Catastrophe: Risk and Response (Paperback)

by Richard A. Posner (Author) "The 1918-1919 flu pandemic is a reminder that nature may yet do us in..." (more)
Key Phrases: strangelet disaster, abrupt global warming, strangelet scenario, United States, Kyoto Protocol, Soviet Union (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
During his career as a federal appeals court judge, Posner has become a prominently outspoken commentator on a variety of legal and cultural issues. Reading Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake, for example, was the springboard for this reflection on the current lack of plans for dealing with large-scale disasters, like environmental upheavals, after which law and public policy would be open to blame for failing to keep pace with rapid scientific advancement. Those familiar with Posner's extensive writings will not be surprised when he advocates applying cost-benefit analysis to determine which catastrophic threats are worth tackling first, though other suggestions will likely spark controversy. Criticizing the "blinkered perspective" of civil libertarians hung up on constitutional law, he finds certain curtailments of freedom an acceptable trade-off for preventing terrorist attacks and offers a lengthy justification of torture as one such option. Posner also offers subtle insights into the psychology of disaster preparedness, noting, for example, that science fiction movies in which the world is routinely saved inure us to the possibility of facing such threats in real life, as well as create undue faith in the saving grace of scientists. And his call for increased scientific literacy among public policy leaders may be too pragmatic to fault. Though clearly not for general readers, this thoughtful analysis may trickle down from the wonkocracy.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Horrific as the tsunamis that ravaged South Asia were, Richard A. Posner is worried about calamities many thousand times worse. Finding the puzzles presented by his day job on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit insufficiently challenging, Posner has seized upon the risk of mega-catastrophes, particularly events that threaten to extinguish all human life on Earth. His central question in Catastrophe is: How should society respond to the possibility of global warming, nuclear terrorist attacks, planet-obliterating asteroids and similar disasters?

Posner groups catastrophes into four types: natural catastrophes (e.g., a massive asteroid collision); catastrophic accidents caused by unfettered scientific exploration (e.g., a "strangelet" scenario in which hyper-dense quarks produced in a physicist's lab compress the Earth in seconds); unintended byproducts of technological progress (e.g., abrupt climate change); and intentional catastrophes (nuclear terrorism, bioterrorism or even nuclear winter). Catastrophe is worth the price of the book simply for Posner's lively and readable summary of the apocalyptic dystopias that serious scientists judge to be possible. (For a similarly sobering account from one of the world's premier astrophysicists, see Martin Rees's 2003 book Our Final Hour.)

But how can sophisticated citizens think productively about such staggering possibilities? Indeed, is it even worth worrying about such appalling but unlikely tragedies? While the first two chapters of Catastrophe present fascinating information for general readers, chapters three and four will likely leave statistic-phobes cold. Posner advocates using basic cost-benefit analysis -- a widely applied technique developed from economics for carefully weighing pros and cons -- not only to structure the questions, but also to derive some answers. Moreover, based on those answers, Posner recommends that Washington act now. Reviewing the best scientific estimates of likelihoods and consequences, he concludes that the U.S. government should seriously consider prohibiting some types of scientific research, creating new international oversight agencies and imposing blanket restrictions on the study of dangerous subjects by all students from suspect nations. No orthodox University of Chicago conservative he.

The cost-benefit framework Posner recommends is good as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it doesn't go very far in dealing with this class of problems. Students of cost-benefit analysis have long recognized this tool's limits in dealing with extremes. In the classic social science formula, risk equals probability times consequences. Since a species-extinguishing event like Earth colliding with a huge asteroid would be infinitely bad, even the slightest probability of such an event occurring would swamp any cost-benefit calculus.

Posner acknowledges these theoretical difficulties but attempts to finesse them. He does so by making heroic but arbitrary assumptions that leave his conclusions unpersuasive.

If cost-benefit analysis cannot provide convincing answers to questions about what our society should be doing about potential mega-catastrophes, where else can we look? My best suggestion is that we draw lessons from recent practice. The most instructive case is the Cold War threat of total annihilation in nuclear war. For decades, American policymakers faced a grim reality: Soviet nuclear bombs that could destroy American cities and kill millions. This possibility drove policymakers to a categorical imperative: Do everything feasible to prevent such a war. President Reagan expressed it best in his oft-quoted bumper sticker: "A nuclear war cannot be won and must therefore never be fought." To prevent that, Republican and Democratic administrations, with broad public support, spent more than $2 trillion developing and deploying missiles, nuclear weapons, satellite-alert systems,