Risk and Reason Safety, Law, and the Environment [Paperback]

Risk and Reason presents a sensible system for reducing risks to save lives and money.What should be done about airplane safety and terrorism, global warming, nuclear power, and genetically engineered food? Risks to safety, health, and the environment are a subject of intense interest worldwide. Unfortunately, too much of the time, we fear the wrong things, and sometimes we make the problem even worse. Risk and Reason explains the source of these problems and shows what can be done about them. It points the way toward a sensible system for reducing risks, one that could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars.What should be done about airplane safety and terrorism, global warming, nuclear power, and genetically engineered food? Risks to safety, health, and the environment are a subject of intense interest worldwide. Unfortunately, too much of the time, we fear the wrong things, and sometimes we make the problem even worse. Risk and Reason explains the source of these problems and shows what can be done about them. It points the way toward a sensible system for reducing risks, one that could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars.What should be done about airplane safety and terrorism, global warming, polluted water, nuclear power, and genetically engineered food? Decision-makers often respond to temporary fears, and the result is a situation of hysteria and neglect--and unnecessary illness and death. Risk and Reason explains the sources of these problems and explores what can be done about them. It shows how individual thinking and social interactions lead us in foolish directions. Offering sound proposals for social reform, it explains how a more sensible system of risk regulation, embodied in the idea of a cost-benefit state, could save many thousands of lives and many billions of dollars too--and protect the environment in the process. Cass R. Sunstein is the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor at the University ofl.