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What are the impacts of human activities on the environment
Impact of human activity on the environment
Impact of human activity on the environment
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As humans nothing is guaranteed to us. The future of our race isn’t guaranteed and with the rate of depletion of our planet we should seek the longevity of our environment. As humans it is our responsibility to sustain the environment. The Bhopal disaster and the British Petroleum oil spill are two of the biggest environmental disasters to occur, with over 14,000 deaths. Many people have debated throughout history if companies should be held responsible for the damages this causes for the safety and economic welfare of society. So… Should companies (such as Union Carbide and BP) be held responsible for environmental disasters that endanger safety and economic welfare of societies? Simply put, the answer is yes. With the technology available multinational companies such as BP and Union Carbide, should be able to practice their business safely within …show more content…
There are three key indicators for environmental global sustainability; “Ability to maintain the current standard of living based on the current capital stock, ability to solve environmental problems, and figure out the climate in the sense of global warming and CO2 emissions (Welfens, 163).” Multinational firms should have these three goals in mind and proceed to do anything possible to achieve these. For instance, Union Carbide in the Bhopal disaster hadn’t take enough measures to maintain the safety of the nearby society. The lack of protection for the methyl isocyanate tank, lack of management leading to disgruntled workers, and lack of regulations for the surrounding community highlights that Union Carbide wasn’t focused on environmental global sustainability. Their lack of concern for these key ideals that all firms should follow is what led to this disaster. Global sustainability is an integral part to any business’s practice and should be not overlooked by big firms in the
This is not the first time that BP is at fault. They have had criminal convictions in places such as Endicott Bay in Alaska, Texas City and Prudhoe Bay. Jeanne Pascal was a part of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and was assigned to watch over BP. Pascal was watching over companies such as BP that were facing debarment. Under her watch, BP was charged with four federal crimes. Over the past twelve years, Pascal’s seen BP patterns as misconducts. She attempted to warn the government about BP’s safety and environmental issues that would most likely lead to another disaster. While she was watching over BP, the company misinformed and misled her about things that resulted to the felonies that they have committed. Sensing that some things were not right about the company, she presented a case of their unsafe working environments.
Wheelen, T. L., & Hunger, J. D. (2012). ‘Strategic management and business policy: toward global sustainability” (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.
When an environmental disaster occurs, like massive ocean oil leaks, it should be considered if the company and government employees responsible for taking the decisions acted correctly and therefore, the disaster could not have been avoided. “The Deepwater Horizon disaster is [has been] confirmed as the biggest ever accidental release of oil into the oceans” (Black, 2010, para. 1). The adage of the adage. This issue has been controversial and much disputed over the last few years; however, there has not been much discussion about the ethical values and behavior of the company. The Government should take action against BP and its executives because the company is acting unethically, trying to evade its responsibilities and the consequences of the disaster.
Whenever we fight for clean drinking water, or clean air, or a safe workplace, we are likely to find a corporation on the other side of the issue. The goal of a corporation is, first, to survive, and, second, to return a profit to its shareholders, not to mention for money and if the air has to be fouled to accomplish these goals, then the air will be fouled. Meaning, the corporations will do anything to keep these goals even if it means that they have to cause pollution or some issues. Pollution is one of the problems by the corporations that affect us. The Business Council for Sustainable Development thinks of this as ?gToday, for instance, the earth's atmosphere is providing the valuable service of acting as a dump for pollutants; those enjoying this service rarely pay a reasonable price for it,". This is an example of corporations ?gexternalizing?h their costs. By using the air as a free dump, corporations are able to get away with paying the costs for waste disposal to the people while they prof...
BP is the leading energy company. BP took its name from the initials of the company’s previous official name British Petroleum. The company was trying to persuade everyone that it was an environmental friendly company that was using and develop alternative energy technology. During its existence it paid so much in fines for pollution that it is become obvious that management did not really care about the environment, but only about maximizing profit in anyway. It was easier for them to pay fines than to change their management system and prove safety improvements in the workplace. After the explosion, BP’s stock price and its reputation went down, and it is one of the numerous results of the disaster. It has definitely happened because of a lack of strong ethical guidance.
