With the articles I’ve written for this newspaper and the research that always comes with it, I’ve begun to see a certain pattern in businesses when it comes to environmental protection; it’s that most large businesses could not care less.
Recently, the car manufacturing company Volkswagen has been under fire for using a program that cheats emission tests that decide if a car is environmentally friendly enough to drive. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have found that Volkswagen cars sold in the United States are able to tell when they are being tested, activating a program that changes their performance in order to pass. It has been reported that nearly 500,000 Volkswagen cars in the US have this program running in them, meaning that 500,000 cars are producing forty times the amount of emissions that were recorded during the tests. Not only is this a clear violation of business standards, it casts a very large, dark cloud over the relationship between big businesses and our environment.
The CEO of Volkswagen denies any involvement in this scandal, while pinning this on the software engineers. The fact of the matter is that this is his company and he is directly responsible for the employees his company hires; even if he truly did not have a part in this, he is still at fault. Diesel cars are bad for the environment to begin with, but half a million cars producing emissions above the legal standard make it that much worse.
What this boils down to is the lack of scrutiny these companies undergo; they have the potential to affect a large population and our environment. Cars from as early as 2009 have been reported as having this program, meaning this problem has been undetected in cars for way too long. This is something that the EPA should actively test for while raising the quality of the inspection and the accountability of the companies who cross these boundaries.
The EPA has the right to charge Volkswagen more than $37,000 per car, adding up to almost $18 billion worth of fines, along with forcing the company to recall the cars and fix them. This punishment is not drastic enough for a company that is worth nearly $100 billion, making nearly double the amount of the fine per year. Volkswagen needs to be held accountable for the environmental damage it has caused. While there is no clear way to measure this damage, this should not be just another scandal. The EPA has the potential to turn this into a lesson for other big businesses who value profit over the quality of our environment. Volkswagen should become an example in the fight for businesses to recognize global warming and climate change.
If Volkswagen was able to get away with this for so long, what is stopping other companies? It is clear that Volkswagen is willing to do whatever it takes to be the best, even if it means lying. Life comes second to these powerful entities, and that needs to stop. Companies need to become environmentally friendly and they need to do it fast because our planet is not going to wait for them to come around. We are almost at a point where climate change is irreversible, yet issues like this still happen. The EPA needs to set a precedent with this Volkswagen scandal and they need to demand that they be taken seriously.