New article on the ethics of risk online

Just a little heads-up that a few days ago I submitted a new article for a coming special issue on the ethics of risk, and has made the "preprint" (my msubmitted manuscript before peer review and editing) available for free reading and download. The article critically assesses the notion of basing an ethics of risk on the core assumption of "defeasible" basic individual moral rights against being exposed to risk by others, and the abstract runs like this:

This article critically assesses recent proposals that an ethics of risk developed independently of standard "factualistic" ethical theory should be based on the assumption of a basic moral right of individuals against being exposed to risks. I argue that core elements that have to be present if the notion of a moral right is to uphold the classic Rawlsian requirement of "taking seriously the distinction between persons" and of preserving the notion of waiving rights means that an ethics of risk based on this axiom will fail to address its most paramount issues. This, in turn, is due to the nature of the most ethically important risks to be collectively produced, and the subsequent consequence that an ethics of risk needs to be able to acknowledge the moral importance of security against risks as a public good. The article ends by charting three broad theoretical strategies that an ethics of risk may take to face up to this challenge, and discuss the place for rights within these respective theoretical landscapes with mostly skeptical results.

 The article itself can be accessed here and here.

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New paper on precaution and existential risk online for free reading and download

 Some time back, I had two posts here, with a slightly tongue-in-cheek comment on some ongoing academic campaigns and discussions for attending to small or very unclear risks with potentially very serious negative outcomes - so-called existential risks: here, and here. As reported later, this led to an invitation to debate the issue with Olle Häggström (mathematician and crossdisciplinary futurist), author of this new book on the existential risk issue, at The Institute of Future Studies in Stockholm, and Olle used a number of pages in his book to comment on the points I made in the blog posts. Parallel to all of this, I was invited by Sune Holm at the University of Copenhagen, who's been coordinating a nice series of international workshops on the ethics and philosophy of risk, to contribute to a coming special issue of the research journal Ethics, Policy and the Environment on the theme of the ethics of precaution, an area that readers of this blog know that I'm deeply engaged in since many years. Happy to accept, I took the opportunity to start off from the blogposts and the ensuing debates to clarify what existential risks means for the ethics of precaution, and to attend to some quite difficult theoretical issues left hanging in my own theory of the ethics of precaution and risk, published 5 years ago. I have now submitted my contribution, and the so-called preprint, that is my submitted manuscript before peer review, etc. can be freely read and downloaded here and here.

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Is Human Extraterrestial Migration Banned by (Monotheistic) Religious Ethics – And Maybe Some Secular Too?

As you know, the ethical assessment and political evaluation of technological risk is one of my main areas of interest, and a focus of one of my main research publications, the book The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk. In that book, I consider a number of futuristic scenarios to illustrate and test my theoretical ideas. One thing that I'm not considering, however, is the vision of human migration to other planets. But this very scenario has now become the topic of some inflamed debating between  a visionary entrepreneurial endeavour to such an effect and the opinions of highly authoritative religious scholars.

As infantile, unrealistic and uneconomic they may seem, there are actual plans for having humans migrate from Earth to other planets – Mars being one in immediate focus, for instance through the initiative Mars-One. I'm one of those who think that, while it may be prudent to actually work on such contingencies (this is one reason why I have accepted to be scientific adviser to the Lifeboat Foundation), making it the primary priority seems to me to be an immoral waste of resources in light of more pressing needs where there are no technological barriers for doing good (such as securing clean drinking water and sewerage installations for all people globally, or fixing the rules of global trade to be at least somewhat less to the disbenefit of those needing it the most). I don't, however, host any principled objection to the idea of human extraterrestial migration – to my mind it's about needs, likelihoods of success and priorities in light of what stakes are up for humanity at the moment.

Others, however, seem to take a more rigid stance. Thus, apparently, the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates has issued a fatwa (i.e., a scholarly, allegedly authoritative interpretation of the tenets of Islam), according to which the idea of a one-way trip to Mars in the Mars-One style, would be too risky and uncertain to be allowed under the ban against recklessly endangering human life:

The committee, presided by Professor Dr Farooq Hamada, said: “Protecting life against all possible dangers and keeping it safe is an issue agreed upon by all religions and is clearly stipulated in verse 4/29 of the Holy Quran: Do not kill yourselves or one another. Indeed, Allah is to you ever Merciful.”

