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Saturday, November 3, 2012

Underground Ecocriticism Liveblog 19

Q: why do we need to contain or fear responses, denigrating them as the hippie response?
A: containment of response in Rio. Not particularly radical though you must credit them with coming up with something at all. Risk management >> precaution says it's not working. Holds open the possibility of not getting the oil out of the rock.
Q: Does precaution exclude interventionist reading?
A: I don't think so. There could be some resistance to the notion of precaution because it sounds conservative and stodgy.

Q: Molly, we can think about and enhance precautionary thinking. In US government this principle has been folded into security risks. Preemption is the opposite of stodgy: acting on the basis of no knowledge to detain people and curtail their liberties with no thinking at all.
A: Or isn't this risk management gone nuts?
Q: But this is too making decisions based on the incalculable. "There is no evidence, but what if we didn't act?"
A: This is a danger of letting conspiracy theory in.

Q: What would precautionary thinking look like in regard to bees?
A: There are lots of agents and yet we would like to stop the die off.
A: The principle was invoked in the removal of pesticides from Europe. Thus they can start looking at some of the other causes. Precaution enables action.

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