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It shocked me at first too, but on thinking about it the policy a bit more I think it's actually quite reasonable. Environmental pollution directly results in

It shocked me at first too, but on thinking about it the policy a bit more I think it's actually quite reasonable. Environmental pollution directly results in increased human death (due to cancers/etc), and GP wants the people responsible to be liable for those deaths. Under this scheme, accidental pollution would then be the equivalent of manslaughter, and intentional pollution would be the equivalent of murder. I'm personally not a fan of executing murderers, but many states in the US execute them.

garmaine 6y ago
Most of the civilized world has gotten rid of the death penalty, even in murder cases. Even those that still do have capital punishment generally do NOT apply it to manslaughter cases. Your jump from manslaughter to murder is not legally justified, unless the polluter caused environmental damage explicitly for the purpose of killing people, which I'm pretty sure is not what you are describing. But even setting that aside, we are talking about capital punishment for a crime, the evidence for which is statistical and divorced from the actual crime itself. The managers who make the decision to pollute aren't on the scene leaving their fingerprints. As this is not something for which there is a smoking gun proof of culpability, which makes it ripe for abuse. Do you really think the people who called the shots are going to be the one on the executioner's block, or will it be some mid-level fall guy? And what about manufactured controversy? How difficult would it be to make a spurious connection between some unlikeable business and an environmental disaster, getting a jury to give that business' managers the death penalty? What an upgrade to cancel culture: now you can get your opponents legally murdered. Finally, the actual suggestion here is that C-level leadership and board members be executed for crimes their company commits. Note this means that someone lower down in the organization could commit a crime which causes the CEO or board members to be executed. So we're talking about killing people who might not even have been involved in the decision at all! I stand by my prior description of this proposed society as dystopia.

garmaine 6y ago

Most of the civilized world has gotten rid of the death penalty, even in murder cases. Even those that still do have capital punishment generally do NOT apply it to manslaughter cases. Your jump from manslaughter to murder is not legally justified, unless the polluter caused environmental damage explicitly for the purpose of killing people, which I'm pretty sure is not what you are describing. But even setting that aside, we are talking about capital punishment for a crime, the evidence for which is statistical and divorced from the actual crime itself. The managers who make the decision to pollute aren't on the scene leaving their fingerprints. As this is not something for which there is a smoking gun proof of culpability, which makes it ripe for abuse. Do you really think the people who called the shots are going to be the one on the executioner's block, or will it be some mid-level fall guy? And what about manufactured controversy? How difficult would it be to make a spurious connection between some unlikeable business and an environmental disaster, getting a jury to give that business' managers the death penalty? What an upgrade to cancel culture: now you can get your opponents legally murdered. Finally, the actual suggestion here is that C-level leadership and board members be executed for crimes their company commits. Note this means that someone lower down in the organization could commit a crime which causes the CEO or board members to be executed. So we're talking about killing people who might not even have been involved in the decision at all! I stand by my prior description of this proposed society as dystopia.