Apparently, the strong wording of these learned clerics is partly motivated by the fact that...

Thousands of volunteers, including some 500 Saudis and other Arabs, have reportedly applied for the mission which costs $6 billion. The committee indicated that some may be interested in travelling to Mars for escaping punishment or standing before Almighty Allah for judgment.
 “This is an absolutely baseless and unacceptable belief because not even an atom falls outside the purview of Allah, the Creator of everything.  This has also been clearly underscored in verse 19&20/93 of the Holy Quran in which Allah says: There is no one in the heavens and earth but that he comes to the Most Merciful as a servant. (Indeed) He has enumerated them and counted them a (full) counting.”

The Mars-One initiative has chosen to respond to this assault on their project (and, I strongly suspect, on its financial viability) not primarily by ridicule or resentment, but in kind, arguing that the mission is in the genral spirit of what some famous muslim explorers have done in the past (which is not really relevant to the argument) and, more interestingly, that central parts of Islamic teaching would rather seem to condone the planned mission, and that the implied risk assessment of the GAIAE committee is flawed from an intellectual perspective:

Space Exploration, just like Earth exploration throughout history, will come with risks and rewards. We would like to respectfully inform the GAIAE about elements of the Mars One mission that reduce the risk to human life as much as possible. It may seem extremely dangerous to send humans to Mars today, but the humans will be preceded by at least eight cargo missions. Robotic unmanned vehicles will prepare the habitable settlement. Water and a breathable atmosphere will be produced inside the habitat and the settlement will be operational for two years, even before the first crew leaves Earth. Each of the cargo missions will land in a system very similar to the human landing capsule. An impressive track record of the landing technology will be established before risking human lives. It should be noted that the moon lander was never test on the Moon before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed successfully on the Moon.
If we may be so bold: the GAIAE should not analyze the risk as they perceive it today. The GAIAE should assess the potential risk for humans as if an unmanned habitable outpost is ready and waiting on Mars. Only when that outpost is established will human lives be risked in Mars One's plan. With eight successful consecutive landing and a habitable settlement waiting on Mars, will the human mission be risk-free? Of course not. Any progress requires taking risks, but in this case the reward is 'the next giant leap for mankind'. That reward is certainly worth the risks involved in this mission.

It remains to be seen what the GAIAE committee will respond. The Mars-One reasoning isn't exactly fail-safe, since it comes down to how the importance of the mission is weighed in light of the cost and what that money could have been used for instead and what those alternative activities might have implied in terms of truly valuable gain and risk to human life and limb. My own theory would probably give the Mars-One option rather low priority in such light, I dare to say without having made any more precise analysis (which, provided the wide range of uncertainty, I would doubt to be possible anyway). And I dare venture the guess that my theory is more allowing to technological adventure than any of the Abrahamitic religions.

For this is my final reflection, inspired by an aside-comment by my colleague Anders Herlitz: The reaction of the Islamic scholars of the UAE is a pretty logical one in light of the strong stance against human taking of human life, not least one's own, in the scriptures of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. As noted by the pioneer theorist of the ethics of risk, theologian Hans Jonas, this stance would seem to warrant a high degree of risk aversion as soon as such scenarios are among the options. For sure (I would say, it's more uncertain if Jonas would be prepared to follow me), taking such risks may – as Mars-One suggests – be justified, but it takes special considerations and circumstances for that to be the case. In particular, venturing on risky missions just for the hell of it, or for making money, or for "doing something different", or for feeling important, or for exapanding human boundaries, or somesuch would in fact not seem to suffice. What would seem to be necessary is the presence of some realistic threat to human life or humanity, where the activity in question would be a necessary or, at least, reasonable response of escape. At the very least, the story of the Ark of Noah would seem to suggest as much.

