Unfortunately what I think will happen is this startup will release a ton of pollutants into the air, and nobody will be held responsible.
On the contrary, companies and individuals should absolutely be responsible for the consequences of their actions.
Culpability for damaging the environment should rest on the person who caused the damage.
This is basic stuff.
When the potential damages of an action far outweigh what it is even conceivably possible that the entity doing the action could ever hope to repay, the standards for preventing that action change.
The company is still at fault and should still be legally punished within the local legal system. The difference is that the government has now got to accept liability on the international stage, since the company is incorporated in that country. The liability has "expanded", not changed from one entity to another.
Looks like the plot of Snowpiercer, minus the perpetually moving train part.
No, he absolutely should not. This is not some stupid B2C nonsense where if you "move fast and break things" you can always redeploy. If it turns out that these people are not as smart as they think they are, and that's my guess, do they have a better backup plan than saying "whoops" and walking away? I doubt it.
Hopefully, as others have pointed out, these people are not really trying to do what they say they're doing and it's just a publicity stunt to sell a variation on the old carbon offset scam.
> damaging the atmosphere in any measurable way, both him his company should be on the hook.
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s actually me who is responsible because I’m the one who bought it and decided to drive it.
Is Philip-Morris responsible for lung cancer, just because they purchased and refined the tobacco and sold it to consumers? It's the consumers who bought it and decided to smoke it.