Providing an environment which makes cheating easy and profitable is just as morally corrupt as the cheating itself, and entirely more predictable and preventable.
Solve solvable problems like bad testing and not unsolvable problems like unscrupulous businessmen.
No, it isn't. This is called victim blaming. It is like saying not locking your door is as morally corrupt as the thieves that walked into your unlocked house.
We create standards for emissions. And companies should comply with the tests even without the need for tests. We expect people should follow the laws, and we should use the minimal amount of enforcement to get compliance. But it's silly to blame the epa for poor tests. The vault is with VW for selling cars that didn't comply with emissions standards.
Because I don't care about their morals. Be as corrupt as you want, as immoral as you want, that doesn't (for this example) make the air dirty. However, if we catch you not meeting the standards put forth, the hammer will fall swiftly and hard.
But suppose we publish a moral standard to be met. Who's chosen deity do we use? Because for the majority of people, there's at least a nod to some form of god when aligning our moral compasses. In some cultures, a little corruption is just part of it. From my POV, most of our systems of laws have a little morality baked in, but those systems are more concerned about outcomes. "Don't do this, or punish shall befall you." "If you manufacture these, they must meet a minimum standard, or you will be fined."
VW's management should be jailed, and the EPA should probably be reprimanded or have someone fired for letting this go uncaught for so long.
Or do they keep mum even if the leaders (like the recently resigned VW ceo) who not only got scot-free but also were rewarded millions if not billions of dollars ultimately for such crimes by the company and its shareholders?
But I want to bring out an important aspect here: if the USA (mainly its people) fail to punish VW and its criminal leaders (along with the shareholders who backed, rewarded those leaders) in an exemplary manner, then some people will keep on blaming its capitalist economy based democracy for being too soft on "big and rich" while punishing severely only "poor people" even for smaller scale crimes.
The VW leaders should be put behind bars for something like 30 years and its big shareholders (the ones holding more 0.1% of its total shares, say) be punished monetarily by legally declaring their shares to be void. If US cannot do this because Germany wouldn't allow it to do so, then USA should ban the VW and all the companies associated with VW or its parent companies to do any business in US.
What has currently happened with VW in the name of punishment is pure farce. Its shares are still trading at non-zero positive value. And its leaders enjoying multi-million dollars in rewards for the criminal behavior. The justice has become farce in this case.
>>Or we might as well say all humanity has failed, or God has failed,
Yes, you can say so. But at least now we don't have a world-wide single state. As a god or gods (whether he, she, it or they (multiple gods)) are concerned, we don't know for sure whether the things called gods exist or not, so saying god failed doesn't get us much far.
The people don't get to vote on specific issues, they get to vote on representation. The people representing them are directly responsible. Hold the people directly responsible to account, remove and replace if ineffective.
And who is going to do "that"? and what if those who are responsible to do "that" don't do that? Then who is going to hold 'those' people who didn't do anything to hold those people responsible for the VW? I mean somewhere down the line, the general public must become active and show that it is not sleeping altogether, if that doesn't happen, well, society as a whole has to pay its price, and this price generally is very big, it can be so big that society may be crushed under its weight.
My point is let's see how USA deals with this VW crime and the other important criminal called Saudi Arabia for its role in 9/11. The government and enforcement agencies have already shown that they won't punish them much. So it remains to see if the general public holds them accountable or not.
That's not likely to happen. The American public is generally quite apathetic.
For example, one of the current leading candidates to become the next president of the USA had the following good fortune a while ago[1]:
- did not have any previous experience trading commodities futures
- deposited less than $1000 in cash into a futures trading account
- Made hundreds of trades. Each futures trade incurs a significant bid/ask spread, much greater than stock trades. And yet: Two-thirds of her trades showed a profit by the end of the day she made them and 80 percent were ultimately profitable. Many of her trades took place at or near the best prices of the day.
- cashed out for $100,000 nine months later
To me, that $100,000 was nothing more and nothing less than a bribe. And, although corruption is endemic in many parts of the world, one would hope that in the USA such obvious grift would unequivocally disqualify someone for the office of the President.
But if you took a poll, probably 99% of the electorate wouldn't even be aware of this little incident. And the majority probably wouldn't care.
So don't look for "the general public" to hold anyone accountable about anything. That's no longer how this country works. Not in 2016, anyway.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_cattle_futures_...
>>So don't look for "the general public" to hold anyone accountable about anything. That's no longer how this country works. Not in 2016, anyway.
