And most of us would be totally sympathetic with that refusal. We would not be telling them, “so what if it's immoral or illegal, it's a job, it pays the bills.” At least, I thing very few would take that attitude. In short, we are not at all happy with people who commit crimes against humanity and say they were just doing a job, just following orders. And that is as it should be.

    Yet, the story seems to be much different when we are dealing with crimes against nature and the environment that those very same humans need to live in. We are seeing a big push in politics to end or relax many environmental laws because the supposedly hamper businesses and prevent them from doing projects they want to do and therefore prevent them from hiring people to work on those projects. And many people are listening to this and agreeing. The attitude among many seems to be that getting jobs come first, then later we can worry about the environment. But before we get that desperate for jobs, we have to ask ourselves if allowing the environment to be destroyed in the process is worth it. Do we really want to go back to factories dumping hazardous chemical waste in the rivers and lakes? Do we really want to allow cancer-causing chemicals to be flowing from smoke stacks again? If we decide the answer is “Yes” then we will be, in essence, approving of cannibalism because destroying our environment out of greed is very much the same as killing and eating each other because, in a round-about way, that is what we would be doing.