Of Petrochemical Companies and Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Ferdinand Sy


Many have wondered a year ago – in 2008 – whether if the crude oil trading via the commodities speculation game “might” push the already teetering global economy over the edge. Given that everyone and their dog’s pension funds – not to mention pension funds – are used by commodities speculators to hike up crude oil prices to almost 150 US dollars a barrel back in July 2008. It surely looks like the greed of commodities speculators will be the end of us all. Fast forward to 2009 and OPEC already has plans to keep prices of crude oil within 3 to 10% of August 2009 prices for the rest of the year citing reduced demand. You can now start wondering whether petrochemical companies - multi-national corporations or nationalized OPEC members - ever possess a semblance of corporate social responsibility.

Even though former US Vice President Al Gore was “too polite” to have mentioned it in his environmental opus called An Inconvenient Truth. Over the past few years, the crude oil lobbyists in the Capitol Hill had been very busy funding their own “information campaign” to tell everyone that global warming is not caused by fossil fuel burning. They even managed to buy off the American “Religious Right”, which is quite odd given that America’s Religious Right was very busy bitching about the wholesale destruction of the Amazon Rain Forest during the second half of the Reagan Administration.

Do petrochemical companies want to be compared with the famed hedge fund fraudster Bernie Madoff? Of course not, but if these crude oil companies continue to run their business like it is still George “Dubya” Bush on the helm of the White House, then petrochemical companies are probably selling the most unethically produced commodity on the face of the planet. You could be right for saying that the cars of today are run with the blood of young Americans cut down in their prime. Sadly, it is not very easy to boycott petroleum, let alone plastics. Given that almost everything around has been made with plastic since the end of World War II.

Corporate Social Responsibility Sells - But Who’s Buying?

By: Ferdinand Sy

By an overwhelmingly unfair margin, ambition-driven successful people are more often than not are inclined to be inconsiderate bastards. If this is the case, then why are we letting them be the captains of our industry? If some had successfully melded principles with profit, why then is corporate social responsibility still having trouble becoming an indispensable cornerstone of our modern corporate world?

Though many business entities “claim” that they have adopted corporate social responsibility for many years now, and yet their claims are more often than not needs to be taken with more than an occasional helping of a grain of salt. From the thinly disguised racist sentiment “We can’t afford diversity during a recession?” battlecry that also became a de facto anti-Obama sentiment during the turbulent campaign days of the 2008 US Presidential Elections. Not to mention the tacit approval of the “established” American financial institutions of subprime mortgages to clients who can never fiscally handle such transactions.

So is corporate social responsibility part of capitalism’s reform process in our post subprime mortgage economy? Or will Karl Marx be proven right again this time that capitalism really can’t reform itself. Well, the ultimate future shape of our global economy will mostly depend on us consumers. If we only buy products from companies that practice corporate social responsibility and ethical business governance, then there is still hope that capitalism can still indeed reform itself. Karl Marx was probably right in hinting that we the people still have the run of the place.