Here's the sentence
in his brief post
that really struck
my fancy: "I'm still
waiting for us to
start thinking about
the hurricane
vulnerability of
coastal cities as a
meta-problem
potentially
requiring massive
technological and
engineering fixes to
prevent catastrophic
destruction -- in
short, some serious
application of the
precautionary
principle."



I could not agree
more.



Together with
post-Tsunami
arguments one now
sometimes hears
about how the
precautionary
principle should
inspire the creation
of a global network
to observe and warn
people everywhere in
the world about
quick-looming
climate-threats and
mobilize disaster
relief, as well as
occasional comments
one hears about how
the principle might
mobilize
technological
interventions to
avoid extinction
level asteroid
impacts and other
existential threats,
all of these
arguments suggest
ways in which the
precautionary
principle can
inspire reasonable
people to invent and
apply technological
solutions to
proximate problems.




This matters because
the corporate shills
and libertopians who
have dominated so
much technophilic
discourse over the
last couple of
decades have long
indulged an
hysterical crusade
against the
manifestly
reasonable
precautionary
principle, arguing
that it expresses
hostility for
progress just
because they rightly
fear the more
democratic
developmental
deliberation it
champions and the
fairer distribution
of risks, costs, and
benefits it would
certainly demand
will have an impact
on the short-term
profit margins that
are all they really
care about.



I made this argument
in a more systematic
way in a column a
year ago called "The
Need for Fair Risk,"
and elaborated the
position a bit in a
defense against some
critics of that
column in a post
called "Two Visions
of Precaution:

Paranoia Against
Proportion,"
and more recently

connected
precaution to
peer-to-peer
bioethics. After the
blasted dissertation
is filed (we're down
to days, now,
people!) one of the
very first things I
mean to do is weave
the arguments of
these papers into
something tighter
and more elaborate.
Till then I am
encouraged whenever
I see such
technoprogressive
applications of the
precautionary
principle happening,
and I'll try to
report on them more
often here.