It's sad. With all the "information age tools" at hand, we see that people are just choosing to remain ignorant. Reminds me Huxley's brave new world [1]
By and large the USA has chosen to punish companies by fines. Very rarely do we put executives in jail.
There have been a few. E.g. Jeff Skilling is a poster boy for corporate malfeasance, and he wound up being sentenced to 14 years. But Enron was, overall, a cesspool rather than a legitimate company. In the greater scheme of things, VW's transgressions are minor compared to Enron's. So it's unlikely that the USA will try to put anyone in jail for them.
But VW has already set aside $18 billion. If we look at what happened to BP (another foreign company, and consequently easier to treat as a whipping boy than a US company), that $18 billion will prove wholly inadequate. VW will be lucky if it only costs them $18 billion for their USA fines, etc. And then everyone else in the world will then pile on.
Even if VW's total cost is "only" $18 billion, I think that's a big enough number that it will get the attention of CEOs and boards all around the world. It's unlikely that any other company will be so brazen in the near future.
Who creates standards? Equally corrupt and money driven politicians? I certainly don't remember having a debate and getting to vote on what the standards will look like, and why. They seem arbitrary.
It's funny, we sit around HackerNews and laugh at the ineptitude of politicians trying to regulate the internet, but yet we assume they know what's best regarding pollution regulation? That's hypocritical.
Then what exactly are we paying them for? End the agency if they aren't responsible for regulation. We can rely on the morality of random people all over the world, and lament the human condition when multi-billion dollar incentives turn out to dominate the complete absence of reward for doing the lawful thing.
If “we” want better, it would take shifting tax money toward those government functions and adjusting the law to give regulators a stronger mandate.
If you personally want to see such a change, the easiest first–order action you can take is helping get out the vote or donating money in competitive congress and senate elections, working to replace Republican Party lawmakers with ones from the Democratic Party. (Party affiliation is obviously not a perfect proxy for support of the EPA, but it’s not a bad start, since opposing environmental protection and denying global climate change are a core plank of the GOP platform.) If you want to do better than that, you’ll have to educate yourself more thoroughly, and take on more deliberate activism and/or involve yourself significantly in the political process.
If we're to trust in morality to keep people from defeating tests, we could replace the entire agency with a mail merge: "Do your vehicles comply? If yes, reply to yes@epa.gov, if no, reply to admittingtoacrime@epa.gov"
Edit: Deleted text about global warming since it was incorrect.
You can't have your cake and eat it, too. Reducing NOx emissions basically means reducing the engine's efficiency, increasing consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
To reduce NOx, you'll need to reduce the temperature in the combustion chamber and reduce the excess oxygen levels in the exhaust (Oxygen in the exhaust being a requirement for generating NOx).
One common, cheap way of doing this, is to use EGR (exhaust gas recirculation, feeding some of the exhaust gas back to the inlet). This cools the combustion chamber AND ensures less oxygen is available for NOx generation.
A more complicated way is to add urea to the exhaust before feeding the mix through a catalytic converter; the hot exhaust converts urea to ammonia, and ammonia reacts with NOx to create nitrogen and water.
This latter approach, if I've understood it correctly, is what VW tried to avoid by cheating - presumably to not have to pass on the added cost and complexity to their customers, making their offerings less competitive.
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One of the main violations is NOx emissions. Current EPA standards are 0.043g/km. The TDI engines tested under real world conditions at 0.61g/km - 1.5g/km.[1]
A quick google brought me to some testing in 2004[2] of a 6.5l diesel engine typically used in the military version of the Humvee and most Chevrolet light-duty trucks from around 1994 to 2001. The testing shows NOx output levels between ~55g/hr to ~355g/hr.
Comparing that to the VW output, lets take an average speed of 100km/hr so the VW is pumping out between 61g/hr and 150g/hr of NOX. Likely closer to the 61g/hr as most of the engine power is used during acceleration. Yes, a 6.5L is more than 3x the displacement of the 2.0L CBEA engine, however, the power output is only about 30% higher.
Far from 'unprecedented,' though clearly in violation of EPA regulations.
Sorry for citing wikipedia. It's late and I'm tired. Source 63 is the one you want.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
[2] http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA449196 (PDF, "EMISSIONS FROM A 6.5L HMMWV ENGINE ON LOW SULFUR DIESEL FUEL AND JP-8")