Claim OwnershipEthics and the Extractive Industries Audio
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© Copyright 2018 Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
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Extractive industries have brought money and jobs to all corners of the globe. But they have also wreaked havoc on the environment and exacerbated political and cultural tensions. Can natural resources be managed responsibly?
12 Episodes
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How can corporations work to prevent human rights violations on their watch, as well as disasters like the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion? Christine Bader discusses her time at BP, where she was part of the invisible army of people inside corporations who are pushing for safer and more responsible practices.
Thanks to fracking and the unlikely characters who made this revolution happen, the United States is now the biggest energy producer in the world. The fracking bonanza is here to stay, argues Gregory Zuckerman, and the environmental hazards can be overcome. Our best course is to work with the industry to improve safety standards.
Mining harms the environment irreversibly, yet this is often ignored, and mining is on the increase, often without clear ecological or economic development benefits. "We're still using the model created at the end of the 19th century, but in a very different period, where the resources are increasingly scarce and the economy has changed dramatically."
McKibben, one of the world's leading environmentalist, believes our best hope lies not in appealing to our wallets, but in appealing to our ethics, our most basic sense of right and wrong. When it comes to taking on the fossil fuel industry, McKibben says pure self interest will not cut it, but moral outrage might.
ExxonMobil is rather like France, says Steve Coll. It's mostly aligned with the U.S; it's sometimes opposed, but a lot of the time it's just busy keeping track of its own separate system and really doesn't want to be entangled in U.S. power unless it serves ExxonMobil interests.
As we run out of resources, the human race is at a pivotal point. We have two options: We can continue along the same path, leading to much of the planet becoming uninhabitable. Or we can create an alternative future where we use resources in a much more sustainable and frugal way.
According to Michael Ross, it's no coincidence that major oil-producing countries have less democracy, fewer opportunities for women, more frequent civil wars, and more volatile economic growth than the rest of the world.
Justin Harlow discusses investing in the energy sector in emerging markets. He is the founder and managing partner of Tau Energy Partners, an energy investment advisory firm dedicated to emerging markets.
Consumers in countries that import natural resources are often unwittingly in business with dictators, corrupt officials, and armed groups, says Leif Wenar. Yet we could change our laws to make powerful groups in exporting countries more accountable to their own people.
What, asks Oxford economist Paul Collier, are realistic and sustainable solutions to correcting the mismanagement of the natural world? Can an international standard be established to resolve the complex issues of unchecked profiteering on the one hand and environmental romanticism on the other?
From Ecuador to Nigeria, in most oil-producing countries oil has not brought any benefits to the poor and has often damaged people's health and ruined the environment, says Peter Maass. As for Iraq, although the war was not "all about oil," oil certainly played an important role.
Julia Kennedy talks to Sujeesh Krishnan and Euan Murray of Carbon Trust about the journey to discover the biggest sources of emissions for businesses, and finds that sometimes the answers are not what you might expect.
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