[comex]

Personally, I think what was being proposed would be an awful idea, but not so odious that merely hearing idle conversation about it is disturbing. I mainly save that category for ideas with racist undertones and the likes. I suppose that's because in most such debates, an appropriate or at least plausible approach exists along similar lines to what's being discussed, albeit less extreme - in this case, what actually happened, fining a company over ten billion dollars, could be seen as a less extreme version of a corporate death penalty, and there are points in between that are at least not completely unthinkable - so the basic emotions behind the debate are a reasonable framework. Whereas with ideology motivated by prejudice, I think usually you should essentially throw the whole thing away and start fresh, because the premise is fundamentally irrational.

YMMV. (Especially if you have a Volkswagen.)