So, my wonder is really why the GAIAE committee is so alone in its critical response to the Mars-One initiative. Where's the other islamic leaders? Where's the Pope? Where are the Lutheran Arch Bishops or the many preachers of the free churches Where are the chief Rabbis? And, since there are also secular versions around of the stance to the importance of human life, in particular one's own – where's the penetrating analyses from the Future of Humanity Institute and the Institute of the Ethics of Emerging Technology of the Kantian and (late) Wittgensteinian positions on this matter, just to mention the most obvious ones that would seem to qualify?

(Now Updated with open access link) Review in Theoria of The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk

Update 2013-02-17: I discovered today, that Theoria has chosen to make this review available for all, free of charge, so-called open access. To read it in full, follow the link given below, or access a pdf directly here.

My book on the moral basis of the precautionary principle that was published by Springer in 2011, The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk, is very favorably reviewed over four pages in the latest issue of the renowned philosophy journal, Theoria. To read the entire review, written by Niklas Möller, you need access to reach behind the Wiley paywall (e.g. through a university library) or a subscription of your own, and in that case just click here. If you lack this sort of access, clicking the just mentioned link can still let you sample the first page of the four of the review.

Of course, besides describing the content of the book, the reviewer also launches some criticism – as should indeed be the case in any serious academic review. However, the overall assessment is very favorable, evidenced by these quotes of the sections where Möller sums up his overall evaluation:

Munthe’s book is a well-argued contribution to the PP [i.e. precautionary principle] debate, putting neglected justificatory and methodological questions at the forefront. His many discussions of alternative accounts as well as his drawing out the consequences of his own suggestion in practical cases give the reader a thorough, holistic sense of what justification of PP amounts to. /..../ Munthe’s main case, his argumentation for the requirement of precaution as a moral norm, is convincing and puts a strong pressure on too narrow alternative suggestions on how it should be perceived and justified, and he launches a plausible defence of its practical usability.

 Should you be interested in acquiring the book as hardcopy or pdf, this can be done through the Springer book webpage above or any major online book seller. If you have university library access, chances are the library has a Springer license and in that case you can access and download the e-book through that channel. If you're interested in the issue of the precautionary principle and its moral and political justification, as well as the ethics and politics of environmental and technological risk in general, you may be interested in a lengthy review article written by myself on exactly that topic, including some further ideas, considerations and contributors over and above those discussed in my book, which will be appearing the the very soon to be released International Encyclopedia of Ethics, under the heading of "precautionary principle".

USA Willingness to Abandon 2°C Target in Climate Talks Opens for Negative Spirals and Moral Criticism

Just the other day, the US government went public with an official willingness to abandon the henceforth solidly agreed 2°C target in global climate policy talks. It did so rather slippery, through a public address by the Special Envoy for Climate Change, Todd Stern, at Dartmouth College. Not a public declaration by the President, or at least a minister. But nevertheless a clear signal, since it is since some time posted at the US Dept. of State's webpage. 

The declaration of "flexibility" with regard to the 2°C target has been met with criticism. But I wonder why the critics all act so surprised. This, I would claim, is an expected outcome of the way that the COP climate policy summits have been going over the last few years. However, I also think that the "flexibility" is far more deadly than what is implied by the criticism and for this, I have support from some of my own latest research!

Some of you may have noted my yearly comments on the global climate policy talks, the so-called COP, from no. 15, 16 and 17. Since last time in Durban, it was agreed that the COP summit will not meet again until 2015, and since that agreement was a result of the continued refusal of a few powerful players (the US and China in particular) to yield on their position to have others pay for the inescapable burdens of managing the climate change that is already unavoidable and preventing or, at least, limiting further such change by halting the continuing rise of the global mean temperature to one of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. In my last comment, I elaborated on why the 2°C target is such an important cornerstone of the COP talks:

...the 2° target, it must be understood, is not in any way magical or set in stone. In fact, some claims it to be a much too allowing goal. Moreover, the target is rather a range than an exact temperature, since the climate models necessarily embody rather drastic uncertainties. But the 2°C is of importance for two reasons. First, it is one of the very few substantial things about climate policy that the global community has been able to agree on. Second, it approximates the limit of our empirical knowledge from the past and, thus, our basis for prediction, preparation and adaption in face of the various changes that increases of the global mean temperature bring. A bit simplified, beyond 2°C, what we have is basically mathematics and fantasy – something that is amply illustrated by the predictive models in climate change research. Our ability to prepare for whatever will be coming – and thus to be capable of reversing the process without considerable higher cost to human life and well-being – becomes drastically weakened.

