The fuck? No he shouldnt. Not everything can be solved with fines and jail time. Imagine everything this does manages to push the earth into a 100 year ice age, and it is irreversible on any other time scale. How much do you think that anything this company could do to repair it would be worth?

> Imagine everything this does manages to push the earth into a 100 year ice age

Looks like the plot of Snowpiercer, minus the perpetually moving train part.

I’m sure some startup is working on the train part already

Wilfred Industries was the first thing that came to mind for me. Seems unduly irresponsible to quench the heat entirely without first starting in the train, jeesh.

If you're not willing to accept risk in a business action, including legal risk, you should not do that action.

Culpability for damaging the environment should rest on the person who caused the damage.

This is basic stuff.

By this logic, a company should be free to launch a nuclear missile at Russia from US soil, as long as they pinky promise to accept legal liability for what follows, right?

When the potential damages of an action far outweigh what it is even conceivably possible that the entity doing the action could ever hope to repay, the standards for preventing that action change.

Not sure what your hypothetical proves other than that we agree that launching nukes is bad. :P

The company is still at fault and should still be legally punished within the local legal system. The difference is that the government has now got to accept liability on the international stage, since the company is incorporated in that country. The liability has "expanded", not changed from one entity to another.

>> The fuck? No he shouldnt. Not everything can be solved with fines and jail time.

On the contrary, companies and individuals should absolutely be responsible for the consequences of their actions.

They should, but I think parent means that companies should also be stopped from doing things before they damage the environment for generations... because all the fines in the world cannot fix that anymore.

Maybe it's less about the fixing part, and more about the redistribution of funds into the reelection coffers?

  > damaging the atmosphere in any measurable way, both him his company should be on the hook.

How about holding the hydrocarbon industry "on the hook" as well?

Are Exxon, Mobil, and others responsible for my car’s emissions because they extracted and refined the fuel? Or perhaps it’s Honda because they built it?

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s actually me who is responsible because I’m the one who bought it and decided to drive it.

Exxon and Mobil are part of the industry - note that I said industry and did not specify any particular level of participation.

Is Philip-Morris responsible for lung cancer, just because they purchased and refined the tobacco and sold it to consumers? It's the consumers who bought it and decided to smoke it.

Is it government investors and subsidies that prop up failing businesses? Nope, it's vooters.

Anyone who picked up smoking after around the early 1960s (when it was abundantly clear that smoking causes lung cancer)? Lung cancer they got from tobacco is on them, IMO.

> He should have the freedom to try

No, he absolutely should not. This is not some stupid B2C nonsense where if you "move fast and break things" you can always redeploy. If it turns out that these people are not as smart as they think they are, and that's my guess, do they have a better backup plan than saying "whoops" and walking away? I doubt it.

Hopefully, as others have pointed out, these people are not really trying to do what they say they're doing and it's just a publicity stunt to sell a variation on the old carbon offset scam.