Business or ecology: which comes first today?

Abstract

Business-ecological relation today creates a definition of “environmental business ethics”. In a business sense, environmental ethics deals with the company's responsibility to protect the environment in which it operates. Businesses have traditionally shown egregious indifference towards the environment. Environmental protection was rarely seen as an issue. A company would harm the environment to whatever extent was profitable, and they often harmed the environment despite the fact that it was unwarranted to do so. Shaw discusses the attitudes of businesses that lead to unwarranted environmental damage. In particular, people saw the “natural world as a ‘free and unlimited good’”. People at one point thought that the world’s resources could be taken without end and without any morally significant harm done. Pollution could damage the environment, but the damage done was considered to be insignificant because the world was seen as such a large place.