PFAS: 3M pays $7.35bn and closes the file

According to Le Monde, the American group 3M will pay $7.35 billion in compensation in the affair of the "forever chemicals" (PFAS). The settlement was reached in a class action brought in South Carolina, which brings together more than 100,000 plaintiffs. Still according to the paper, it would cover "about 99%" of the claims, per the company itself. What we do not yet know: how the money is split between plaintiffs, the payment schedule, what the deal changes for clean-up, and whether the company accepts any liability. The wire report does not say.

So let's look at what we have. Our reading, obviously, not an established fact.

Seven billion and change is enormous for an individual. For a multinational, it is a line in the provisions. The figure arrives after decades of production, decades of profits, and it settles 99% of the claims. The word that matters is "settles". An out-of-court settlement is a price fixed once and for all on a harm that does not stop: these molecules are called "forever" precisely because they do not break down. The contract has a closing date. The contamination does not.

This is what ecological Marxism calls a metabolic rift. Accumulation always demands more materials transformed, and the cost of what is left over is pushed outward: onto water, soil and bodies. The economists speak of externalities, with that tidy word which avoids naming sick people. Here, it is local residents who had to organise themselves into more than 100,000 plaintiffs just to get a bill presented. The damage was socialised first, and discussed afterwards.

Look at the order of events. The company manufactures, sells, collects. The pollution seeps in. Residents notice, and then they need lawyers, experts, years. And at the end, a settlement that turns a collective harm into a sum divided file by file. That is not nothing: victims will be compensated, and nobody should turn their nose up at that. But compensation is not prevention. No court can replace a public authority that would have banned these substances before they were everywhere.

This is where the question becomes political. Planning means deciding in advance what one is allowed to produce. Judicial settlement does the opposite: it lets production happen, then puts a price on the damage. Polluters come out ahead, since the risk becomes predictable, therefore insurable, therefore provisionable. What the market calls internalising costs sometimes looks like a subscription to the nuisance.

What remains to be seen is who will pay for the long-term clean-up, and whether shareholders will bear a share comparable to that of the residents. The answers, when they come, will show whether these 7.35 billion dollars are a repair or simply an exit fee.