Things That Annoy (and Horrify) – Bhopal and Environmental Injustice

As an article from today’s New York Times indicates, the lingering effects of a massive gas leak back in 1984 continue to haunt the people of Bhopal, India. The Bhopal accident, although tragic, is also instructive, as it raises incredibly important questions environmental justice issues that are still timely given globalization trends and the proliferation of multinational corporations into developing states around the world.

If you read the article and are interested in learning more about the gas leak and its effects on Bhopal, the following video is a worthwhile way to spend about 16 minutes. You should know that an NGO, the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, created this video, thus the filmmakers have an agenda. Certainly, then, in the interest of fairness, you should check out out Union Carbide/Dow Chemical’s perspective on the Bhopal tragedy, and then make up your own mind regarding where the blame lies in this situation.

Several questions come to mind after watching the video –

–Who was ultimately responsible for the gas leak? Was Union Carbide responsible because they didn’t keep the plant up to safety standards, or was the Indian government responsible because it didn’t hold regular inspections of the plant to make sure that safety was a primary issue?

–If you believe, as many people claim, that Union Carbide had different safety standards for its American and Indian plants, is it ethical for Union Carbide (or for any company with similar plants in different countries) to hold the plants to different safety standards?

–Does the fact that the Bhopal plant was built in an impoverished area mean that it was more important for Union Carbide to provide jobs to the people of Bhopal than to focus on costly safety standards that may force some of those jobs to be cut?

–Did the survivors receive fair compensation? What is the value of a human life? How do you compensate someone for future medical problems or future environmental hazards that may occur as the result of a chemical leak twenty years ago?

These are all incredibly difficult questions to answer, but the thousands/millions/billions of people that have the potential to be affected by similar situations require us to be thoughtful and measured in our response to those questions.