12 ms·

It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff b

by dusted 6y ago

It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.. It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money. I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at the time", they knew the stuff was toxic, and they chose to release it into the oceans, just because no one had explicitly made a law banning them from doing so.. Common sense should be the first law.

relix 6y ago
One of the first paragraphs of the article: at the time it was considered dumping the barrels in the deep ocean was sufficient because the vast amount of water would dilute the chemical. The shortcut they took was that they did not go that far into the ocean but instead kept much closer to shore and dumped the barrels there, as well as punctured them when they floated. The discovery that's lamented is the "shortcut dumping ground". This does not fit with your jumped-to conclusions.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
sokoloff 6y ago
He didn’t, but suppose my grandfather legally (or even semi-legally) disposed of some DDT and left my father some money. My father later me some money. What’s the legal process to claw some of that money back to pay for the cleanup? Do you or the state have standing to sue me for something I never did, knew nothing about, and can’t reasonably answer to any specifics about?
- meed2000 6y ago
  Suing you to the extent of having to pay back whatever your father passed on to you, at least what's left of it would be reasonable, don't you think?
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    No, I do not. If my grandfather left my father $X, my father left me $Y, at the very most the maximum would have to be the lesser of $X and $Y, decremented by the full cost of answering the lawsuit. This is problematic from a variety of practical angles, though, not just mathematical ones. It seems like something the forensic accounting lobby would salivate over. Should I be forced to defend a lawsuit because my great^6 grandfather owned slaves? (As far as I know, none did.) That’s more abhorrent than legally dumping chemicals that today’s common sense says should have been done differently.
    - dubcanada 6y ago
      But if you grandfather lost all of $X, your father would not have any of $Y (based entirely on $X being an amount they got from business dealings and $Y being a smaller amount which came from $X).
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        That strikes me as non-sensical. My father had his own earning, creating, and saving abilities.
        pessimizer 6y ago
        Subtract it from what he would have earned if he had dumped the cash into an index fund, and we may find that his earning, creating and saving abilities were negative. His only profitable skill may have been having a father who dealt in slaves.
    - dathinab 6y ago
      Yes. The only think which could in anyway get close to legality would be to: - Legally hold a case against whoever did it and win it. (Can even legally have a case against a dead person?) This requires thinks to have been illegal when done. - Requiring that (likely dead) person to pay a fine based on existing law. - Arguing that whoever accepted an inheritance did inherit the fine, too. But as far as I know every point of this list has many legally questionable aspects. But what you MUST NOT do under any circumstances in a state of law is to not base judgement on law but arbitrary "I feel like this should be done" arguments. This is also why it's of upmost importance to fast adapt laws make them general instead of specific and not put any loop holes in them. Because then you can judge people to some degree even if they do something bad even if that specific think wasn't explicitly forbidden. (E.g. based on a generic law which makes any form of causing environmental damage in a context where it's reasonable to assume it the person should have been aware illegal. Sure you need some threshold, too. Else driving your care is illegal.)
- charlesu 6y ago
  This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!
  - ChrisLomont 6y ago
    So punishment for everyone because someone, somewhere may have done something that decades later was made illegal? What kind of bizarre sadism is that?
    - FDSGSG 6y ago
      Who does estate tax punish?
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        The children of the people who managed to live out their days without going broke and becoming a burden on everyone else have less money than if their parents spent it all (presumably some of which would have been on them) and died with debt. The people who lived out their days without going broke lose because their property rights are being violated. Their property and their dollars that they have already paid taxes on should be theirs to give away as they see fit.
        pessimizer 6y ago
        Not being entitled to something no one else is entitled to either is not a punishment, otherwise it's a punishment to me when I can't have your dad's money. Children aren't even entitled to their parents money in adulthood. Parents have to choose to give it to them either explicitly or by omission.
        eesmith 6y ago
        If that's punishment for the children of the rich, then those children born to parents who are broke must also live a punished life, yes? If you are against children being punished because of the economics of their parents, then surely you are in support for a strong social safety network for children (universal subsidized/free childcare, including meals, and healthcare), yes? Which requires taxation or other funding sources. Which means we must ponder things like: how much of Sam Walton's $100 million inheritance did his children need in order to not be punished by a higher inheritance tax? $5 million each?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dusted 6y ago
