Business Ethics                      Discussion Project     Ethics and the Environment

Discuss and try to agree on answers to the following questions:

1.  To what extent can we expect market forces to produce solutions to environmental problems?             
a.Are there sometimes market-based incentives to reduce waste and pollution and to preserve wilderness and scarce natural resources?  (If so, give some examples.)
b.  Do markets sometimes fail to provide adequate incentives to do these things?  (Give examples.)
c.  What do you think would happen if the government were to abolish all environmental regulations?  Is there some other way that environmental problems might be addressed?  (And, if so, would that be enough.)

2.  Supposing that governmental regulation is necessary to address environmental problems, what responsibility do businesses have towards the political process which produces the regulations? 
Here are three possible answers: 
i.  It's perfectly O.K. for businesses to lobby for the weakest possible regulations, trusting others to argue for stronger ones and trusting the political system to strike an appropriate balance.
ii. Businesses should not intervene in the political process, leaving it to citizens to express their preferences about the strictness of environmental rules. (Bowie's view)
iii.  Businesses should cooperate with government agencies to develop sound and sensible environmental rules, even when those rules will increase their costs, because businesses, like everyone, have a responsibility to leave a decent world for future generations.
Which answer do you think is most reasonable? Why?

3.  Bowie argues that businesses have no ethical responsibility to do more than the law requires vis a vis the environment (no responsibility, for example, to reduce pollution below the level which is legally permitted).  He also says that businesses have no responsibility to do more for the environment than the market is "telling" them to do (no responsibility, for example, to reduce their use of nonrenewable resources below whatever rate maximizes profits at current prices).  Others (like Ray Anderson) would say that business firms have a moral responsibility to ensure that their activities are ecologically sustainable.  Who's right?  Why?