Is it wise to completely shut down a company that is causing pollution?

Answer 1

Answer It depends

Answer:

This is too open a question to respond to directly as it is dependant on what type of pollution you are refering to. Should it be an enterprise that is simply pumping noxious gases into the air, then the answer would be yes. If the business is responsible for pollutants entering local water supplies and therefore local land then the answer may be far more complex as one must consider the obligation of the company to rectify the damage they have caused, knowlingly or unknowingly. One answer would be "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs" and this is certainly valid if we wish to kept the advantages of modern technology as there is always a price to pay in many broken eggs. However, many modern technologies can now be approached from different directions; the stumbling block being the initial start-up costs. Again, the problem here lies in evaluating actual cost against the benefit of an ecological balance - something I feel that must be incorporated into all business directives such we wish to survive as a species. There is a phrase from the North American Indians and also the Chinese that states "Only when the rivers are empty of fish and the forests empty of animals will people realise they can't eat money". Our seas are in danger of being emptied of fish. We are not the biggest predator here but are certainly responsible for a massive imbalance that only time and nature can heal. We are directly responsible for often terrible pollution and seem to consistently ignore our responsibilities leaving it to action groups such as Greenpeace to bring the issues to the public's attention when such should never have been allowed to happen in the first place should correct business standards have been mandatory. The American Government, or more precisely, Texas, set the standard of preferring financial gain to ecologic responsibility by forcing the U.S. to not participate in the Carbon Dioxide reduction program agreed upon by the rest of the World. Many Americans voiced the fact that they were embarassed by their own country over this issue but that does not change the fact. Perhaps now, our only solution is to allow a World Overseeing body to regulate all issues of pollution that individual countries must recognise. Greed, of course, will sadly not allow this to happen. I am not a scientist so I am not qualified to correctly answer this question but I am a very concerned individual as I am currently living in China where I see many things that can simply wipe out the population here (namely, terrible air and an increasing loss of farmland) unless the problems are addressed very quickly.