[afro-nets] Tilting at windmills of development (2)

[Jeff Buderer <jeff@onevillage.biz>]

Tilting at windmills of development (2)
---------------------------------------

Philip,

You might consider that to many such viewpoints comes across as
very biased especially when there is concrete evidence of many
cases when the environmentalists and the social and political
activists were on the mark.

In many cases it does not even take a corporate whistleblower or
environmental or social activist muckracker, but rather the
greed of the corporation itself which leads to its own
embarrassment and ostrasizing in society. Case in point BP's
North Slope Alaskan pipeline fiasco. Here is a company that has
been portraying itself as a socially and ecologically conscious
corporate citizen. Indeed I actually was hoping that this
company would be an example of a big oil company gone good a
model of socially responsible business. Now we hear DOCUMENTED
information about serious problems with corporate corruption and
greed in the company. There is no way you can defend BP - they
dropped the ball - one of the largest corporations in the world.
It can't be blamed on treehuggers or eco-imperialists. Are we
supposed to believe Mr Dresser and the Mining and oil industries
that this is rare exception when we see case after case of this
kind of irresponsible behavior that unecessarily puts the
ecology at risk? Before BP it was Shell, and Exxon and Enron.

This is not to say that environmentalist are always on the mark
but lets not delude ourselves it is a challenge for mainstream
business to balance environmental and public health
considerations with corporate profits and/or the demands of
shareholders. However despite the BP setback I do think it is
possible to run a profitable competitive and prosperous business
that is also moving in a very real way towards socially and
ecologically sustainable practices, but it no doubt requires a
lot of imagination and courage which is why such examples are
still relatively few and far between. Yet any development of
emerging markets must be driven by such a business mindset for
the sake of all our futures and also of those who will inhabit
this planet after us.

Jeff Buderer
mailto:jeff@onevillage.biz