[moptar]

The extent to which it cost human lives is a function of the arbitrary emission standards that governments have set. Those standards are obviously chosen as a trade-off between too many harmful consequences of pollution and being too expensive for car makers to comply with. So it's not as clear as "VW killed people" but more like "VW killed more people than we expected them to." The standards themselves still allow some harmful emissions to be released. If had more relaxed standards then all the extra harm caused by the VW cheating would simply evaporate.

[SwellJoe]

But, we have the standards we have (which are already weaker than they need to be to avert a climate and air quality disaster going forward). If one company is permitted to fake results, it means all companies will have to fake results to compete.

My argument is that cheating our already lax air quality and environmental standards should be a tremendous deal. It shouldn't be something that can be swept under the rug or written off as a cost of doing business.