Why do Humans Continue to Pollute?

Pollution is has had a devastating effect on the world we live in. It has altered landscapes with melting ice caps and damaged ecosystems with toxic waste. Yet despite agreement that it is a problem, people still continue to pollute. I want to ask why does humanity continue to pollute, and in order to come to a conclusion, I’ll have to look at the main offenders, as well as the inaction on the world stage.

Pollution Prevention is a popular stance, as evidenced by the work of protestors and activists.In the video “Protestors ‘Dying’ to Save the Planet,” different protests around the world are shown, all relating to the 2009 Copenhagen summit. Protesters in France are shown banging pots and holding alarm clocks, telling world leaders that it’s time to “wake up” to the issues that pollution has caused. Protesters in Brussels pretended to be dead in order to put pressure on the potential human cost the issues caused by pollution could bring. The image

“Demonstrators Call For Clean Energy, Environment In Washington” shows protestors rallying budgets cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and supporting cleaner energy. So despite the popularity of pollution control, why is there so little action being taken?

 

Dr. Paul Griffin’s report, “CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017” goes into detail about the nations and companies that are responsible for contributing the majority of greenhouse gas emissions. Provided in the report are numerous graphs and charts, each of which explaining how much greenhouse gas emissions each company is responsible for. The report states that almost a third of greenhouse emissions is caused by publicly listed investor companies, such as ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP. Around 59% of the pollution is caused by state owned companies such as Saudi Aramco, with the rest around 9% linked to private investment companies. The most worrying statement in the report refers to the consequences of this pollution, “If the trend in fossil fuel extraction continues over the next 28 years as it has over the last 28, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4ºC by the end of the century – likely to entail substantial species extinction and large food scarcity risks worldwide.” This outcome sounds absolutely catastrophic, and something that all of humanity would be fiercely fighting against. Yet both businesses and the international community at large are shuffling their feet about an issue that poses a massive threat to mankind.

Despite the obvious PR nightmare that this would cause, companies can find it bothersome to implement pollution prevention policies. Peter Cebon’s article “Corporate obstacles to pollution prevention” discusses why prevention is difficult to work with. Cebon states that “Pollution prevention presents a difficult information processing problem because it requires people to understand more than the intimate details of the production process; they must also understand the technical possibilities.” Essentially, companies have trouble with identifying the consequences of their production. Production is a set process, but pollution prevention requires theorizing about what that production entails, which can throw a wrench into the whole process. Pollution prevention also “requires the engineers and operators to work together.” These two groups can have difficulty in communicating according to Cebon, and that with the combination of office politics can also make prevention a pain for companies. Some companies however oppose anti-pollution stances as they fear that it would hurt their profits. In California, there has been a push to ban plastic bags in order to reduce the amount of pollution caused by these bags, as they are not biodegradable. However, a coalition of plastic bag producing companies called the American Progressive Bag Alliance have raised money to try and convince voters to oppose the ban. (The Sacramento Bee) “They are desperately trying to protect the profits they make from selling plastic bags, and they are very concerned about the 10 billion bags that are sold in California,” said Mark Murray, a proponent of the bag ban and executive director of Californians Against Waste. Since plastic bags are one of the main products of these companies, they oppose anti-pollution action as it could have severe effects on their business. This alliance of companies view their profits as more important than the environment, so rather than adapt to the changing world, they would fight off anything they deem a threat to their bottom line, even if it is to the detriment of the rest of humanity.

So why is the international community so hesitant to find a solution to the pollution crisis? The answer lies in international power and arguments over contribution. The article “High Noon at Kyoto”, talks about what concessions different countries wanted at the 1997 Kyoto UN Summit. Developing countries want “the richer countries to make radical cuts to their greenhouse-gas emissions.” The United States wants less radical cuts, and more towards stabilization to previous levels. Many developing countries also don’t want to bear the burden of an issue that were in their eyes “caused mainly by others.” The unwillingness of large countries with global influence to reduce their emissions is also brought to the forefront in Saleemul Huq’s article “Climate and Energy.” In this article Huq blames the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit on the “reluctance of the two biggest emitters, namely the United States and China, to agree to meaningful reductions in their emissions.” None of the major countries in the world want to risk giving up any power they have on the international stage. Huq then goes on to state that “As long as they and others continue to see the short-term costs of reducing emissions as paramount to the longer term benefits of avoiding dangerous climate change, there is little likelihood of achieving an ambitious global treaty.” Arguments over who is responsible and a desire to maintain a foothold of global power is the biggest obstacle in global actions against pollution prevention.