  Have you noticed how we generally do not bear any responsible for the wrongs of our parents? For instance, we are not forced to pay their debts, yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind? Seems asymmetrical to me. I'd say, yeah, I guess if you accepted the money, you should accept at least some of the responsibility for how they were amassed.
  - unishark 6y ago
    The estate can be sued for debts. There is a time limit on filing claims though and there might be some limits on what they can come after in the sense they might be considered jointly-owned like a house if you're still living there.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind The kids of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are getting a miniscule amount of their fathers' wealth - how is that possible if supposedly they have a right to it? So you have it all backwards. The descendent are not entitled to the wealth of their parents or ancestors. The right to property (including disbursement through inheritance) is given to those that own it! The dollar I earn, I can do as a please with and has already been taxed.
    - bzbarsky 6y ago
      This is very country-dependent. In a number of European countries, the children are in fact entitled to some minimal share of the wealth of their parents (in France this share is between 50 and 75%, depending on the number of children for example), and what Buffet and Gates are doing would be illegal, as I understand it.
      - foobarian 6y ago
        I would not call 50-75% minimal :) Though I imagine you meant "minimum" - somewhat subtle difference.
- effingwewt 6y ago
  I'll do you one better. Suppose your forebears made the money illegally. Most certainly the ill-gotten gains must be clawed back. Are you seriously positing that you should keep illegally obtained money because you yourself didn't know? Punishment is another story, of course it wasn't your fault, so you won't do the time, but you certainly don't get to be rich off the proceeds of the crime. ie If I rob a bank and leave the money for my kids, they don't get to keep the money when the feds finally crack the case.
macspoofing 6y ago
The problem with your approach, besides the immorality of arbitrary post-hoc rationalization for punishment, is that it is not pragmatic. What's done is done, and you need people to get behind making it better. If you come out and push a policy that in part entails rooting and punishing those responsible (or even descendent of those responsible), you'll have people come out against it just for that reason and the environment will suffer. I would be one of those people, because I would never give that power to the kinds of people who would argue for the arbitrary execution of collective punishments on people today. If given the choice to fix environment/punish wrongdoers or do nothing, I would go with 'do nothing'. It's why 'The Green New Deal' is so terrible because instead of focusing on pragmatic solutions we can all get behind, it suffers from scope creep of socialist and progressive policies that have little to nothing to do with climate change and environment - and therefore I'd rather have none of it. To circle back on collective punishment - there's a reason why the North, after winning the civil war, has largely chose not to collectively punish the South - in much the same way that other regions which suffered through terrible civil wars where terrible crimes were committed, frequently choose to replace punishment of many of those responsible with something like reconciliation committees, where symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment.
- Hokusai 6y ago
  > post-hoc punishment post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. The alternative it to punish people before they commit a crime, and that seems immoral at best. > push a policy My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment. They just got caught now. > those responsible with something like reconciliation committees ... symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment. Corporations are not people. You can punish a corporation without any of that considerations.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. Maybe a little charitable interpretation is warranted? I clearly meant, post hoc rationalization for the punishment. Typically you punish when AN EXISTING law is broken. In this case, OP is arguing for new punishment based on new laws that were broken in the past. >My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment No. The devil is in the definition of 'poison the environment'. We have coal plants that 'poison the environment'. We have solar panels, that through manufacturing, maintenance and decommissioning, 'poison the environment'. >Corporations are not people. You can punish a corporation without any of that considerations. Who owns corporations? This "corporations are not people" is such a cliché. All the rights that corporations have stem from the rights of the owners. Corporations have rights, because the owners have rights. And who says the corporations are solely responsible? An unincorporated contractor may be responsible as well.
tsdlts 6y ago