Already in Durban, there was a clear tendency that some parties wanted, nevertheless, to abandon the 2°C target, and I warned that the yielding of, especially European countries to the pressures from USA, China and a few other parties with high short-term stakes, to postpone further yearly talks (where this focus on short-term self-interests of these countries were being painfully exposed), lest they would abandon the talks altogether, would further such an end result, since:

...we may expect no, repeat no, preparation on the political home-fronts of these countries for a climate deal in 2015 which implies making actual concessions and taking on actual commitments. This, I claim, is the main result of the strategy of the EU and the rest of the world in Durban.

 Why is this so? Because in the game of Chicken played by the US, China and their unholy group of allies (for the analysis showing that this is what they are doing, see my first COP post)...

...Europe and the rest of the Kyoto-protocol signing countries are allowing themselves to become what game theorists know as money pumps – someone who is applying a strategy that makes one systematically vulnerable to making deals that sum up to a loosing position, while one's counterpart is systematically winning, although each singular deal may look like a winner. Giving in to blackmail (which is, effectively, what Europe is doing in the climate policy negotiation game) is a prime example.

If not clear before, the declared "flexibility" on the 2°C target makes this as evident as one may wish. For the 2°C target is, as a matter of fact even more important than what has been set out above. For what the agreement on the 2°C target stands for is the idea that a climate policy agreement is supposed to limit further rises of the global temperature and, hence, limit the extent and costs (in monetary as well as human and environmental terms) of climate change, by limiting CO2 and other green house gas emissions. It is the global acceptance of that ultimate goal which has then created the necessity of negotiating of how to distribute the, no doubt, substantial costs of reaching it. It is, thus, within this frame that the above mentioned game of Chicken has been played, with the outcome that none of the institutional frameworks created at the COP meetings and mentioned by Todd Stern will have any substantial impact on climate change. Therefore, what Stern argues in his Dartmouth address is that the difficulties of reaching an agreement in such a context means that keeping to the 2°C target will mean that one forfeits one's chance of substantial global political agreement:

For many countries, the core assumption about how to address climate change is that you negotiate a treaty with binding emission targets stringent enough to meet a stipulated global goal – namely, holding the increase in global average temperature to less than 2° centigrade above pre-industrial levels – and that treaty in turn drives national action. This is a kind of unified field theory of solving climate change – get the treaty right; the treaty dictates national action; and the problem gets solved. This is entirely logical. It makes perfect sense on paper. The trouble is it ignores the classic lesson that politics – including international politics – is the art of the possible.

However, while I agree with Stern that the situation that has ensued in global climate policy negotiations is grave, the cure he proposes to my mind threatens to make the patient much more ill than if, simply, Europe and other states pressing for substantial concessions stood up a little bit better. And, as an aside, perhaps this is what Stern senses too, thus continuing the Chicken-playing by saying the things he does, hoping that the other side will thereby look at a hard line for insisting on such concessions as a hopeless strategy.But, nevertheless, if Stern would have his way, what would that imply? Would we then see a chance

In my recent book on the ethical basis of the precautionary principle, The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk (Springer, 2011), I discuss the implications of the theory of the ethics of risk that I develop and defend on the example of climate change policy (chapter 6, section 6.2.1). A primary result of that analysis that is no way dependent on my own particular theory is that there is an intimate interplay between ethically analysing the issues of:

(1) how much of risk and damage due to climate change that may be accepted in view of the costs of preventing or reducing them and available options, and

(2) how the costs of reducing or preventing risk and damage due to climate change should be distributed between concerned parties.

