BUSINESS & ENVIRONMENT

The process of producing goods forces businesses to engage in exchanges and interactions with 2 main environments ie. the customer environment and the natural environment.

It is from the natural environment that business ultimately draws the raw materials that it transforms into it the finished products, which are then promoted and sold to the customers. 

Thus, the natural environment provides the raw material input of business, whereas the consumer environment absorbs it finished output.

POLLUTION:

The undesirable and unintended contamination of the environment by the manufacture or use of commodities.

RESOURCE DEPLETION:

The consumption of finite or scarce resources.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The increase in temperatiures around the globe due to rising levels of greenhouse gases.

GREENHOUSE GASES:

Carbob dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons - gases that absorb and hold heat from the sun,preventing it from escaping back into space, much like a greenhouse absorbs and holds the sun's heat.

OZONE DEPLETION:

The gradual breakdown of ozone gas in the stratosphere above us caused by the release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in to the air.

ACID RAIN:

Acid rain occurs when sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides are combined with water vapour in clouds to form nitric acid and sulfuric acid.

These acids are then carried down in rainfall.

PHOTOCHEMICAL SMOG:

A complex mixture of gases and particles manufactured by sunlight out of the raw materials- nirogen oxides and hydrocarbons - discharged to the atmosphere chiefly by automobiles.

MAJOR TYPES OF AIR POLLUTION:

• Gobal Warming Gases
• Ozone depleting Gases.
• Acid Rain
• Airbone Toxics
• Air Quality

ORGANIC WASTES:

Largely untreated human wastes,seware,and industrial wastes from processing various food products,from the pulp and paper industry and from animal feedlots. 

ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM:

An interrealted and interdependent set or organisms and environments.

ECOLOGICAL ETHICS:

The view that nonhuman parts of the environemtn deserve to be preserved for their own sake, regardless of whether this benefits human beings.

PRIVATE COST:

The cost an individual or company must pay out of its own pocket to engage in a particular economic acitivity.

SOCIAL COST:

The private internal costs and wider external costs of engaging in a particular economic activity.

KINDS OF ETHICAL APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION:

• Ecological approach: nonhumans have intrinsic value.
• Environmental Rights Approach: Humans have a right to a livable environment.
• Market Approach: External costs violate utility, rights and justice.

INTERNALIZATION OF THE COSTS OF POLLUTION:

Absorbtion of costs by the producer, who takes them into account when determining the price of goods.

ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE:

The bearing of external costs of pollution largely by those who do not enjoy a net benefit from the activity that produces the pollution.

SOCIAL AUDIT:

A report of the social costs and social benefits of the firm's activities.

CONSERVING:

The saving or rationing of neurtal resourcese for later uses.

Arguments against the Existence of the Rights of Future Generations:

• Future generations do not now exist and may never exist.
• The potential argument that the present must be sacrificed fot he future.
• Our ignorance of the interests of future generations.

CONSERVATION BASED ON JUSTICE:

• Rawls: Leave the world no worse than we found it.
• Care: Leave our children a world no worse than we received.
• Attfield: Leave the world as productive as we found it.