Fernando's Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, 3rd Edition

Chapter 7

 Environmental Ethics 227

between social benets and private costs. The issue of how to balance society’s desire for envi-

ronmental improvement becomes a kind of arm-wrestling match’. Environmentalists want to

establish high standards, while industrialists want them lowered or even eliminated. However,

the unavoidable struggle between the economy and ecology arises out of static view in which

everything in environmental regulation is xed—technology, products, process and customer

needs. But if environmental standards are designed well and appropriately, they can promote

innovation, which may fully, or to a large extent, offset ...