Carbon Emission Trading and Business Ethics in British Airways - Case Study Example

In the last fifty years of the story of humanity has witnessed two important changes that have never been experienced by the world of human beings before. One is globalization, which is an entirely new phenomenon known only in the contemporary period (Soros, 2002). Through globalization, rapid movements, exchanges, and flows in goods, services, investments, capital, firms, and people have been experienced worldwide. Being such, though there are multifaceted connotations for globalization, one of the most common ways of looking at it is that it shatters internal and external economic and cultural barriers creating a more rapid spread of technology, information, knowledge, and culture (Fischer, 2003; Soros, 2002).

However, in order to sustain the rapid developments of the 20th century, industrial, agricultural and other human activities have been tremendously dependent on fossil fuels, deforestation and agricultural activities and other similar actions (di Norcia, 2008). These activities, in turn, have resulted into an increase in  “carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases which are raising the temperature of the planet at an alarmingly rapid rate” (di Norcia, 2008:1). This phenomenon of global climate change is known as global warming.

Global warming in the contemporary period is alarming because of the fast rate with which it is happening. Indeed, the planet has experienced alternate global warming and cooling. However, what makes the contemporary experience of global warming alarming is the fact that “The warming trend over the last 50 years (1955 to 2005) is near twice that for the last 100 years…And much of it happened in the last 15 years!”( di Norcia, 2008:1). Left unhampered, the predictable effects of global warming include more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes.

Mountain glaciers are thinning, snow cover is retreating earlier in the spring, permafrost is melting, sea ice in the Arctic is shrinking faster than expected, and the seas are rising faster, at about 3millimetres/year (di Norcia, 2008). In the face of this dire situation, what is being done? Recognizing the urgency of addressing global warming, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has come with up the Kyoto Protocol, which is an environmental treaty designed to attain “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would minimise dangerous anthropogenic interference with the atmosphere” (Kyoto Protocol,1998).

Under the protocol, industrialized countries who are parties to the convention, have agreed to reduce their greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and sulfur hexafluoride- together with the two other groups of gases  - hydrofluorocarbon and perfluorocarbon – by 5.2 % from their 1990 level. Furthermore, signatory countries have also come up with plans and policies that will ensure the implantation of goals of the Kyoto Protocol. It is in this regard, that the carbon dioxide emissions of sectors in each industrialized signatory countries are looked at and challenge for a lower carbon emission.

  And one of the sectors that are claimed to be contributing to high carbon emission is aviation (Gossling & Peeters, 2007).  Since within Europe alone, greenhouse gas emission of tourist related aviation is a 7% high and it is even expected to reach  15% by 202. Thus, there is a need to look into carbon emission and how organizations in the aviation industry are responding to the call for the reduction. And the aviation sector is not without an exemplary, British Airways has set the paradigm with which an organization may ethically respond to the challenge of carbon emission reduction and still maintain a high status in its sector.

As such, this paper will look into British Airways as it puts into practice business ethics as manifested in its policies and actions which are geared towards carbon emissions reduction.