Envirocrime and corruption: evil twins

Envirocrime and corruption: evil twins

Patrick Guntensperger
Jakarta

If you ask any group of reasonably intelligent people to list
the gravest problems in the world today, several perennial
favorites can usually be predicted to show up on the list. Along
with terrorism, corruption and poverty, the environment can
usually be counted upon to make the top ten, with the flavors of
the week and issues of special interest rounding out the
contenders.

Schools today, in developed nations as well as Third World
countries, teach their students about environmental issues. Many
major daily newspapers have a section devoted to the topic and
most run at least a regular column and frequent features on it.
It is fair to say that the destruction of this planet's
environment is known to be in crisis by pretty much everyone who
breathes occasionally.

And yet, observation of any large city in the world impresses
us with the indifference displayed by people over their
contributions to this crisis. It's not a lack of awareness;
everyone knows we have a problem. It's not a lack of scientific
understanding of the details of the problem; you don't have to be
rocket scientist to know that plastic wrappings thrown in the
street are going to stay there until someone takes them away.

So why do people who know they are polluting, who know that
pollution is killing us and who can see the effects of pollution
on their immediate environment continue to act as though there is
nothing to worry about?

The answer is that it isn't an awareness problem or even a
knowledge problem any more. At this point in history, the early
21st Century, the problem is a moral one. Polluting is a sin
against humanity.

And that's why it is so hard to cope with. Immoral behavior,
particularly when it carries financial benefits, is virtually
impossible to eliminate and extraordinarily unresponsive to
persuasion.

Criminalizing specific behavior is a step in the right
direction; it doesn't eliminate the behavior but it gives us a
tool to help control it. Just as laws against crimes like theft
and murder have not and never will eliminate those acts from
humanity's vast repertoire of reprehensible behavior, laws
against willful or negligent environmental assaults can't stop
all eco-criminals, but they do put them clearly outside of the
pale of respectable society.

Corporations lobby governments to refrain from passing laws
prohibiting such behavior and whine when the existing laws are
enforced. Or they simply find ways to circumvent the laws when it
is considered too expensive to comply with them. Corporations, to
put it baldly, kill people because to refrain from doing so would
reduce their profits. More precisely, those individual human
beings who make the corporate decision to pollute rather than
treat their waste are murderers. And they murder for money.

This is not a failure to be aware of environmental issues.
This is not a gap in their scientific understanding. This is a
moral failure. This is sociopathic behavior. This failure of the
moral compass to kick in and guide people away from knowingly
committing acts that kill fellow human beings is a result of the
most banal motive for crime: Greed.

On the large scale it is that simple; non-polluting measures
cost money. The corporate bosses want to keep that money for
themselves, so they pollute. They kill people in order to have
more money.

And that is why it is so hard to stop. And, as a corollary to
that problem, that is why corruption, collusion and nepotism
continue to exist unabated in Indonesia. The callous, short term,
profit oriented criminals find it cheaper and therefore more
personally profitable to engage in acts of corruption, so they
won't clean up their acts; why on earth should they?

Corruption will continue to be a source of shame to the people
of Indonesia, just like pollution, as long as a climate exists
that not only allows those antisocial acts to be profitable but
also permits the worst offenders to hold their heads up publicly.
A corrupt official, just like a polluter, should not be
acceptable to members of the community he betrays.

Environmental crime, like corruption in government, exists
because people are greedy and self-serving. And it is not just
the official who demands or accepts the bribe who is guilty...the
private citizen who pays a bribe contributes to the crime. We
allow bribery to exist because we are too lazy to do things
legally.

We allow pollution to exist because we are too lazy or too
greedy to spend the extra time or money it costs to dispose of
our waste safely. Because they reflect the same kind of thinking,
the level of environmental pollution is a fairly reliable gauge
of the level of corruption in a country. Has anyone noticed the
garbage in the streets of our country lately? Both kinds of
garbage?

The writer (ttpguntensperger@hotmail.com) is Business
Consultant.