That's Not My Job

[Laxman]

Interesting discussion of the West Virginia Chemical Spill, The Dan River Ash Spill and Christie's Pinelands Pipeline. And yes they are all related.

Protecting the environment is not the job or the goal of the corporation. We rely on the government to insure that the corporate pursuit of profit has limits. We trust that someone is standing guard to make sure that those whose only interest is making money don’t trample on anyone or anything that stands in their way. When the people whose job it is to protect our resources or public health lose sight of that obligation or fail to fulfill that responsibility the results are predictable. When our elected officials owe their allegiance to special interests, the people’s interests get lost. We must demand that those charged with keeping watch on our behalf remember what their job actually is.

Read the full article here: http://enviropolitics.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/thats-not-my-job/

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

1. This should be required reading for public officials!

I always try to be an optimist about who represents us. I guess that's why I'm frequently disappointed. This just seems like something we should be able to just take for granted.

Remembering who has the job of protecting the public and protecting the environment is important. Corporations are quite capable of looking out for themselves. The people who are placed in positions that give them the responsibility of protection of valuable public trust resources should never forget that solemn charge. If they fail to fulfill that duty, nobody else is there to do it for them, or for us. The twin fallacies that corporations can’t make a profit in a regulated world and that corporations can be trusted to “do the right thing” lead to a great deal of bad policy decisions. Poisoning the drinking water of a city in West Virginia, destroying a river in North Carolina or disrupting a sensitive eco-system in New Jersey, all because government priorities have been flipped upside down should be alarming outcomes to any thinking person. When it comes to our elected officials and the environment, we need to make certain that “not my job” is not in their vocabulary.

[Brigid]

2. Getting mad at a corporation engaged in the pursuit of profit . . .

Is like getting mad at a lion for eating a gazelle."

Excellent analogy. But what do we do when those responsible for looking out for the gazelle are instead beholden to the lion?

[Laxman]

5. I Think That's The Point....

he's getting at. We know what to expect from corporations. That's why regulations and regulators exist. When the folks in charge of the store forget what their job is-bad things happen.

[Igel]

3. That's more an assertion than it is an observation.

Even though "it's not the job of the corporation" to protect the environment seems to be masquerading as an observation, it's really (like a lot of impersonal "it's" sentences in English) an opinion.

Pollution stats from the '50s and early '60s say something different. Water and air pollution numbers were decreasing in the late '50s and into the '60s (with little change in the trendline as environmental regs were passed). That was because residents, workers, and consumers were making it the job of the producers to produce more soundly and because the effects of pollution, as they became more widely known, were the matter of some high-level employer and corporate board outrage.

Even the "Cuyahoga river on fire" picture that I saw as I kid was recycled. The river was cleaner in '69 than it was in '52, and while there aren't any pictures claimed to be from '69 the descriptions by then are of a small patch and not the larger fires from earlier in the century.

What's happened is the stereotype we have of corporate figures back in the '40s and '50s have become much more real: Back then, it was assumed that if it was legal or a way could be found to do it, every corporation would do precisely that. Now that enforcement's been outsourced, there's probably more of a "ne poiman, ne vor" ("if you're not caught, you're not a thief"--Russian proverb) mentality.

It's highly likely that government has made things cleaner, but by saying corporate types just are supposed to do what government says, and public health isn't their job (unless they're in the public health field) we've taken the onus off them and said that clearly they have no responsibility. And this has been argued in court--sometimes to success, sometimes not.

We've done the same things in other areas of American life. If it's somebody else's responsibility, it's not a shared responsibility. Sad, that. You can't treat people as childish reprobates for most of their life and expect them to act otherwise.

[Rider3]

4. Huh?

They're always saying we need less government. Now they're saying we need the government to set limits? I know a corporation is there to make money, but don't they have responsibility to society to not f' up the environment? How can such a red state say it's up to the government to protect their resources, when they are against every single thing the government does to rein in environmental hazards? LESS GOVERNMENT, they always scream. They cannot have it both ways.

[Laxman]

6. You Can't Rely On Corporations...

to do the right thing. They never have and never will unless its somehow related to increasing profits. That's why the government needs to do its job and keep them in check. If you read through the article, I'm pretty sure that's the point. He goes on to add that regulation is not a profit-killer and you can't trust corporations to do the right thing on their own.

The twin fallacies that corporations can’t make a profit in a regulated world and that corporations can be trusted to “do the right thing” lead to a great deal of bad policy decisions. Poisoning the drinking water of a city in West Virginia, destroying a river in North Carolina or disrupting a sensitive eco-system in New Jersey, all because government priorities have been flipped upside down should be alarming outcomes to any thinking person. When it comes to our elected officials and the environment, we need to make certain that “not my job” is not in their vocabulary.