by Daniel Farnkoff

Created on: April 16, 2008

In 1984 an American-owned pesticide plant leaked toxic gas into the air in Bhopal, India, killing over 3000 people and injuring tens of thousands more. The plant was primarily owned by a U.S. corporation called Union Carbide, which had outsourced its manufacturing operations to India partly as a cost-cutting measure, and partly, one would imagine, because the corporation assumed that safety inspections and environmental standards would not be as strict in a developing nation than they were in the United States. Indeed, none of the required safety systems that one would expect could have prevented the horrific catastrophe were operational on the day of the leak, but the plant had not been shut down.

By all accounts, many of the people unfortunate enough to live near the plant died in excruciating pain, choking and convulsing as the chemicals ravaged their lungs and burned their eyes. The survivors of the disaster are still coping with their wounds, both physical and emotional, and the pesticide plant itself was abandoned to the elements without any attempt at environmental remediation.

Union Carbide is now owned by the Dow Chemical Corporation. Dow has refused to assist the Indians in cleanup of the disaster site, and has generally evaded responsibility for the actions of its subsidiary and for the toxic graveyard that it left behind for the people of Bhopal.

Had an industrial disaster of such magnitude occurred in the United States, and the same types of negligence and irresposibility found to be at the root of it, it is very likely that the CEO of Union Carbide, a man named Warren Anderson, would have found himself facing manslaughter charges in an American court. The public outcry upon the deaths of 3000 Americans from corproate negligence would have been tremendous.

Fortunately for Anderson, a United States superior court granted India full jurisdiction over the case, which resulted eventually in Union Carbide paying restitution in the area of $500 million. Most importantly, criminal charges that were filed against Anderson and other executives have been ignored by the United States government, and Anderson has lived to a ripe old age in peace and affluence somewhere in the vicinity of Long Island.

As long as U.S. corporations are able to skirt domestic environmental and safety standards by relocating their manufacturing operations abroad, and are allowed to evade even the standards of host countries by claiming immunity when the accidents and incidents inevitably occur, the whole world will suffer.

Without consistent safety standards and predictable legal consequences for negligence (including, in some cases, prosecution of executives and other company officials or employees), the United States will continue to lose jobs, global warming will accelerate, natural resources will be defiled, and poor people in other nations will continue to suffer untold miseries as a result of corporate greed and indifference- as they did in Bhopal, India in 1984.

"Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?" -Lord Edward Thurlow, 1731-1806

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