from total greenhouse gas (European Commission, 2015). We passengers are also stakeholder of climate change because we ride in car and drivers drive car for our unavoidable dependency to technology to go one place to another. From their view they are not doing anything wrong because they have no other choice but driving and riding in motor vehicle because it is time convincing. All general people are any way are stakeholders of climate change because they somehow are contributing to climate change and also suffering from its’ effect which is directly harming to ecological sustainability. We general people cut trees to make house, we kill rivers by throwing our waste because we think that is a perfect place to dump our waste, we smoke, we kill animals to eat, we drive because we want to lead a comfortable life. Nothing wrong from our point of view to because we believe these are our necessity thus we do so, but we do not think of any environmental-friendly way to meet our necessity. A big stakeholder of climate change is the living element of environment including any animal and plant. Many animals die as an effect of climate change because this environment is not suitable for them. Only the fittest one survives in environmental crucial situation (Sydow, 2014). From their point of view, they are being suffered not for their own fault, but for someone else’s fault. All of these stake holders are interrelated in this issue because if factory owner’s, vehicle drivers produce greenhouse gas that leads to climate change and many organisms, elements of environment cannot survive in this changed climate.If it continues to happen, a lot of species will be vanished in time course; human is not an exception in this case. In addition, general people always have a negative connotation to the businessmen who pollute environment.Therefore, there is an urgency of to come up with a sustainable solution for this issue.

To solve this problem the first initiative should come to every stakeholders’ at the same time who are directly or indirectly responsible for climate change. Firstly, they need to understand the severity of the problem they are creating for our environment. Secondly, they need to understand that what they are doing is not ethical because it is causing harm to other. The sustainable solution to this problem is nothing, but ethics. Every stakeholder must be ethical from their position. A factory owner needs to run his business, but he must not disperse factory waste to environment and follow environmental law of government. On the other hand, government also must arrange a strict set up for monitoring the companies if they are follow the environmental law of government. Also, businessmen need to look for an eco-friendly technology which will make the waste materials non-toxic to environment. Even if it will require them to spend a lot of money to afford the eco-friendly technology, but an ethical businessman will not only think about profit, but also care about his surroundings and act accordingly. Passengers and drivers of vehicles need not to stop riding, but need to be more considerate. We can encourage people to walk in walkable distance. Riding bicycle can be a very solution to reduce carbon footprint. I personally run an organization where we arrange environmental programs to make people aware. In our first program, we arranged a cycle rally in my city Chittagong in Valentine’s day to encourage people to ride bicycle. This little initiative increased number of bicycle riders in my city thus reduced car riders.The most affordable solution is see so far is, a strong social networking is needed where environmental issues will get priority and will suggest the steps we can do to save our mother earth. It should not be only virtual, we can create environmental club to every educational institutes, every city where everybody must join the seminars arranged by environmental clubs. Consultancy session, for those who are causing climate change, for example, factory owners’ should be arranged where he will confess and discuss the ways he can do to reduce the harm he does to environment. In this aspect, consultant will be government people who were supposed to monitor the companies. In these clubs, the stakeholders will compensate a specific percentage of their profit to the club that will be spent to create environmental awareness and purchase environmental friendly technology.This compensation should be considered in factory owner’s Corporate Social Responsibility. Society always has positive impression on the companies who meet corporate social responsibility. This impression will facilitate them to attract more customers thus will create a positive trend on their profit.

References

Sarwar, G. M., & Khan, M. H. (2007).Sea level rise: A Threat to the Coast of Bangladesh. (Vol.

38, pp. 375- 397).InternationalesAsienforum. Retrieved August 16, 2015 from www.undp.org.bd/library/../Asienforum_Sarwar_Khan.pdf

Hansen, K (2008). Water Vapor Confirmed as Major Player in Climate Change.Nasa. Retrieved August 14, 2015 from http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.html

European Commission (2015) .Road transport: Reducing CO2 Emissions from Vehicles. Retrieved August 14, 2015 from http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/index_en.htm Sydow, M (2014). Survival of the Fittest in Darwinian Metaphysics: Tautology or Testable Theory? Retrieved August 13, 2015 from http://crisp.psi.uni-heidelberg.de/sites/default/files/vonSydow/von_Sydo...

Rahman, A. Atiq., Alam, Mozaharu.,Alam, S. Shafiqul., Uzzaman Md. Rabi.,RashidMariam.,andGolam Rabbani. 2007). Risks, Vulnerability and Adaptation inBangladesh.Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS).