Environmental  security

The Environmental Legacy of the Volkswagen Scandal

 It took a few days, but the inevitable happened Wednesday: Martin Winterkorn, the embattled C.E.O. of Volkswagen, stepped down in the wake of revelations that his company had equipped eleven million diesel-engine cars with software explicitly designed to cheat on emissions tests. The cars were set to recognize when they were being tested and, if they were, to abruptly begin emitting far less nitrogen oxide than they would on the road. Winterkorn had initially tried to ride out the scandal, and there’s no evidence (so far) that he knew about the software cheating.