Corporations, through guidance of new laws, in the future in the United States, should be held more accountable for environmental crimes, because without these new laws corporations will continue to pay meniscal fines and serve little to no time in prisons for destroying the environment in which we have to live and survive.
On April 20th in 2010, the deepwater horizon drilling platform of BP PLC at the Gulf of Mexico in American got blowout and burnt, which had sunk 36 hours after that with 11 persons killed and 17 persons injured. On April 24th, the oil wells out of control began to leak oil lasting for 87 days, about 4.1 million barrels of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, the pollution of which spread to coastwise 5 states. This became the worst oil spill in America history, so it was said to be a national disaster of America. The accident resulted in not only casualties, but also serious oil leakage and environmental pollution event. The blowout and the oil spill is rare in oil and gas development history, for its difficult oil spill block, huge volume of oil leak, wide influence range, and the consequence is very serious:1. The ecological environment of the Gulf of Mexico suffered serious damage as well as a major loss of coastal economy. 2. BP PLC suffered heavy losses, and the company image and performance had been seriously affected. 3. Brought new challenge to the America government response to crisis, with a negative impact on the credibility and the ruling ability of the government. At the same time, it to a certain extent affected the use of global oil resources, especially marine deepwater oil and gas development. Although the explosion, leakage and pollution and a series of accidents brought huge losses and serious effect for people life, the property of the company, and even the local people's life. However, the whole process of BP PLC dealing with the incident, in technical measures, reaction speed or even incident response taken was a success. The ethic issue refracted in this incident focuses on the corporate social responsibilit...
Globalization Phase, companies were known locally, regionally and internationally, their products were already improved offering innovative services. However, as The Economist (2007) has highlighted, while more global the companies are more aware of corporate social responsibility they need to be, namely, foreign stakeholders will expect, not only innovative and effective products, but also they will open their doors and invest their money to companies that are social responsible.
In our ever developing world the environment, or more so the state of it, has become an ever worsening concern. Globalization has created more demand for things like oil. The alberta oil sands are booming in business because of this but the darker side to this industry that makes our
In the United States, corporate powers and private interest groups have been allowed to take far to much control over the creation and enforcement of environmental regulations and policy. This overstepping of boundaries has influenced the actions of politicians on every level, but one dangerous overstep is into the world of environmental politics. Corporations and private interest groups have a lot to lose if stringent environmental policy goes into place in the United States, and therefore these groups are willing, and unfortunately able, to fight back.
Stuart Hart, in a business article, discusses the tough task for companies to make a sustainable global ec...
Over the past few decades there have been discourses both in favor and against Globalization’s capacity to guarantee a sustainable future. Authors attest societies and businesses’ inability to account for ecological and environmental limits when dealing with economic growth, examples of this are some of the traditional business metrics used by most global companies, and nations’ measure of wealth (GDP); both sides heavily resting on economic factors, fail to account for societal and environmental concerns (Byrnea & Gloverb, 2002). Other researchers point at the intensive use of resources, especially by global corporations; such as the increasing and careless consumption of fossil fuels, water, precious metals, etc. leading to a rise in GHG (Starke, 2002) (United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 2000). Most fervent opponents go as far as to call ‘sustainable development’ an oxymoron (Ayres, 1995).
Davis, Lee. 1998. Environmental Disasters: a Chronicle of Individual, Industrial, and Governmental Carelessness. New York, NY: Facts on File, 1998.
The sustainability of the ecosystems on which the global economy depends must be guaranteed. And the economic partners must be satisfied that the basis of exchange is equitable” (World). This quote demonstrates the complexities of sustainability. Another thing corporations should focus on when trying to be sustainable is their environmental impact.
We all belong to the same world and all of us have the same responsibilities towards the world and its environment. This fact might be hard to digest, but if we continue to pollute the Earth at the current rate, all of the world’s ocean waters will become one-hundred-thirty percent acidic. This means that the ocean will be unable to sustain most of its marine life and only a few creatures will be able to survive in the water. A big population of people think that they do not or have few responsibilities towards the environment. People think that the governor of a country should take steps to help the environment. They leave it to scientists since they have the technology to prevent pollution, or that is what most people think. There are more responsibilities to the world each individual has than most of realize. The amount of negligence and ignorance of humans towards the Earth is taking a heavy toll.