Photo by: Lim Weixiang - Zeitgeist Photos / iStock
The primary purpose of business is to make money, which is what business is all about. To create goods, it consumes resources which are the property of the entire planet. If business destroys the planet for profit, divisions arise in society.
If a child is left with a box of chocolates, he will eat them until they run out — so will business do with natural resources. So the regulator’s job is not to convince producers to be ’green’, but to make it unprofitable for them to be ’not green’.
Economic development must not come at the expense of present and future generations — this is the basic paradigm of sustainable development. Existing companies in such a framework will have to compromise between legal constraints and their own ambitions. In other words, I am in favour of stricter protection of nature at the level of legislation.
Cover photo: AzmanL / iStock
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