"I don't think it's even relevant that it was not legal at the time". Imagine setting the precedent that the government can unilaterally decide to steal your property based on something your great grandfather did which wasn't even a crime. Do you not see how such a power might be abused in future when you can retroactively punish people for laws where the ink has yet to dry and that they never even committed?
- phkahler 6y ago
  Ex post facto laws are forbidden by the US constitution.
  - btilly 6y ago
    Only for criminal laws. Ex post facto laws allowing civil suits to be brought would be a different matter.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  That's a good point. Where's the line between knowingingly circumventing the spirit of the law by following the letter. For example Teflon has been replaced with chemically similar compounds that just aren't Teflon. It'll take decades for the studies to come in, in the mean time every human is being exposed to these chemicals in significant amounts. Then we have bpa, Neonicotinoids and other pesticides. We have cases where companies knowingly sell talc contaminated with asbestos for decades. We know these products kill people, we now the companies that make thenknow they are killing people and yet we can't claw back decades of fraudulently acquired profits and revenues? Imo, we should treat these behaviors like Nazis where everything they touched gets seized, even decades later. If that ruins some lives, well, whose worse off? The injured class or the child who inherited blood money?
  - tsdlts 6y ago
    Isn't this a regulation failure though? The fact that these chemicals who we don't know the full effects of are let to market is the problem. Preventative measures make more sense than criminalizing things only when we find out there's a problem. Also, what if the company has been acquired since then, is it still on the hook? What if they've since switched markets entirely? What if the company disbanded and the founders created a new company in the same market? There's no clean way to deal out punishment in a legally unambiguous or overreaching way.
bsenftner 6y ago
> Common sense should be the first law. That won't work, we have an entire political party in the United States hell bent on making sure people have no common sense. The GOP are a selfish cancer on civilization.
relativitypro 6y ago
1. This dumping was litigated in the 60s and happened before this 2. You can’t predict the future 3. This is the efficient market at work, don’t solve any problem until it becomes a social, political or environmental reality you can’t legalese your way around.
billyhoffman 6y ago
> I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at the time" The idea that a government can make something illegal and retroactively punish previous offenders is so colossally bad that in the United States the Founding Fathers wrote a prohibition against it into the Constitution. It's not an amendment, such as the right to free speech. They wrote it into Article 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  It's nowhere near as clear cut as you make it out. There are even plenty of examples in the page you link of justifiable ex post facto laws. For example war crimes. To be honest, because of the devastating long term effects of environmental pollution, and the deaths it has caused, I would quite happily argue that laws applying to it could be ex post facto. Crimes against future generations. I remember covering this in my philosophy degree and you can argue about it for hours. The example I remember was Nazi collaborators who reported on Jews or resistance fighters or even falsely accused neighbours. They got people killed, often maliciously, but what they did was perfectly legal at the time. Should they have gotten away with their complicity or should they have ex post facto laws brought against them? In the time of the US founders, the scale of damage a single human or company could conceivably do for profit was a lot less.
- gpm 6y ago
  It seems unlikely that this would be retroactive. It would probably fall under some pre existing statute like vandalism.
  - leptons 6y ago
    "Causing environmental catastrophe" seems like it should be covered by some kind of law in the last 70 or 80 years since DDT started production. They knew how toxic the substance was and how long-lived it was, there is no guessing game as to whether it was a bad idea, even at the time. It has more to do with tolerance of callousness and stupidity in previous decades than it has to do with there not being a specific law against dumping specifically DDT into the ocean.
vaccinator 6y ago
> Common sense should be the first law. That's how I thought it was when I was a kid... now I can only wish it was in some instances.
dahdum 6y ago
> It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea. > Common sense should be the first law They weren't hiding anything, the bulk went to government designated dumping sites. Shortcuts were taken, but it was known and accepted that these were being dumped into the ocean. Common sense at the time was "dilution is the solution to pollution".
b0tzzzzzzman 6y ago
Adding the latimes.com to my do not click or read mental list. So tired of pop ups or full on blocks just to glance at an article. Yeah I could easily resolve it.. So could the LA Times. Firefox Focus shouldnt need to allow trackers/cookies ... Miss the old days when people posted direct archive links.
mywacaday 6y ago
The tobacco and sugar industry were/are no different. Makes you wonder what else will be in same bucket in 20 years. Anyone care to hazard a guess?