This since, first, the answer to (1) will partly depend on what latitude of acceptable options that is available with regard to (2). The more constrained we are with regard to how the costs of action (and inaction) may be distributed, the less the room for arguing in favor of a lower acceptance level for climate change related risk and damage. This since there will be less practical ways of pulling an actual implementation of such a lower level off without having to distribute costs in unacceptable ways. Second, how (1) is set will dictate, under most minimally reasonable ideas of how (unavoidable) costs and harm should be distributed between parties, what solutions of (2) that become available. When more is at stake, issues about distribution becom more pressing and increasingly minor details (especially regarding already burdened, especially unfavored or otherwise especially vulnerable parties) will become more relevant.

This mutual dependence is mirrored by what seems like a very plausible social scientific assumption with regard to how events may in fact be expected to unfold: The lower the actual acceptance level for climate change related risk and damage is set, the more difficult it will be to reach actual consensus on how to distribute the costs of implementing such a level, and the farther away from consensus with regard to (2) that concerned parties perceive themselves to be, the less likely that they will agree on a lower level with regard to (1). The first is what has already been demonstrated by the COP failures. The second dependence, however, although I predicted it in my book, has so far not been demonstrated. That is, up to Todd Stern's announcement of the new "flexible" US view of the 2°C target. For this is what Stern's (and the USA's) new stand boils down to: allowing more of risk and damage due to climate change in order to have a less difficult situation agreeing to a distribution of the costs of the steps taken to limit the risks and damage of climate change. In straight terms: those that will be harmed by climate change will be harmed more and some that would not have been harmed otherwise will be now be harmed, since the US decides to accept that rather than open its massive purse just a tiny bit more.

In my book, I argue that reasoning in patterns like Stern here does is both morally and rationally indefensible (quite apart from its role in extending the blackmail operation of the Chicken playing henceforth forming the US main strategy), since it tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy situation. If the US says that the formerly agreed upper limit on green house gas emissions (in terms of a limit to the rise of the mean global temperature) is open for revision upwards, parties will be less prepared to accept that limit (since they can see the opportunity of having to carry less costs for limiting emissions thereby created), and thus the case for the Stern stance is strengthened, since the 2°C target does not (due to his having made the initial statement) enjoy such a strong support after all. We can now see how this process may continue according to a so far unknown logic of development, where eventually the difficulties of agreeing on the distribution of costs will be so easy to overcome so that no significasnt party see any need for pressing for a further upward adjustment of the global emission or mean temperature limit. Will that be 4, a 5, a 6 or perhaps a 7°C limit? We don't know. All we know is that people will reap the harvest in the next few hundred years in terms of much more climate change related damage and and exponentially worse risks.

All of this is exactly why responsible politicians once upon a time made the 2°C agreement – so that something could be kept out of the negotiations, knowing what would otherwise ensue, thus creating a basis for a result that would actually save people from harm to a significant extent. But to do that, global politics needs to finally confront the distribution issue seriously, rather than dancing around it in a ritual of looking the other way that has been the rule of the COP summits. This is what the Stern address teaches us. It needs to disprove Stern's claim that doing that within the framework of a morally responsible resolve to limit the damage of climate change is not within "the art of the possible". In my book, I sketch one contribution to such an endeavor in the form of a way of solving the distribution issue (answering question (2) above) without invoking any of those traditional disagreements over what is just and fair that are currently poisoning and paralyzing global climate policy talks with useless ideology. It is possible, I argue, to infer a solution to the question of how to distribute the costs just by having each party work out what would be the most morally responsible decision for them to make in terms of the risks and chances, harms and benefits and available options. The total result of those solutions of each party will provide a distribution where no one will have a good reason to complain, while at the same time the resulting agreement may actually do some substantial good in terms of prevention and reduction of climate change related damage and risk.

My Response to Priscilla Coleman's Article on Abortion and Mental Health Now Online at the British Journal of Psychiatry

Yep, finally, my response to Priscilla Coleman's meta-analysis that claims there to be a causal link between having an abortion and suffering subsequent mental health problems is online at the British Journal of Psychiatry website. The response targets not only Coleman, but also a number of other contributors, who have all made simplistic claims about what practical conclusions to draw from Coleman's study.

