Julia Shaw

In this book, the question was, are the people who are, for example, I use the Dieselgate Volkswagen case, which was all about lying about the emissions that were being produced by diesel cars, especially in the United States.

And so Volkswagen, for 10 years, produced these cars that had what was called a defeat device, which is a specific device that makes it look like the cars don't emit very much nitrous oxides, but they actually were way over the legal limit for pollution.

Now, why we should care about nitrous oxides is because there is no bottom limit of nitrous oxides that is healthy for the human lung.

So basically any amount is bad for you.

And it's related to things like asthma.

It's related to things like premature death.

It's related to all kinds of negative immediate health effects.

And

This is what was being pumped out of these cars at wildly high rates, 40 times the legal rates in some cases.

And they just lied about it.

They just covered it up.

They knew they didn't.

Well, some some of the people there's a big debate within the Volkswagen people who've been convicted.

A lot of people say, I didn't really know I'm being scapegoated.

Fine.

People knew the question how much and who that's up for debate.

But certainly people knew they had to create the thing.

They had to literally create this piece of software to put into the cars.

And then when they got caught, they lied about it.

And eventually the truth came out, but it was like 10 years later.