Maybe calling it corporate bioterrorism (though a bit hyperbolic) could shift the overton window into somewhere closer to reality.
When Congress continually undermines and rolls back the agencies rules, who actually is to blame? The regulator? Congress? The voters?
The point I'm trying to make is that this scenario isn't as black and white as one might think. It's easy to be an absolutist about it when it's not your child burning to death.
For some reason, even though plenty of people are ready and willing to buy and sell murder, we still don't allow it.
Both can be bad and disallowed.
The US government knew it was bad, bought it, and then knowingly created the vast majority of contamination.
They then Sue manufacturers like 3M, while continuing to buy and use it and cause more contamination.
It is like buying a knife, stabbing a bunch of people, then suing the manufacturer while still running around stabbing people. It screams of misdirection.
All these articles in mainstream papers the last few years fomenting a panic about rising crime, calling it crime waves, etc. They are not talking about this. Because they don't mean this. We don't, for the most part, consider these to be crimes. Sometimes we may use that word, but you don't see the same flood of op-eds and public official press conferences calling for retributive justice.
Similar shit elsewhere. Shoplifting is a crime but hundreds of millions in wage fraud is just bad accounting, etc etc.
I believe it should be normalized that we speak about the most egregious, permanent, impossible to reckon with environmental pollution in the same way - that is - it ought to be a crime to pollute in the most serious ways and that crime out to be punished with state executions.