by dusted 6y ago

relix 6y ago

One of the first paragraphs of the article: at the time it was considered dumping the barrels in the deep ocean was sufficient because the vast amount of water would dilute the chemical. The shortcut they took was that they did not go that far into the ocean but instead kept much closer to shore and dumped the barrels there, as well as punctured them when they floated. The discovery that's lamented is the "shortcut dumping ground". This does not fit with your jumped-to conclusions.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

sokoloff 6y ago

He didn’t, but suppose my grandfather legally (or even semi-legally) disposed of some DDT and left my father some money. My father later me some money. What’s the legal process to claw some of that money back to pay for the cleanup? Do you or the state have standing to sue me for something I never did, knew nothing about, and can’t reasonably answer to any specifics about?

meed2000 6y ago
Suing you to the extent of having to pay back whatever your father passed on to you, at least what's left of it would be reasonable, don't you think?
- sokoloff 6y ago
  No, I do not. If my grandfather left my father $X, my father left me $Y, at the very most the maximum would have to be the lesser of $X and $Y, decremented by the full cost of answering the lawsuit. This is problematic from a variety of practical angles, though, not just mathematical ones. It seems like something the forensic accounting lobby would salivate over. Should I be forced to defend a lawsuit because my great^6 grandfather owned slaves? (As far as I know, none did.) That’s more abhorrent than legally dumping chemicals that today’s common sense says should have been done differently.
  - dubcanada 6y ago
    But if you grandfather lost all of $X, your father would not have any of $Y (based entirely on $X being an amount they got from business dealings and $Y being a smaller amount which came from $X).
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      That strikes me as non-sensical. My father had his own earning, creating, and saving abilities.
      - pessimizer 6y ago
        Subtract it from what he would have earned if he had dumped the cash into an index fund, and we may find that his earning, creating and saving abilities were negative. His only profitable skill may have been having a father who dealt in slaves.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    Yes. The only think which could in anyway get close to legality would be to: - Legally hold a case against whoever did it and win it. (Can even legally have a case against a dead person?) This requires thinks to have been illegal when done. - Requiring that (likely dead) person to pay a fine based on existing law. - Arguing that whoever accepted an inheritance did inherit the fine, too. But as far as I know every point of this list has many legally questionable aspects. But what you MUST NOT do under any circumstances in a state of law is to not base judgement on law but arbitrary "I feel like this should be done" arguments. This is also why it's of upmost importance to fast adapt laws make them general instead of specific and not put any loop holes in them. Because then you can judge people to some degree even if they do something bad even if that specific think wasn't explicitly forbidden. (E.g. based on a generic law which makes any form of causing environmental damage in a context where it's reasonable to assume it the person should have been aware illegal. Sure you need some threshold, too. Else driving your care is illegal.)
charlesu 6y ago
This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  So punishment for everyone because someone, somewhere may have done something that decades later was made illegal? What kind of bizarre sadism is that?
  - FDSGSG 6y ago
    Who does estate tax punish?
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      The children of the people who managed to live out their days without going broke and becoming a burden on everyone else have less money than if their parents spent it all (presumably some of which would have been on them) and died with debt. The people who lived out their days without going broke lose because their property rights are being violated. Their property and their dollars that they have already paid taxes on should be theirs to give away as they see fit.
      - pessimizer 6y ago
        Not being entitled to something no one else is entitled to either is not a punishment, otherwise it's a punishment to me when I can't have your dad's money. Children aren't even entitled to their parents money in adulthood. Parents have to choose to give it to them either explicitly or by omission.
      - eesmith 6y ago
        If that's punishment for the children of the rich, then those children born to parents who are broke must also live a punished life, yes? If you are against children being punished because of the economics of their parents, then surely you are in support for a strong social safety network for children (universal subsidized/free childcare, including meals, and healthcare), yes? Which requires taxation or other funding sources. Which means we must ponder things like: how much of Sam Walton's $100 million inheritance did his children need in order to not be punished by a higher inheritance tax? $5 million each?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dusted 6y ago
Have you noticed how we generally do not bear any responsible for the wrongs of our parents? For instance, we are not forced to pay their debts, yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind? Seems asymmetrical to me. I'd say, yeah, I guess if you accepted the money, you should accept at least some of the responsibility for how they were amassed.
- unishark 6y ago
  The estate can be sued for debts. There is a time limit on filing claims though and there might be some limits on what they can come after in the sense they might be considered jointly-owned like a house if you're still living there.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind The kids of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are getting a miniscule amount of their fathers' wealth - how is that possible if supposedly they have a right to it? So you have it all backwards. The descendent are not entitled to the wealth of their parents or ancestors. The right to property (including disbursement through inheritance) is given to those that own it! The dollar I earn, I can do as a please with and has already been taxed.
  - bzbarsky 6y ago
    This is very country-dependent. In a number of European countries, the children are in fact entitled to some minimal share of the wealth of their parents (in France this share is between 50 and 75%, depending on the number of children for example), and what Buffet and Gates are doing would be illegal, as I understand it.
    - foobarian 6y ago
      I would not call 50-75% minimal :) Though I imagine you meant "minimum" - somewhat subtle difference.
effingwewt 6y ago
I'll do you one better. Suppose your forebears made the money illegally. Most certainly the ill-gotten gains must be clawed back. Are you seriously positing that you should keep illegally obtained money because you yourself didn't know? Punishment is another story, of course it wasn't your fault, so you won't do the time, but you certainly don't get to be rich off the proceeds of the crime. ie If I rob a bank and leave the money for my kids, they don't get to keep the money when the feds finally crack the case.