There are many humans however, that contribute to pollution not out of malicious intent, but rather out of a lack of convenience. Littering is the most common type of pollution that individual humans contribute to. According to Keep America Beautiful, the largest rate of litter came from cigarette butts, as approximately 57% of all butts are improperly discarded. Unsurprisingly, smokers also have the highest rate of littering as a whopping 65% of smokers were observed littering. However, this just begs the question of why do people litter in the first place. The biggest reason is how convenient is it. The observed littering rate when a receptacle was 10 feet or closer was 12%, and the likelihood of littering increased steadily for receptacles at a greater distance.(Keep America Beautiful) Having a trash receptacle be a large distance away can discourage people from properly disposing their trash, as it is easier to simply dump their trash rather than search for a trash bin. Smokers have a large rate of littering as public ashtrays are not commonly found. Of multiple sites observed by Keep America Beautiful, only 47% had proper ash receptacles. According to USA Today, plastic bottles are items that commonly littered, despite the fact that plastic bottles are encouraged to be recycled. According to a study done by Keep America Beautiful, approximately 12% of the observed areas had proper recycling bins. One person littering can also promote others to litter as well. About 15% of litter is affected by existing litter, which can make others believe that it is okay to litter in that area. By keeping an area clean and free of trash, it can promote the idea that littering is unacceptable. Increasing the amount of trash cans may also reduce litter as now there’s an easy and convenient way to dispose of trash. Many people also don’t believe that their individual trash is a big issue. USA Today also list some more common types of litter include tissues, gum wrappers, and receipts. These are very small items, and can cause many people to mistakenly believe that it is an insignificant amount. However, all of that tiny trash can enter into tight spaces, such as sewer drains, and then build up where the water is dumped. This trash can then flow out into waterways, where local wildlife could mistakenly consume the garbage, causing them to become poisoned.(Rinkesh) Many people pollute not out of sense of malice, but rather due to a lack of convenience, and educating them about the effects of littering can be a key solution in stopping individual pollution.

Perhaps the most perplexing reason of all however, is that some groups have taken action against any sort of pollution prevention all together. Carolyn Gregoire’s article “Why Some Conservatives Can’t Accept that Climate Change is Real” describes how people can go into echo chambers and reject any sort of evidence of the issues pollution brings. “Nobody wants to be wrong, and that elicits confirmation bias, which is when we seek out information that confirms that we believe to be true.” Simply put, some people will try to latch onto anything that supports their own confirmations, even if they are wrong. This can cause people to believe in sources that aren’t trusted and these sources can “combine to create a ‘bubble’ in which many committed Republicans live, and when it comes to scientific issues we find that they literally create an ‘alternative reality’ in which human-caused climate change is a hoax.” The combination of believing climate change to be a hoax and republicans being against regulation can cause these deniers to oppose any sort of prevention, as they see it as unnecessary. Many of these deniers also feel empowered by President Trump, who also believes climate change to be a hoax. The United States is running on a platform of denial under President Trump. Trump doesn’t believe that anti-pollution and climate change prevention would be beneficial to the country. President Trump has gone so far as to pull the United States out of the Paris Accords, claiming that it unfairly punishes the United States. He claims that the accords would make the United States lose around 2.7 million jobs. This is debunked by the New York Times however, as they show that his source comes from a heavily biased industry-sponsored study. The study essentially ignored any possibility that investing in renewable resources and cleaner energy would bring benefits to the country’s economy. Many companies also recommended that Trump keep the United States in the Paris Accord, particularly tech companies such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Trump also claims that the accords wouldn’t even do much to solve climate change, yet if the countries agree to uphold their ends of the deal, then it would succeed in slowing global warming by 1.7 degrees(NYTimes.com Video Collection). Misinformation, combined with a President who promotes it, has lead to some people oppose any action on preventing pollution.
In short, humanity still continues to pollute due to a wide variety of reasons. Some companies pollute due to the the frustration that pollution prevention can bring. Other companies pollute as they view it as a way to protect their profits. Countries hesitate to take action on pollution as they don’t want to take responsibility for such as massive crisis. And a minority of people try to stop pollution prevention due to misinformation spread by untrustworthy sources that are supported by a president who feeds into their biases.