Before and After

Before

Before taking this class, I thought that sustainability in business only involved environmental issues. I thought social injustice was an entirely separate issue from environmental pollution. I was particularly confused when people criticized wealth inequality because I thought their main arguments were founded on an illegitimate basis: that everyone in the world except America is unjustly impoverished. To me, those arguments seemed like an attack on free market capitalism, which is founded on inequality. I guess this mentality stemmed from the conservative sentiments of my parents who felt that people who work hard deserve to be wealthy and that everyone else is just trying to dig their hand into the pockets of those hard-working individuals. I did not appreciate the fact that critics were pointing to poor working conditions, comparing wages in America to wages in developing nations. They did not take into account currency exchange rates and the fact that the American dollar buys a lot more in those nations than it does in America. One of the main arguments was that factory workers were not making enough in a day to buy a Starbucks coffee. In America, if a worker were to make less than a dollar per day, they would quit their job because they could not buy anything in America. Take that same wage and apply it to a Southeast Asian factory worker. They would still be able to pay for their livelihoods. At least that is what I thought at the time. I tried to criticize the social injustice argument in my first essay by claiming that “those who work for poor wages are actively choosing to work under such conditions.” If the working conditions were so poor in these developing nations, why did people still go to work? If anything, I thought that factories were providing job opportunities to people in the developing world. I then claimed that social injustice was necessary for many of the luxuries we can afford in America because outsourcing drives down the prices of American products. I thought that the critics of wealth inequality were being hypocritical because they too enjoyed the benefits of wealth inequality whether they liked it or not.

After

Now I think sustainability in business is really about the connection between social and environmental impact. After watching the TED talk about the Doughnut Model, I began to see why reducing wealth inequality can positively impact the environment. According to the TED talk and other related articles, the main reason why wealth inequality exists is the fact that the world’s wealthiest nations disproportionately consume natural resources. Overconsumption of resources in developed nations does not leave enough for those in developing countries to have basic necessities, such as electricity. Additionally, this overconsumption exerts a huge amount of pressure on the planet’s ecosystems. The articles about the Boundary Waters explain how copper mining is not only incredibly destructive to natural habitats, but also affects air quality and job opportunities for local residents. Other researchers, such as David Quamman, have argued that the outbreak of COVID-19 is a direct result of overconsumption of resources and encroachment on natural habitats. As I read all these articles, I realized that sustainability in business is so much more than just about the environment. It is about finding ways to regulate resource consumption such that planetary boundaries are not exceeded and that enough resources are provided to populations experiencing extreme scarcity.

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