macspoofing 6y ago

The problem with your approach, besides the immorality of arbitrary post-hoc rationalization for punishment, is that it is not pragmatic. What's done is done, and you need people to get behind making it better. If you come out and push a policy that in part entails rooting and punishing those responsible (or even descendent of those responsible), you'll have people come out against it just for that reason and the environment will suffer. I would be one of those people, because I would never give that power to the kinds of people who would argue for the arbitrary execution of collective punishments on people today. If given the choice to fix environment/punish wrongdoers or do nothing, I would go with 'do nothing'. It's why 'The Green New Deal' is so terrible because instead of focusing on pragmatic solutions we can all get behind, it suffers from scope creep of socialist and progressive policies that have little to nothing to do with climate change and environment - and therefore I'd rather have none of it. To circle back on collective punishment - there's a reason why the North, after winning the civil war, has largely chose not to collectively punish the South - in much the same way that other regions which suffered through terrible civil wars where terrible crimes were committed, frequently choose to replace punishment of many of those responsible with something like reconciliation committees, where symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment.

Hokusai 6y ago
> post-hoc punishment post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. The alternative it to punish people before they commit a crime, and that seems immoral at best. > push a policy My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment. They just got caught now. > those responsible with something like reconciliation committees ... symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment. Corporations are not people. You can punish a corporation without any of that considerations.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. Maybe a little charitable interpretation is warranted? I clearly meant, post hoc rationalization for the punishment. Typically you punish when AN EXISTING law is broken. In this case, OP is arguing for new punishment based on new laws that were broken in the past. >My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment No. The devil is in the definition of 'poison the environment'. We have coal plants that 'poison the environment'. We have solar panels, that through manufacturing, maintenance and decommissioning, 'poison the environment'. >Corporations are not people. You can punish a corporation without any of that considerations. Who owns corporations? This "corporations are not people" is such a cliché. All the rights that corporations have stem from the rights of the owners. Corporations have rights, because the owners have rights. And who says the corporations are solely responsible? An unincorporated contractor may be responsible as well.

tsdlts 6y ago

"I don't think it's even relevant that it was not legal at the time". Imagine setting the precedent that the government can unilaterally decide to steal your property based on something your great grandfather did which wasn't even a crime. Do you not see how such a power might be abused in future when you can retroactively punish people for laws where the ink has yet to dry and that they never even committed?

