The Ethics of Globalization - Essay Example

If it requires more, it may purchase credits from companies who need less, providing it doesn’t exceed the ‘strict and enforceable emissions cap.’1 Morgenstern demonstrates how this cap has been successful in reducing CFCs and SO2. If a factory unintentionally pollutes a neighbourhood, the factory would legally be responsible for making repairs and paying compensation. A well-known example (made famous by the Erin Brockovich film2) is the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which contaminated the water in Hinkley in 1993.

In a BBC interview Dr Mayer Hillman from the Policy Studies Institute author of the book How We Can Save the Planet, and Dr James Woudhuysen from De Montford University, debate the possibility of Personal Carbon Rationing, whereby UK citizens are given annual carbon allowances, and each time they use electric, fly, or fill a car with petrol this is deducted from their allowance. In a similar manner to factory permits, if people require additional allowance, they need to purchase a top-up. Hillman’s idea for Personal Carbon Rating is not new, but Morgenstern suggests it, ‘failed to gain more than rhetorical support in the last Administration.

’3 Hillman is keen to stress that it’s fair, with people, ‘having equal shares.’4 The female presenter raises the unique ethical question when she asks: ‘do we each have a personal responsibility?’5 Dr Woodhuysen, thinks that we are not individually responsible, and points out that some people will ‘feel guilty,’ others may ‘feel good’ and suggests this promotes a culture of ‘finger waging and moralizing about everyday behaviour,’6 which he thinks is ethically unfair. Peter Singer in an interview with The Guardian is asked what is your biggest guilty green secret?

An ethical question that could be raised is that any ‘guilty’ behaviour we indulge in, affects not only us, but also people around us, and ‘our grandchildren’s futures.’ This may have a greater impact than a factory polluting a neighbourhood, because whilst that is detrimental to the neighbourhood; anything to do with climate change affects the entire world. Singer makes this point when contemplating factory pollution and states that it’s not just ‘a displeasing smell in the air … [but] the long term results may be every bit as deadly.’ A Times article looks at the work of Mark Lynas who wrote Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet and in each chapter charts the catastrophic impact that would occur, each time global warming increases by incremental degrees. 

Madsen comments that Singer, in One World: The Ethics of Globalization, ‘signifies the increased interconnectedness of life on the planet’ In a separate article Singer comments, ‘it is nonhumans who bear the most direct burden of human interference with nature.’ Whilst Singer’s account focuses mainly on the effects on non-human animals, Lynas’ work looks too at the effect on plants and trees (which ultimately impacts on all animals too and serves to demonstrate the interconnectedness). Lynas makes the shocking comment about the Amazon rainforest: ‘Drought and heat will cripple it; the fire will finish it off. In human terms, the effect on the planet will be like cutting off oxygen during an asthma attack.’ Carbon emissions are essentially causing cruelty, pain and death to live plants and animals and it raises questions about the ethics of this.