Corporate Social and Environmental Accountability
U.S. corporations have been striving in
recent years to be more socially and environmentally accountable --
or at least, depending on your level of skepticism, to create the
impression of moving in that direction. The reason they're doing this is
not, shocking though some may find this, to salve their collective
consciences. (I remain steadfast in my belief that corporations do not
have consciences, collective or otherwise.) The reason corporations are
doing this is because the marketplace tells them they'd be fools -- and
dinosaurs -- not to.
That's one of the key points made by Steve Lydenberg in this
interview published Monday by the Christian Science
Monitor. Lydenberg, chief investment officer of Domini Social
Investments and author of the new book
Corporations and the Public Interest, makes compelling
points about the oil industry's need to diversify the types of energy it
produces, and about industry deregulation and its effect on the economy
and the environment.
"The real dilemma that government has created for itself and society
is this," Lydenberg says. "How can you get corporations to act more in
the public interest -- but without returning to the same kind of
heavy-handed regulation that we had before?" A fundamental change we're
moving toward, he says, is the marketplace forcing corporations "to
compete on social and environmental issues the way they had competed in
the past on price, on innovation, on efficiency."
If Lydenberg writes as persuasively as he talks in this interview,
his book is worth a read, despite the dreary, textbooky title.
Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is starting to
take on the sheen of inevitability, as evidenced by this Washington
Post
report and this Wall Street Journal
editorial, both published yesterday. Before 9/11, I was
against drilling in the ANWR, but since the attack I've been on the
fence, and I still am. I'm edging closer to being convinced that the
benefits of drilling in the refuge would outweigh the costs -- for sure
in the near term, but over the long haul as well. (The WSJ editorial
provides persuasive evidence of this.) On the other hand, I'm also
increasingly convinced that our overdependence on oil is real and deep,
that we're not pushing as hard as we sh ould to develop alternatives,
and that subsequent generations of Americans will pay dearly for this
shortsightedness.
The Wall Street Journal opines that the Senate's 51-48 vote last week
to allow drilling in the refuge was as close as it was only because of
opposition from Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., "who led most of her party
and seven Republicans in arguing that drilling in Alaska would only feed
the nation's dangerous oil addiction." Then the WSJ offeres this
riposte: "Does she know any other addiction that propels automobiles
down city streets?"
That's clever, but it's also pointless. This is a crucial, complex
issue. We're better off hewing to the black and white, and avoiding the
red herrings.
Pete Fehrenbach
is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this
column are collected in
the Inbox
archive.
|