Volkswagen recently admitted deliberate fraud in cheating engine emissions tests for — according to the latest reports — the better part of ten years. Fraud, that — according to the International Council on Clean Transportation — resulted in emissions of “smog-forming nitrogen oxides at 15 to 35 times higher than the US legal limit,” Vox reports.
What’s the upshot? More from Vox:
Using these figures, the extra pollution from Volkswagen’s US cars can be expected to lead to an additional 5 to 27 premature deaths per year. If we extrapolated worldwide to all 11 million vehicles, that would come to somewhere between 74 and 404 premature deaths each year.
Appalling though that is, the car manufacturer’s found an apologist and defender in general director at the Koch-financed (naturally) Mercatus Center, Tyler Cowen.
The professor penned a recent opinion for the New York Times, in which he unabashedly excuses not just the pollution and criminal fraud, but also the lives that were lost as a direct consequence of the car company’s illegal activity.
It’s unpleasant stuff, but worth an in-depth breakdown, because it says a lot about Koch-Think — about how the selfish Kochs unabashedly prioritize their profit margins over the public’s well-being.
Koch Prof.’s argument? Firstly: There are relatively worse, more lethal things than fraudulently-deflated nitrogen oxide emissions. In an attempt to minimize Vox’s 5 to 27 American deaths per-year estimate, Cowen writes, “Even within the United States, early deaths from air pollution have been estimated to run about 200,000 a year, in comparison to which the losses from the Volkswagen scandal are a rounding error.”
Koch-Think Exhibit A.: 5 to 27 American lives each year are “a rounding error.” But that’s not enough, or so Cowen seems to think — so he tries to price it out:
That would mean Volkswagen has been destroying perhaps around $100 million in value a year. To put that number in context, a single Picasso painting can cost that much, or a Hollywood studio might spend (waste?) that much money marketing a single blockbuster movie.
Ah, OK — so it’s just a single Picasso per year, then.
Callousness of the imagery aside, the comparison is instructive: People are just numbers for Charles and David Koch — numbers with a $ in front.
Cowen’s secondary strategy is to suggest individual polluters should be absolved of any culpability:
For the American [emissions-linked premature] deaths, however, the culprits are often cars, trucks and cooking and heating emissions, so there is no single, evil, easily identified wrongdoer at fault.
Koch-Think Exhibit B.: “There is no single, evil, easily identified wrongdoer at fault.” Because who knows who’s really to blame? This one’s got to be a Koch brothers favorite — the pollution giants need all the plausible deniability they can get.
Cowen’s column is cold and calculating, but it says a great deal about Koch-Think: “Illegal” is permissible. Culpability is negotiable. And human lives lost are “rounding errors” — collateral damage.
The only number that matters to Charles and David Koch is their bottom line.