E-Stork III: Where Poisoned Babies Come From

Green Ned Flanders Stork Museum

Part III of 4:   Does it really matter whether the pollution in Guiyu China came from E-waste, or from iron mining, or from textile mills?

If we are responsible for the Stewardship of our own upstreams and downstreams, as seems reasonable, why take any risk at all?

Isn't it appropriate for us to use our buying and selling power to procure the best available services, providing the best possible standards?

If so, why shouldn't our society, in essence, assign a liability for bad consequences to corporations we buy from?  Why shouldn't we ourselves remain legally liable for anything we once owned?  This concept is behind the "precautionary principle", championed in Europe:

The precautionary principle or precautionary approach states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action. [wikipedia 2011.11.20]

If the individual making the purchasing decision suspects risk, and there is a vacuum or absense of scientific consensus, the burden of proof (liability) might dictate we should "avoid bad neighborhoods".  In the "absence of scientific consensus" we have reputation, news reports, green fingerpointing upon which to formulate our cognitive risk.  EPA enforcement cannot happen (in the USA) in absence of science.  Perhaps we need Watchdog organizations to boost our collective sense of liability.  Whether or not what we did was responsible for the watershed pollution in Blackstone, Louhrajang, OK Tedi, or Guiyu rivers, perhaps we need watchdogs who bark falsely, to keep us on our toes.

Or so said the lawyer for the boy who cries wolf...

Populist Cognitive Risk:   The "suspected risk" of the precautionary principle has boiled down to racial profiling.   Reputations of Africans for "waste tourism", "organized crime", burning computers they purchase for thousands of dollars after spending thousands of dollars to ship them over the ocean and through customs...  Given most Americans command of language and geography (most would place Mauritania next to Malawi, Madagascar, and Mozambique...), a photo of a sad child or sandalled woman elevates the "suspected risk".  A friend of mine in Massachusetts, a recycler of conscience, said to me that if there was even a chance that a computer exported wound up in Guiyu, that she couldn't sleep at night if a computer her town collected might wind up there.*

[see Bambauer, "Shopping Badly: Cognitive Biases..." 2006)

Ethics of Religion: Imagine You're Jesus

(at the risk of offending absolutely everyone... this is about thinking).

Imagine You Are Jesus, and You've recently arrived back in Heaven.  You are looking down at the world, and You have some followers, some people who are genuinely enlightened by the golden rule, loving their neighbors as themselves, bearing fruit one hundred fold.

You also see about a million people who are just awful.  Just the worst.  Cruel, murdering, thieving, a million people who kill children.

Two of Your followers, named Pastor West and Pastor East, feel heartbroken by the badness.  West and East both live by Your golden rule, they both give away their possessions to help the needy, and they both try to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect.

Then Pastor West speaks up.  He tells the million violent and angry people that You, Jesus, spoke to him personally, and gave him a saintly prophetic vision... that You, Jesus, had told him Your plans for a place called Hell.  Agonizing, atrocious, flesh eating fire which never ends, forever and ever and ever, and that you were going to throw those million sinners into a firey doom.  And that you spoke of a place called Heaven, where all people who believe in You and change their ways will live in Joy and harmony.

Of course, You said no such thing.  Your allegories of gnashing of teeth were intended to describe a life trying to bless itself with material goods which pass.  Pastor West weeps tears of joy at the feeling of "Your" words, adding emphasis and importance to the "vision".

But... Imagine it appears to work sometimes.  Of the million sinners, imagine that half of them pause, fearing death and Hell, and that they lay down their weapons and stop killing children...  Hundreds of thousands are spared, as armies and gangs set down their weapons, and pray for salvation from the Vision of Hell.

On the day Your two followers meet You in heaven, they each plead their case...