Precautionary Thinking and the Critical Principle

At the beginning of this winter a Witchdocter came to my house and related an astonishingly apt tale. A mutual friend had been subject to what may have been a shakedown of sorts. The plot is thus: A heating and cooling contractor advised an expensive replacement based on evidence that was at or below the threshold of detection. Reasoning that any possible chance of harm to his family should be mitigated he opted to spend the money.

The Witchdoctor presented a seemless arguement against this course and in little more than habit I assumed a contrary position. The heat exchange manifold had a crack, though one not visible to the eye, according to the contractor. This crack could potentially allow untold moles of deadly carbon monoxide to work it's haemoglobin corrupting magick in the delicate lungs of his daughter. "Fie" he declared, "if the crack is so small that you can't see it how can dangerous amounts of the gas get through?" I had little to offer but vague gestures to pressure differences and relatively low concentrations for toxicity. "That's what the CO detectors are for." Touche, they are indeed. Get a second opinion at least. Armed with such knowledge and vigilence he could determine if the threat was a real or imagined. I couldn't help but surrender my stance feined though it was.

The topic turned to he buggabo of this time Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Ruinationousness. An unwieldy moniker, hereafter refered to a CAnCR. "I've seen that image of the Earth at night" as had I. A composite of the whole surface of our planet at night with our populations centers lit in a striking lattice. To some it was malignant tendrils to others a gossamer triumph. "We have to be doing something, we have to be having an affect!" I can't argue that, every living thing contributes to it's environment, as do the inanimate. The gaia hypothesis is not without merit but gives rise to a hubristic catagory error. It makes available the conclusion that the 'health' of this organism can be measured and understood with metrics we would associate with our own health. The preponderance of medical scares and the dubious assertions regarding preventative modalities fuse seemlessly with the image of gaia as an organism in need of our care and stewardship.