Stop Passing Blame and Start Taking Collective Accountability
Article by Imogen Ellis
Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash
Global north blaming the global south, Corporations blaming foreign laws and Individuals blaming corporations. The need to stop pointing fingers and all look inward and work together has never been stronger if we are to overcome the current climate crisis.
On an individual scale, it’s not uncommon to hear people state they believe that their individual actions won’t have an effect on the climate at all. Even personally in my first few weeks at university, I’ve heard comments like “I may as well fly places as the flights will go regardless” or “There’s no point in being vegetarian as the animals will be killed regardless” or “What’s the point in me recycling it makes no difference when there are corporations creating and dumping tonnes of waste”.
It’s not that we’re unaware of climate change, as there are a vast amount of articles in the media and news stories about disastrous events as a result of climate change. It’s just often hard to visualise the impact a ‘small’ change an individual makes can have. with people feeling as if they have no real control to help control or prevent climate decay. With September 2023 being the hottest ever month on record I understand how many view it as too late to make an effort to fix or prevent it.
What is failing to be noticed is that individually, maybe, there may not be a large difference but it’s about a group mentality. If enough people stopped booking flights, less would run, if people stopped buying as much meat at the supermarket, the supermarkets would notice less of a consumer demand and purchase less from the manufacturer, causing them to slaughter fewer animals. Reducing the methane released. It’s also our job to recycle on a micro-scale and instead of using large corporations’ waste as our proxy argument not to, we need to be holding them accountable.
Joel Bakan is a sociologist teaching at the University of British Columbia(Wikipedia Contributors, 2019), he suggests that corporations are social institutions, due to their vast amount of power in the modern world through cultural and social control, that are “made in the image of the human psychopath” (Bakan 2004). One of the outstanding features of a psychopath is a lack of guilt, which Bakan identifies in numerous corporations, for example, corporations committing green crimes but not taking any responsibility often due to the fact that the law supports their wrongdoings in order to prioritise the economic growth of a nation. As well as this even if the government takes action and punishes companies in the form of fines, they are so economically wealthy that they don’t actually take a financial hit impactful enough to deter them from doing it again (this is often why a company will commit the same crimes multiple times regardless of them being caught).
Our growing consumer culture is what fuels corporations to keep creating mass-produced items, we legitimise their habits by buying their products. For example, fast fashion only gets worn once and put into landfill after the microtrend ends. This waste is directly linked to climate change as unwanted products have to be dumped somewhere, often in countries with less socio-economic wealth, furthering the issues and putting the most vulnerable people to the effect of climate change in danger.
In spite of all of this, and efforts to hold corporations accountable, like the Green Peace Movement against the demolitions of Brent Spar in the North Atlantic in 1995, corporations seem to be continuing their habits. This is largely because they outsource their business to places where what they are doing is not illegal. Examples are companies putting their factories in countries where there are fewer health and safety laws and allowing waste toxins from the production to flow into nearby rivers contaminating water that is needed for consumption by local residents.
Dworkin is a sociologist who states that law is intertwined with morality (Dowkin, R. 2014), suggesting that what we decide to view as right or wrong has a direct effect on what becomes illegal or not, rather than there being an objective set of rules we follow. Based on this logic we have the ability to change the laws if there is a shift in what we view as morally right or wrong.
This is how we should hold corporations accountable. A large moral shift forces laws to change and prevent corporations from performing major green crimes.
However, we still need to hold ourselves accountable. look from both a top-down approach and hold corporations accountable and as individuals by choosing to eat meat less frequently, recycling or flying less.
Reference:
- Bakan, J. (2005). The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Constable.
- Wacks, R. (2014). 3. Dworkin: the moral integrity of law. Philosophy of Law, [online] pp.49–64. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780199687008.003.0003.
- Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Joel Bakan. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Bakan [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019]. 176 words
Stop Passing Blame and Start Taking Collective Accountability
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Stop Passing Blame and Start Taking Collective Accountability
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Stop Passing Blame and Start Taking Collective Accountability
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