phkahler 6y ago
Ex post facto laws are forbidden by the US constitution.
- btilly 6y ago
  Only for criminal laws. Ex post facto laws allowing civil suits to be brought would be a different matter.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
That's a good point. Where's the line between knowingingly circumventing the spirit of the law by following the letter. For example Teflon has been replaced with chemically similar compounds that just aren't Teflon. It'll take decades for the studies to come in, in the mean time every human is being exposed to these chemicals in significant amounts. Then we have bpa, Neonicotinoids and other pesticides. We have cases where companies knowingly sell talc contaminated with asbestos for decades. We know these products kill people, we now the companies that make thenknow they are killing people and yet we can't claw back decades of fraudulently acquired profits and revenues? Imo, we should treat these behaviors like Nazis where everything they touched gets seized, even decades later. If that ruins some lives, well, whose worse off? The injured class or the child who inherited blood money?
- tsdlts 6y ago
  Isn't this a regulation failure though? The fact that these chemicals who we don't know the full effects of are let to market is the problem. Preventative measures make more sense than criminalizing things only when we find out there's a problem. Also, what if the company has been acquired since then, is it still on the hook? What if they've since switched markets entirely? What if the company disbanded and the founders created a new company in the same market? There's no clean way to deal out punishment in a legally unambiguous or overreaching way.

bsenftner 6y ago

> Common sense should be the first law. That won't work, we have an entire political party in the United States hell bent on making sure people have no common sense. The GOP are a selfish cancer on civilization.

relativitypro 6y ago

1. This dumping was litigated in the 60s and happened before this 2. You can’t predict the future 3. This is the efficient market at work, don’t solve any problem until it becomes a social, political or environmental reality you can’t legalese your way around.

billyhoffman 6y ago

> I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at the time" The idea that a government can make something illegal and retroactively punish previous offenders is so colossally bad that in the United States the Founding Fathers wrote a prohibition against it into the Constitution. It's not an amendment, such as the right to free speech. They wrote it into Article 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law.

mattmanser 6y ago
It's nowhere near as clear cut as you make it out. There are even plenty of examples in the page you link of justifiable ex post facto laws. For example war crimes. To be honest, because of the devastating long term effects of environmental pollution, and the deaths it has caused, I would quite happily argue that laws applying to it could be ex post facto. Crimes against future generations. I remember covering this in my philosophy degree and you can argue about it for hours. The example I remember was Nazi collaborators who reported on Jews or resistance fighters or even falsely accused neighbours. They got people killed, often maliciously, but what they did was perfectly legal at the time. Should they have gotten away with their complicity or should they have ex post facto laws brought against them? In the time of the US founders, the scale of damage a single human or company could conceivably do for profit was a lot less.
gpm 6y ago
It seems unlikely that this would be retroactive. It would probably fall under some pre existing statute like vandalism.
- leptons 6y ago
  "Causing environmental catastrophe" seems like it should be covered by some kind of law in the last 70 or 80 years since DDT started production. They knew how toxic the substance was and how long-lived it was, there is no guessing game as to whether it was a bad idea, even at the time. It has more to do with tolerance of callousness and stupidity in previous decades than it has to do with there not being a specific law against dumping specifically DDT into the ocean.

vaccinator 6y ago

> Common sense should be the first law. That's how I thought it was when I was a kid... now I can only wish it was in some instances.

dahdum 6y ago

> It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea. > Common sense should be the first law They weren't hiding anything, the bulk went to government designated dumping sites. Shortcuts were taken, but it was known and accepted that these were being dumped into the ocean. Common sense at the time was "dilution is the solution to pollution".

b0tzzzzzzman 6y ago

Adding the latimes.com to my do not click or read mental list. So tired of pop ups or full on blocks just to glance at an article. Yeah I could easily resolve it.. So could the LA Times. Firefox Focus shouldnt need to allow trackers/cookies ... Miss the old days when people posted direct archive links.

mywacaday 6y ago

The tobacco and sugar industry were/are no different. Makes you wonder what else will be in same bucket in 20 years. Anyone care to hazard a guess?