Week 4: Biodiversity; Movie

I apologize if this comes across as a little convoluted. Just coming off of a stressful GRE is not the best of times to be writing, but I’m on a caffeine kick at the moment, so let’s make this happen.

The film we watched on Wednesday really grabbed me.  In international relations, we deal with power relationships all of the time. I was really shocked when I first started learning about international environmental relations, but now I’m not surprised when I hear something like the EV-1 situation. Trying to not get too conspiracy theory here, but it’s obvious how much pull the oil companies have in our government.  This has a serious detriment to our environment as a whole. Companies like these are solely interested in making a profit, and they will do so at any costs necessary.

To really make an impact in the way society views the ideas of conservation, two changed must occur. Companies must learn to shift their focus away from the “profit no matter what” model of thinking and consumers must shift their focus to a new idea of the American Dream. Companies are one of the main influencers in consumer behavior, so this change must begin with a company. GM was a company that wanted to start influencing consumer behavior. It did so by creating and releasing the EV-1 electric car. Soon after, other companies began to follow suit. After this, consumers (at least a small percentage) began to change their thinking towards a new American standard of living. These consumers may have only been a test market, but the groundwork for real change in the American way of thinking had been laid.

There is a food chain in the business world, much as there is in the natural world. Some profit-driven companies rank higher than others. In the case of GM and their EV-1 car, the oil companies ranked higher in terms of influence and power. This particular relationship occurs with every car manufacturer out there: the oil companies have more power, which means more lobbying opportunities in government, which means power of the car manufacturer. We don’t usually see this particular relationship too often, but it was pretty obvious in the case of the EV-1. A successful test market for an electric vehicle could signal the potential for a successful country-wide electric vehicle market, which could mean less oil revenue overall. No one knows if the EV-1 would have caught on nation-wide, but the potential was there. The film alluded to consumer groups that lobbied governments about the hazards posed by mass use of the EV-1, including using more coal to generate the higher energy demand (for an overview of coal usage in the United States, check this out). But these so-called consumer groups were backed by the oil companies to submit their claims to the government. This is just one example of a giant corporation using their power to influence lawmakers. The oil companies were probably afraid to lose their monetary grasp on America, so they took action before any hypothetical situations could even happen. The government was forced to listen to its constituants, and it began to issue ordinances to GM stating that they had to do something about the EV-1, which, to them, meant taking every single one off the street because of the “possible hazards” they posed.

The idea of the lobbyist is inherent to the concept of democracy. They will always be around. But the goal is to use lobbyists for helpful reasons, not to block something that can have immense benefits to society but may mean an industry is losing revenue. Like I said earlier, change will start with the companies, and one way that can happen is if large corporations and industries learn to use their influence on government for the benefit of society. Instead of lobbying against an electric vehicle, lobby for more research to be invested into created a more efficient electric vehicle.

We can argue for change as much as we want, but it takes everyone to make change effective. That includes profit-driven industries. Everyone must be on board. Talk about a utopia. How can change work with everything that works against it? How can a positive change survive among all of the other interests out there?