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Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

Air pollution leads to increases in various diseases of the respiratory tract (and other kinds too). Some of those are deadly. The difference is measured in thousands or maybe tens of thousands of people per year (unverified stat, but I think it's in the right ballpark).

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Not to let VW off the hook but this specific revelation is related to increased CO2 emissions.

That would surely be more related to global warming issues than respiratory desease wouldn't it?

To the best of my knowledge, no-one has ever had an asthma attack from breathing in the fumes from a glass of Coca-cola.

So are people who work on huge V8 engines morally responsible for people dying due to air pollution?

Interesting question. Depends how you working on it. If you are working on improving the efficiency then I would say its ok. If you are tampering with the actual values because your engines are bad to environment then yes, you are directly responsible. Are those workers who put the engine together responsible? Absolutely not. Unless they are aware of such shady actions.

But a 6.0L V8 engine will always release more pollutants than a 1.0 3-cylinder engine. One could argue that unless you actively need so much power(drive a truck, tow caravans/boats/trailers), having a huge engine serves no purpose apart form personal pleasure, and it pollutes a lot. So with this logic in mind....is working on production of such engines morally wrong? If you are working for Mercedes and design their 6.3L V8 that goes into AMG63 cars, it that morally wrong?

If you would think of all humankind + planet as one entity, then you would deduce that it does not make sense to create such redundant engines because for you as a one cell it can be enjoyable and cool but for the cell next to you its actually damaging. So its a zero sum game. You should think of others and always ask yourself if your actions does not harm others or at least try to reduce the harm if possible. So yes, I would say the more power, the greater moral responsibility for the future of our species. For sure.

Once you are great mind and able to design modern engines for super cars then I would say you could do many other 'jobs' which would probably benefit us all more than making strong cars.

BTW I like fast cars myself. My conclusion is rather utopian. If you feel like you should do something more beneficial in position of such person who makes engines, maybe you could consider finding another job. But can you generalize that to all? Probably not..

If they declare that those V8 engines have been manufactured to meet emissions standards set by governments to try and reduce the health and environmental toll of emissions, and therefore allow those V8 engines to be mass-manufactured and included in hundreds of thousands of new cars that would otherwise have contained less polluting engines, then obviously yes?

It's not working on the V8 engines that's the problem, it's lying about their emissions.

I'm not sure how you don't see this? Based on your tone you seem to think you're making some sort of sarcastically clever point, but I'm not sure what it is? (or maybe I'm misreading this)

Your're saying that higher pollution causes more deaths and is therefore morally wrong, so have a look at Mercedes C-Class - you can have it with a relatively small 2.0L petrol(or even 1.8L if I remember correctly) or a massive 6.3L V8 petrol engine. The V8 will always pollute more. So why would it matter, if the V8 is "meeting emissions standards" - it's still poluting more than the 2.0L engine. So my question is - if lying about emissions of the 2.0L engine is "being morally responsible for people dying due to pollution", how is that not true for their 6.3L V8 engines(which are fully compliant, but pollute more nevertheless)?

The difference is that the government has put in place systems to deal with these higher polluting vehicles. It taxes them more, to discourage people from owning them. By lying about the pollution levels, the engineers are encouraging people to own more polluting engines. Not only is this obviously unethical since it involves lying with the purpose of breaking a law, but this law also happens to be designed to try and reduce the deadly effects of pollution. So such behaviour is, I say again, obviously indirectly linked to more people dying.

Yes, if said engines put out enough pollution to statistically kill people and the designers foresaw it.

But how do you define it then? A 1.0L 3-cylinder engine that emits 90g of CO2/1km that goes into 1 million cars is still more harmful statistically than a 7.0L V12 which emits 600g of CO2/km engine but only goes into 300 limited-edition ferraris. So maybe all engine engineers are "morally responsible" for air pollution, no matter what engines they build, or whether they lie or not?

It doesn't have to be that difficult, you can just think about these separately.

Is the V8 designer responsible? Yes if people die as result of pollution from his engines.

Is the 1L designer responsible? Same thing.

What about the scenario where the designer did nothing and people still bought engines by other makers? But this is a moral fallacy, "I'm relieved of the responsibility of doing <bad thing x> because another morally irresponsible person would seize the opportunity if I didn't".

What if the 1L engine displaces another engine product in the market that would result in more people dying. It's similar to tobacco companies introducing "light" cigarettes to market. "Lesser evil".

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