The way to maintain consequentialism is to focus on incentives. We try to minimize the chances of an environmental disaster by holding the company that causes one financially responsible for its consequences. That way they have the proper incentives to make their operations as safe as possible, and to avoid any operations are too inherently risky.
These kinds of disasters generally have lots of bad direct and indirect consequences, and it’s often not possible to make the company pay for all of the costs, so if a few things that they shouldn’t really be held responsible for get added to their bill that might not be such a bad thing.
The way to maintain consequentialism is to focus on incentives. We try to minimize the chances of an environmental disaster by holding the company that causes one financially responsible for its consequences. That way they have the proper incentives to make their operations as safe as possible, and to avoid any operations are too inherently risky.
These kinds of disasters generally have lots of bad direct and indirect consequences, and it’s often not possible to make the company pay for all of the costs, so if a few things that they shouldn’t really be held responsible for get added to their bill that might not be such a bad thing.