Dow Chemicals email
autoreply
Rogier - 04.12.2002 13:03
Everyday I get unsollicited
email, yet yesterday I probably got the weirdest of them all. It was
an email from Dow Chemicals, in which they tried to explain their
company view on the Bhopal disaster from 1984.
Union
Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemicals is responsible for the death of
20.000 people in the Bhopal region in India. On December 2nd, 1984
40 tonnes of lethal gases leaked from Union Carbide Corporation's
pesticide factory killing 20.000 and injuring another 500.000.
People are still suffering today from what happened 18 years
back.
Burial of an unknown child victim of the Bhopal
disaster.
Untill today Dow Chemicals has
not taken the responsability to clean up the chemicals still
remaining in the region.
Upon asking them how the hell they
got my emailadress I got the following auto-reply. (I'm a member of
Greanpeace, and subscriped to their E-mailinglist, but surely this
is not how they got my emailadress!?)
>>>>>>
Dear Fellow Person,
First of all, if you have concerns, it is very important
that you not keep them "pent up" where they might do harm, but
rather that you let us know, at our ethics line; this will feel good
for you, and will give us an understanding of the human resources
pool that we couldn't get otherwise. For callers in North America,
the telephone number is 1-800-803-6862. Callers from outside North
America must first dial a country-specific AT&T Direct Access
Number before dialing 800-803-6862. A listing of the international
access numbers is available from the  http://traveler.network.att.com/traveler/codes/view.jsp?country=
Alternatively, you can call the Office of Global Ethics and
Compliance directly at +1-989-636-2544. You may also directly assess
the ethics department by e-mail, at mailto: Ethics@Dow.com.
What
follows is an automated response on responsibility. Dow would like
to make clear that we do understand your concern about
responsibility.
However, we would like to ask you a
question. The question follows.
As a human person, to whom
do you feel most responsible? Please number the following items in
order of your feeling of responsibility towards them, as you
experience said feeling:
( ) Your own self
( ) Your
immediate human family
( ) Other humans of the human species
( ) Other animal creatures of other species
( ) The moon
If you are a typical human person, you will have ordered
this list in this order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Another possibility is 2, 1,
3, 4, 5 or even 2, 1, 4, 3, 5.
It is extraordinarily
unlikely that you will have placed, in this list, the fifth choice
anywhere other than at the bottom. The moon? you exclaim. The moon?
"Are you insane?" you exclaim, beside yourself and completely
forgetting etiquette.
Yet by requesting Dow to feel
responsibility for the suffering and deaths of 20,000 people, you
are asking that we feel for the moon. You are asking that we number
this list something like 5, 1, 2, 3, 4!
Are you insane? Do
you think that we are insane?
We are not! We are a global
corporation of the corporate species. It is indeed true that we are
persons, like you, at least under the U.S. Consitution. But we are
as different from you, personwise, as the moon is different from a
Bonobo monkey. You and we, we have different motives, ideas, aims,
and feelings. It is arguable, in fact, whether what we havecan even
be called motives, ideas, aims, and feelings--that is how different
you and we are!!!
A corporation, you see, is a person that
is only concerned with wealth. It is a person that is a legal
fiction created for the express purpose of, and only the express
purpose of, making money. What else could it possibly care about?
Curing cancer? Saving Mount Rushmore? Eating the moon?
It is
true that we corporations depend upon human life--but human life
depends on the moon! If there were no moon, there would be no tides,
and life on earth would be different. But this does not mean that
humans feel responsible to the moon! This does not mean that
corporations feel
responsible towards humans!
If you
want us to feel responsible towards anything other than ourselves,
our families, and our co-species persons, MAKE US! Make us worry
about you, with laws to which we are subject (i.e. not national
laws, since we've figured out how to get past them or make them
irrelevant). Either that, or make it worth our while in a strictly
financial sense.
Best wishes,
Dow-Chemical
<<<<<<
What especialy strikes me
is the questionairy, and the conclussion they make; "Yet by
requesting Dow to feel responsibility for the suffering and deaths
of 20,000 people, you are asking that we feel for the moon."
Is their anyone who got the original first email from Dow
Chemicals as well, and would be willing to publish it here for the
full picture?
For more information on the Bhopal disaster,
do a Google search, or see the website of Greenpeace;
http://www.greenpeace.org/
The Dow Chemicals website;
http://www.dow.com/
And their
'Responsible Care, a public commitment'
http://www.dow.com/environment/care_info.html
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