For the state and the pachyderms called corporations are but the head and tail sides of the same coin. The President comes from a Texas family so avarious for oil that in 1991, when his father was the occupant of the Oval Office, the state squandered huge public resources to brutalitalise the Middle East to secure oil to feed the maws of corporate industry. Of course, the big media being part of that family could not put it that way. Apologists often argue that the corporations do not do it wilfully, that, if they cause any destruction, it is only because they cannot foretell the environmental consequences of deploying any technique. This is obvious.
Environmental law is flouted deliberately and often defiantly.
But profit hunters think only of the present. They are never really interested in the future, even of their own children. That is the point Sagan is making on cancer. But, as I say, overnight profit is what makes corporations tick. These is no thought for posterity even where they know their present activities mean sure future death for their own children.