The environmental practices of big businesses are shaped by a fundamental fact that for many of us offends our sense of justice. Depending on the circumstances, a business may maximize the amount of money it makes, at least in the short term, by damaging the environment and hurting people. That is still the case today for fishermen in an unmanaged fishery without quotas, and for international logging companies with short-term leases on tropical rainforest land in places with corrupt officials and unsophisticated landowners. When government regulation is effective, and when the public is environmentally aware, environmentally clean big businesses may out-compete dirty ones, but the reverse is likely to be true if government regulation is ineffective and if the public doesn't care.

大型企业的环保实践受一个基本事实的影响，对于我们中的许多人来说，这违背了我们的正义感。视情况而定，企业可能会通过破坏环境和伤害人来最大限度地获得利润，至少短期内是这样。如今，对于不受配额管理的无限制渔业中的渔民，以及热带雨林土地上短期租赁的国际伐木公司，再加上腐败官员和没有经验的土地所有者，对他们来说事实更是如此。当政府法规行之有效，公众也意识到环保问题时，较环保的大企业可能会打败那些赚黑心钱的企业，但如果政府监管无效、公众也不关心，则情况可能会相反。

It is easy for the rest of us to blame a business for helping itself by hurting other people. But blaming alone is unlikely to produce change. It ignores the fact that businesses are not charities but profit-making companies, and that publicly owned companies with shareholders are under obligation to those shareholders to maximize profits, provided that they do so by legal means. US laws make a company's directors legally liable for something termed 'breach of fiduciary responsibility' if they knowingly manage a company in a way that reduces profits. The car manufacturer Henry Ford was in fact successfully sued by shareholders in 1919 for raising the minimum wage of his workers to $5 per day: the courts declared that, while Ford's humanitarian sentiments about his employees were nice, his business existed to make profits for its stockholders.

仅仅去责备企业通过伤害他人来使自身获利很轻松。但是，单单指责不可能带来改变。人们忽略了以下事实:企业不是慈善机构，而是获利公司，有股东的国有公司有义务让那些股东获得最大化利润，但前提是他们必须通过合法手段做到这一点。美国法律规定，如果公司董事故意以降低利润的方式管理公司，则他们应对“违反信托责任“负有法律责任。事实上，汽车制造商亨利·福特在1919年因为将其工人的最低工资提高到每天5美元而被股东成功起诉:法院宣布，尽管从人道主义角度来看他对员工很好，但他的企业存在是为了帮股东赚钱。

Our blaming of businesses also ignores the ultimate responsibility of the public for creating the conditions that let a business profit through destructive environmental policies. In the long run, it is the public, either directly or through its politicians, that has the power to make such destructive policies unprofitable and illegal, and to make sustainable environmental policies profitable.

我们对企业的指责也忽视了公众的最终责任，即创造条件，让企业通过会破坏环境的政策获利。从长远来看，无论是公众直接参与还是通过政客，他们都需要承担起让破坏环境的政策无利可图的责任，并使可持续的环境政策变得有利可图。

The public can do that by suing businesses for harming them, as happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster, in which over 40,000 m3 of oil were spilled off the coast of Alaska. The public may also make their opinion felt by preferring to buy sustainably harvested products; by making employees of companies with poor track records feel ashamed of their company and complain to their own management; by preferring their governments to award valuable contracts to businesses with a good environmental track record; and by pressing their governments to pass and enforce laws and regulations requiring good environmental practices.

公众可以通过起诉企业损害他们的利益来达到目的，就像阿拉斯加港湾漏油事件后发生，当时有超过40,000立方米的石油从阿拉斯加沿岸泄漏。公众也可以通过以下方式表达自己的意见:倾向于购买可持续发展的产品;使业绩不佳的公司的员工对公司感到羞耻并向自己的管理层抱怨;支持政府向具有良好环境记录的企业授予有福利的合同;敦促政府通过并执行需要良好环境规范的法律和法规。

In turn, big businesses can exert powerful pressure on any suppliers that might ignore public or government pressure. For instance, after the US public became concerned about the spread of a disease known as BSE, which was transmitted to humans through infected meat, the US government's Food and Drug Administration introduced rules demanding that the meat industry abandon practices associated with the risk of the disease spreading. But for five years the meat packers refused to follow these, claiming that they would be too expensive to obey. However, when a major fast-food company then made the same demands after customer purchases of its hamburgers plummeted, the meat industry complied within weeks. The public's task is therefore to identify which links in the supply chain are sensitive to public pressure: for instance, fast–food chains or jewelry stores, but not meat packers or gold miners.

反过来，大企业可以对任何可能忽略公共或政府压力的供应商施加强大的压力。例如，在美国公众开始关注一种被称为疯牛病的疾病的传播之后，该疾病通过受感染的肉传播给人类，美国政府食品药品监督管理局出台了一些法规，要求肉类行业不再从事有疾病传播风险的操作。但是五年来，肉类生产商一直拒绝遵守这些规定，声称成本太高，无法遵守。但是，当一家大型快餐公司在汉堡包销量暴跌之后提出了同样的要求时肉类行业在几周内就顺应了要求。因此，公众的任务是确定供应链中的哪些环节对公众压力敏感:例如，快餐连锁店或珠宝店，而不是肉类包装商或金矿开采商。

Some readers may be disappointed or outraged that I place the ultimate responsibility for business practices harming the public on the public itself. I also believe that the public must accept the necessity for higher prices for products to cover the added costs, if any, of sound environmental practices. My views may seem to ignore the belief that businesses should act in accordance with moral principles even if this leads to a reduction in their profits. But I think we have to recognize that, throughout human history, in all politically complex human societies, government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found that not only did moral principles need to be made explicit, they also needed to be enforced.

对于将危害公众利益的商业行为的最终责任推到公众身上，有些读者可能会感到失望或愤怒。我也认为，公众必须接受提高产品价格的必要性以弥补合理的环保措施所产生的额外成本。我的观点似乎忽略了这样的信念，即企业应遵循道德原则行事，即使这会导致其利润减少。但是我认为我们必须认识到，纵观人类历史，在所有政治复杂的人类社会中，政府管制之所以出现，恰恰是因为人们发现道德原则不仅需要明确，还需要强制执行。

To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish, a good guy or a bad guy. In the past, businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn't want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses' environmental practices.

对我而言，公众对即使最大的企业的行为负有最终责任，这一结论充满了力量和希望，而并非令人失望。我的结论不是关于谁对谁错，谁可敬谁自私，谁是好人谁是坏人的道德说教。过去，当公众期望并要求企业改变时，公众向符合公众期望的企业提供奖励，并为公众不想要的企业行为设绊时，企业已经发生了变化。我预测，与过去一样，未来公众态度的改变对于企业环保实践的改变至关重要。