• How does an industry affect the environment? • How far it can be controlled? • Whether protective measures are available and implemented? • Whether engineers can ensure safe & clean environment?
1. By causing injuries to nature i. Usually this damage is caused slowly ii. Sometimes this also happens in sudden strikes 2. Misuse of our resources, fouling our environment 3. Practicing growths in consumptions and population leading to non-availability of resources 4. Industrial activity denudes land(to destroy all plant and animal life), pollutes atmosphere and water, reduces the yield from sea and land
Technology Transfer: ‘The process of moving technology to a novel setting and implementing there.’ • Novel setting is any situation containing at least one new variable relevant to success or failure of given technology • Transfer of technology from a familiar to a new environment is a complex process Appropriate Technology: ‘Identification, transfer, and implementation of the most suitable technology for a new set of conditions’ • Conditions include social factors that go beyond routine economic and technical engineering constraints • Identifying them requires attention to an array of human values and needs that ma y influence how a technology affects the novel situation • Intermediate technology
• The right to freedom of physical movement • The right to ownership of property • The right to freedom from torture • The right to a fair deal • The right to non-discriminatory treatment • The right to physical security • The right to freedom of speech and association • The right to minimal education • The right to political participation • The right to subsistence
Alternate 1: ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ Alternate 2. Follow the identical practices which were followed in the home country. Both are unacceptable. A via media should be found based on the context.
Ethical Relativism • Actions are morally right in a particular society if they are approved by law, custom, or other conventions of the society. Descriptive Relativism • Value beliefs and attitudes differ from culture to culture and this is a fact. Moral Relationalism or Contextualism (Ethical pluralism) • Moral judgements should be made in relation to factors that vary between issues. Hence it is not possible to formulate rules that are simple and applicably to all situations.
Benefits to MNCs: • Inexpensive labor • Availability of natural resources • Favorable tax conditions • Fresh markets for products Benefits to developing host countries: • New jobs • Greater pay and greater challenge • Transfer of advanced technology • Social benefits from sharing wealth
On December 3, 1984, Union Carbide's pesticide-manufacturing plant in Bhopal, India leaked 40 tons of the deadly gas, methyl isocyanate into a sleeping, impoverished community - killing 2,500 within a few days, 10000 permanently disabled and injuring 100,000 people. Ten years later, it increased to 4000 to 7000 deaths and injuries to 600,000. Risks taken: • Storage tank of Methyl Isocyanate gas was filled to more than 75% capacity as against Union Carbide’s spec. that it should never be more than 60% full. • The company’s West Virginia plant was controlling the safety systems and detected leakages thro’ computers but the Bhopal plant only used manual labour for control and leak detection. • The Methyl Isocyanate gas, being highly concentrated, burns parts of body with which it comes into contact, even blinding eyes and destroying lungs. Causal Factors: • Three protective systems out of service • Plant was understaffed due to costs. • Very high inventory of MIC, an extremely toxic material. • The accident occurred in the early morning.…
