[tacos]

Estimate states it did less than half a billion of dollars of damage to human lives, the environment, and the economy.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/29/vw-excess-emissions-linked-to...

Allowing some New World Judge the power to destroy all international subsidiaries of a global corporation with 610,067 employees at the stroke of a pen might not improve the situation.

[SwellJoe]

Citation?

WikiPedia places the economic cost at $39+ billion, by one measure.

"A peer-reviewed study published in Environmental Pollution estimated that the fraudulent emissions are associated with 45 thousand disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and a value of life lost of at least 39 billion US dollars."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#D...

[kuschku]

Yes, that’s the additional cost from the NOx. But the cars produced in contrast far less CO2 than advertised – offsetting many of the costs.

[SwellJoe]

Citation? Why wouldn't the experts who studied this have accounted for that? I tend to want to trust the science, if it comes from reputable sources.

Anyway, CO2 is not comparable to NOx in terms of danger to human health; CO2 is a real problem, of course, but as I understand it, this was an environmental and human health trade-off that is not at all well-balanced. It produced out-sized harm in exchange for small reductions on the CO2 side. Even if the amount of NOx produced only increased by the same amount that CO2 decreased (which is not the case, if I understand it correctly), it would still be a bad trade. I'm no expert, but the experts I've read on the subject haven't been saying, "oh, it's really no big deal because CO2 went down."

[kuschku]

The increase in NOx led to a decrease in CO2 of about 1000 times that (in volume).

Numbers and studies have been posted by another user in this thread, it’s definitely a huge difference.

That’s kinda why VW did it, it saves fuel and is cleaner.

[tacos]

Citation?

[lostlogin]

The world police allow themselves to do this to countries, so why not corporations? And at what deaths/corporation employee number does killing the corporation become ok? Presumably there is a value? I don't know it.