Sunday 28 July 2013

THE PRECAUTIONARY POLICY

There has been quite a lot of interest in a recent interview by Andrew Neil with the UK Climate Change Minister, Ed Davey who replaced Chris Huhne when he was sent to prison for falsely claiming his wife was driving when he was caught speeding. Here is a link to the interview along with an article by Neil justifying his robust questioning. Davey several times tried to justify his policies by saying that, even if the climate sceptics were right the cost of his policies was like an insurance policy. Neil pointed out that 400 billion pounds (being the government's estimate of the cost of the Climate Change Act) was a very expensive policy.  

I often think that we need to ask these ministers to look at other examples of risk that are faced by large numbers of people such as those living above or alongside earthquake fault lines. The San Andreas fault is a good example. The probability of a serious earthquake in the next 30 years is calculated as 70%, and yet there is no attempt to take any costly precautions to move people away from risk. 

1 comment:

  1. If the precautionary was applied correctly then the government would have told the environmental movement to get knotted; the environmental movement have never, ever, been right. Every scare is a mixture of half truths, exaggeration, wishful thinking and outright lies; acid rain, ALAR, PVC, Global Cooling, Global warming, etc etc.

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