When Risk Assessment is Risky: Predicting the Effects of Technology
October 31, 2012
Each new technology, regardless of benefits, brings its own risks. In many complex situations where there are multiple questions with poorly constrained answers, it is folly to expect that we can use formal risk assessments to guide current actions. Risk assessment can be done properly if it does not pretend a false omniscience, and is considered in its full political, economic, social, biological, and moral context.
This is a chapter from The ENERGY Reader: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth (2012).