I didn't make the selection of responses that are featured in the printed issue 1 of BjP for 2012, but then again I didn't expect to, since my contribution does not address the scientific quality of of Coleman's meta-analysis.

My earlier posts on Coleman's article and the debate it has inspired can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.

Read Entire Chapt. 1 of My New Book Online for Free

Springer, who publish my new book on the ethical basis of the precautionary principle, The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk, has permitted Google books to make the entire first chapter available for online reading. Here it is embedded:




And if you rather prefer that, here's a link to the Google books site. And here's a presentation of the book from a recent post, with links for sampling other chapters and look at the index.

My Book on the Ethical Basis of the Precautionary Principle is Out!

So, some shameless self-promotion:

My book on the ethical basis of the precautionary principle, The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk, is now officially released by Springer. To view the table of contents, sample substantial portions of chapters and look up names or subjects in the index, click on the button below:

 Here's the content summary in all of its glory:

Since a couple of decades, the notion of a precautionary principle plays a central and increasingly influential role in international as well as national policy and regulation regarding the environment and the use of technology. Urging society to take action in the face of potential risks of human activities in these areas, the recent focus on climate change has further sharpened the importance of this idea. However, the idea of a precautionary principle has also been problematised and criticised by scientists, scholars and policy activists, and been accused of almost every intellectual sin imaginable: unclarity, impracticality, arbitrariness and moral as well as political unsoundness. In that light, the very idea of precaution as an ideal for policy making rather comes out as a dead end. On the basis of these contrasting starting points, Christian Munthe undertakes an innovative, in-depth philosophical analysis of what the idea of a precautionary principle is and should be about. A novel theory of the ethics of imposing risks is developed and used as a foundation for defending the idea of precaution in environmental and technological policy making against its critics, while at the same time avoiding a number of identified flaws. The theory is shown to have far-reaching consequences for areas such as bio-, information- and nuclear technology, and global environmental policy in areas such as climate change. The author argues that, while the price we pay for precaution must not be too high, we have to be prepared to pay it in order to act ethically defensible. A number of practical suggestions for precautionary regulation and policy making are made on the basis of this, and some challenges to basic ethical theory as well as consumerist societies, the global political order and liberal democracy are identified

Thank you for your kind attention!

Nuclear Power and Climate Change – No Easy Fix

The massive earthquake and following tsunami hitting Japan yesterday, today had a first serious secondary effect in the form of a large explosion in a nuclear power plant close to Fukushima, causing physical injuries and severe structural damage – thus adding to an already quite serious situation of other nuclear power plants in the same area:



This picture, circulated by global news media illustrates the amount of damage to the external structure caused by the explosion:

The problems started already yesterday, when the tsunami caused electrical failures that incapacitated the technological installments meant to control the temperature of another plant in the Fukushima area. Already then, radioactivity was emitted and tens of thousands of people where relocated for protection, and plans for venting radioactive gas into the air to release the pressure inside the reactor was made official. The explosion in the second plant means that the problems have significantly escalated, it now includes five nuclear reactors and the evacuation scale has been  doubled; now to cover a 20 km radius around the plants. If not before, both plants' cooling systems are now declared completely out of order. The Japanese agency for radiation protection has gone public with warnings that there is a risk of a bona fide "meltdown" – i.e. a Chernobyl type development that may cause massive radioactive emissions and ruin a large area around the plant for any sort of human activity or habitation for a very long period of time. This, however, is denied by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, that owns and runs the plants. According to them, the technology is of a sort that will stop the process of nuclear fission as the temperature rises – that is, assuming – I would personally like to add – that no vital parts of this technology has been damaged due to the precedent events. In any case, there will be substantial emissions of radioactivity due both to the explosion and the venting, and factors such as wind conditions will determine how this will immediate affect japanese people. Reports and further footage of all of this can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here (in my own country, here, here and here) and in numerous other places. And here is an excellent link for keeping yourself updated on this matter.

