I used to be a libertarian. I used to think that private ownership of property, coupled with a free market (and something vague about an informed citizenship and consumers voting with their dollars) was the solution to most of modern society's ills.

It's articles like this that absolutely refute the idea that private ownership of property leads to good environmental outcomes (it doesn't; it leads to exploitative, destructive extraction of value from land, leaving behind carnage whose damage was estimated at below the bottom line, leaving a comfortable margin for profit) and that citizens would be proactive and well-informed (they aren't; they are constantly stonewalled, lied to, and officials stupid or paid off).

Now, ironically, in this advanced state of tech today, we have finally got the tools that citizens can be informed about the environmental impacts...of decades dead corporations and gluttonous barons that have long since moved on from the smoking, toxic craters they knowingly created. What an exciting future we have now, mining the graveyard of a century of bad policy, dealing with the lies and denial of others, and a complete lack of accountability. Meanwhile, these toxins, here a trace, there a torrent, sit as mute reminder of the horrible cost we've exacted on this planet (so far).