China Says Serious Polluters Will Get the Death Penalty

formaggio writes "According to the Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government is now allowing courts to punish those who commit environment crimes with the death penalty. The new judicial interpretation comes in the wake of several serious environmental problems that have hit the country over the last few months, including dangerous levels of air pollution, a river full of dead pigs, and other development projects that have imperiled public health."

Comments

Re:Thou hast angered thy King

[Half-pint HAL]

...off with your head!

Seriously, China? WTF. Going back to medieval values here? Executing people for pollution?

They should be punished, but death is a bit much.

Yeah, the death penalty should be reserved for angry guys who stab one person with a knife. The civilised punishment for poisoning the water drunk by thousands of people is a slap on the wrist and a fine that looks large to newpaper readers but causes no material harm to the perpetrator....

Good? More like "Good Luck"

[Penguinisto]

I seriously doubt it will be implemented against any company or person that is sufficiently connected to the PRC government - this list would include pretty much every existing big company HQ'd in China.

Now potential competitors to the aforementioned companies, and anyone who the PRC government doesn't like? Oh hell yes it'll be implemented - even if the offender has to get a little governmental 'assistance' in generating pollution sufficient to warrant execution.

Re:Good? More like "Good Luck"

[Luckyo]

This isn't about littering. This is about high level leadership making choices for quick profit over sustainable methods. Historically and criminologically the only place that severe punishments ever worked has been at that level, because at that level people spend significant amount of consideration about risk/reward ratio.

It's the same reason why tough penalties don't work for petty crime or desperate people - they do not perform same evaluations with anywhere near the same seriousness or effort.

Re:Good? More like "Good Luck"

[femtobyte]

Excessively harsh penalties tend to be counter-productive because they are almost never carried out

Tell that to the people China executed over industrial-scale adulteration of milk with melamine in 2008:

A number of criminal prosecutions occurred, with two people being executed, another given a suspended death penalty, three others receiving life imprisonment, two receiving 15-year jail terms,[6] and seven local government officials, as well as the Director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) being fired or forced to resign.

(from Wikipedia)

Just because the government of our Megacorporate States of America would never dream about enforcing substantial penalties against our industrialist overlords for mass-murdering in the name of profit, doesn't mean China won't.

Re:Good? More like "Good Luck"

[WOOFYGOOFY]

No. Our court system doesn't have the capacity to individually prosecute all the loan officers who systematically lied to people in order to induce them to assume levels of debt and then walked away from what they had done.

No. Our court system doesn't have the capacity to individually prosecute all the bankers who systematically sold securities they knew would crash to people in order to induce them and then walked away from what they had done.

No. Our court system doesn't have the capacity to individually prosecute all the coke snorting analysts and traders who cooked up a complicated system of CDO and derivatives and pretended to understand same, all the while demanding to be free from regulation and which later took the whole economy down , the only repercussion that they got bailed out, doubled down on their bonuses and walked away from what they had done.

No. Our court system doesn't have the capacity to individually prosecute all the degenerate economists and lobbyists whose "free market" deregulatory theories of non-reality paved the grounds for the entire meltdown but who took no responsibility and walked away from what they had done.

FTFY

Ayn Rand was a amphetamine addicted speed freak who was sexually aroused by stories of rapists, child molesters and murders.

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2010/08/02/ayn-rand%E2%80%99s-superman-a-serial-killer-and-rapist/

http://www.athenstalks.com/ayn-rands-role-model-her-new-society-child-rapist-and-murderer

And those who fo9llow her are more of the same- antisocial personality disorders dressing themselves up as "philosophers"