Now, besides all of the tragedy directly caused by these and the related events, this development also provides some important perspectives on the recent return in Western countries of  strong nuclear power advocacy and support in view of the threats created by climate change due to green house gas emissions. This angle has revived the political leverage of the nuclear power lobby's old environmentalist argument, now beefed up with supporting claims about technology that guarantees that no Chernobyl scenario would be possible even if there was to be serious incidents in the plants. In my forthcoming book, The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk, I assess this argument with rather pessimistic conclusions. Seen in a larger context, where the not only immediate security but also the serious long-term waste problems of nuclear energy are taken into account, there are much better alternatives for dealing with the challenge of ensuring energy production in the face of climate change. However, the recent events in Japan adds a further layer of doubt regarding the idea of nuclear power as the easy fix of climate change problems.

The events we now see unfolding in Japan need to be viewed simultaneously through four lenses: (1) Japan is a vastly rich and technologically well-developed country and its nuclear technology can therefore be assumed to be top notch, (2) for historical reasons, Japan is well-known to host a very demanding security culture when it comes to nuclear power, (3) what has broken down the security measures in this case are concentrated powers of nature, and (4) one of the main aspects of climate change scenarios are about how familiar patterns of where and when concentrations of such powers, resulting in events severely threatening human life and infrastructure, may change in virtually unpredictable ways.

Now, for sure, climate change will not directly affect the movements of Earth's shell – the basic cause of earth quakes and tsunamis. However, it does massively affect large-scale patterns of interaction between water, air, land and biological life (whether or not this may interact with the basic geological forces causing earth quakes, I don't know). I'm not any sort of expert in the field, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the basic uncertainties that this creates regarding temperature and sea levels, weather patterns, and so on. This adds severe complications to the context of any risk-benefit analysis of the idea of the developed world securing its access to energy in the face of climate change through a vast expansion of nuclear power. We have seen what one single earth quake and an ensuing tsunami means in a case where none of the excuses about lax security measures or dated technology wielded in the Chernobyl case are accessible. In the face of the severe uncertainties regarding very powerful concentrations of natural powers created by climate change, how can we in a responsible and cost-effective way decide such things as the proper construction of nuclear power plants, their location, and a suitable system for managing the waste problem?

It is not given, of course, that the answer to these questions have to be that we cannot. However, the apparently tempting piece of chocolate made up of the idea of managing climate change while not having to pay much of a price in terms of energy production cannot be taken seriously until thorough risk analysis is undertaken. Such an analysis needs to not – as is otherwise commonplace – assume basic patterns of nature making up the context of factors determining the security of any sort of installation to be static or foreseeable as linear predictions. It has to address the uncertainty regarding these factors created by climate change scenarios head on, as it has to include the costs needed to guarantee sufficient security in the light of such uncertainties.

Outline of the future and forthcoming books

As some of you may have noticed, I have not posted anything here for a while. Not that I lack things to post, but the main purpose of this blog is not primarily to relay interesting info or news items, but to present my own reactions to various events or phenomena after some amount of due reflection. So the last month or so, a series of deadlines and other duties have impeded me from develop some themes I've been thinking about. Here are some of the topics on which you may be hearing from me in the not too distant future: the "new" European political nationism/racism/etnocentrism, the nature and models of citizenship, liberalism and responsibility, the need for enhancement of human moral capacities.

In addition, I take the opportunity to plug two books that are due to appear next year (that's two of the deadlines I referred to above, both published by Springer (in different series):

 Niklas Juth & Christian Munthe: Serving Society or Serving the Patient? The Ethics of Screening in Health and Medicine. Building on classic works in the field, this book attempts to present a seminal overarching grip on the ethical issues actualised when medical testing methods are proactively offered to great masses of people. Lots of facts and detailed analysis, but we also launch a new model for ethical analysis suitable for this field of medical and health practice, and for other activities which in a similar way overlap different basic sectors of society.

Christian Munthe: The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk. This book presents the first in-depth ethical analysis of the idea of the Precautionary Principle and, in course of that, a seminal approach to the ethical analysis of imposing, preventing and distributing environmental and technological risks.

Stay tuned!