> Why was it OK a few years earlier when the emissions regulations were more permissive? Were the people killed by those emissions not worthy for some reason?

> Why was it OK a few years earlier when the emissions regulations were more permissive? Were the people killed by those emissions not worthy for some reason? Of course not. What changed is that in addition to being wrong, what VW did after the laws were changed was also illegal. > Why were the new emissions targets the "right" ones? Why not make them half again and save even more lives? Eventually they will, I hope. Change to a carbon-neutral and clean-air future takes time, and we’re in a transition period right now. > In reality it's impossible to say that "1200 early deaths" were caused by VW emissions. I mean sure, 1200 is an estimate based on assumptions you could probably quibble with. We know air pollution kills people and we know VW’s cheating significantly increased air pollution. While acknowledging uncertainty, its still important to reason about how many people VW killed. > doesn't even show up as a blip in the normal variation of total mortality of any given year. This argument proves too much, by this reasoning nothing that kills less than 100k people/year is real. > How many early deaths were caused by California's refusal to allow or perform proper forest manangement? A lot!! And that’s really bad! But it’s an entirely different problem from this one.