The truth of our unethical gain

AS the oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico turning the sea to black, the interconnectedness of our world becomes clearer and clearer. BP, the company responsible, has been almost aloof in its reaction and Barrack Obama has even suggested that they are not being fully truthful with his administration regarding the scale of the spill.

While fishermen and others on America’s affected coastline see their livelihoods and wildlife wiped out by the disaster, all over the world pension funds are getting edgy. The reason for their disquiet is the fact that so many pension funds are invested in BP. Those people who have worked all their lives and paid money into a fund to try and insulate them from poverty in the twilight years are now discovering what the funds have actually been doing with the money.
In effect, what this means is that people who feel they have nothing to do with big business and the damage it is doing to the planet are in fact profiting from it and feathering their nest with its proceeds, albeit unknowingly in most cases. In Britain alone, 8% of all the money going into pensions comes from BP. Big oil is not the only ethically questionable industry bolstering the future earnings of pension holders. The arms industry, the tobacco industry and of course the banking sector are all major points of investment for those handling pension funds. This is because they are, of course, very sound investments. The arms industry continues to thrive as all over the world, violent conflict trundles along, in many cases out of our sight. Nations amass vast numbers of missiles and other military equipment as they square off against each other in petty power struggles as well as major conflicts. Similarly mining churns out profits but the environmental and human costs do not appear on the end-of-year balance sheet. As new markets are targeted in China and Africa, the tobacco industry is enjoying sizable profits and would seem an excellent investment for anyone wishing to make a few bob to fund a decent retirement.  
What strikes me in all this is the quietness of the facts listed above. I’m sure most people would not want to invest in morally questionable companies or accept money tainted by human suffering and misery but in many cases, it just never occurs to them that they might be. The nature of modern capitalism means that even without realising, it all can be drawn into the web of exploitation that it creates all over the world. A mining project, which destroys the environment and livelihood of an African village today can fund a retirement in County Clare in 10 years’ time and the beneficiary need never know. It’s like punching somebody in the dark.
In response to the problem of where pensions are invested, an interesting product appeared a few years ago. It is called an “ethical pension”. This, of course, means that all other pensions could be fairly accurately described as unethical but I’m not sure an advertising agency would fancy putting together a campaign for such a product. The difficulty with an ethical pension is that it just doesn’t perform as well as an unethical one. The real money is to be made through exploitative big business and ethically invested pensions suffer from the unstable nature of the companies in which is it invested. This makes choosing an ethical pension a difficult choice for anyone. Society as it exists now will not care for you fully when you get old. Without a private pension, life in old age will be difficult so people are in a way trapped by the interconnectedness of the modern capitalist system. Though the returns from ethical pensions are marginally less than those from unethical ones, the fear of a life of old age in poverty means people are just too scared to make the choice. The percentage of pensions in Britain that can be described as ethical halved between 2007 and 2010.
While the lives of those who invest unethically, either by choice or through ignorance, may be more comfortable, the cost to the earth and humanity from such investment is very difficult to estimate.
The UN has commissioned a report to be published in October to try and estimate the cost to the earth of the actions of the world’s biggest 3,000 companies. The Guardian recently published interim figures which estimate the environmental costs for the various sectors of industry. Utilities were the most damaging at $400 billion. The next highest sectors were basic materials, such as mining and forestry and the food industry at $300 billion. When other industry types are added to these figures, the cost of the 3,000 businesses to the earth runs into trillions, figures so massive they are difficult to fathom. What cannot be estimated by the UN report is the level of human misery and suffering that will come about as a result of these companies doing business. When investing money, the best place to get a return would be in these 3,000 companies but how that profit will compare to the actual cost is difficult to say.
Many people are trapped in the cycle of investment in unethical companies and held to ransom for their future happiness. The ethical option is available but without the kind of guaranteed returns offered by its alternative, it is not an appetising one for many people. Breaking away from a system is a challenging thing and that’s where the power of the system lies. Fear of the future is a real thing in the lives of many people and that’s where the real power and control lies.