commitment toward environmental problems and protecting the environment within the federal government. Lately the White House administration's Environmental Protection Agency has come under fierce attack for a seeming insensitivity toward ecological matters. The Justice Department has been stepping up its enforcement of violations of environmental laws that are designed to safeguard the nation's soil, air and water. Over the past eighteen years, since the creation of a special environmental crime section of the Justice Department, the prosecution of corporate organizations and individual managers are continuously on the rise. The punishments that these groups are receiving are becoming more and more substantial. In fact, between 1982 and 1989, there were 486 indictments for environmental crimes compared to only 25 indictments during the 1970's. Many of these are some of the United States best-known corporations. Thus, the Justice Department is sending a strong message to corporate America that they can no longer get away with environmental crimes (The Wall street Journal, 1989). Industry must begin to take the initiative in the problem solving process in order to tackle the major environmental problems and concerns such as vanishing forests, growing desserts, global warming, and the depletion of the ozone layer. Furthermore, industry should not only obey current environmental laws, but they should go above and beyond them. These issues cannot be addressed by passing more laws or regulations. They cannot be cured by committees, states, or even individual nations. These are global problems and should be handled on an international level with full cooperation from all. Business ethics are complicated, multi-issue problems that are ever changing in our fast-paced world. It is a very complex issue entailing many things from corporate ethics to the ethics of responsibility. Whistle blowing is one result of declining ...
