Catastrophe: Risk and Response RICHARD A. POSNER OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS CATASTROPHE This page intentionally left blank CATASTROPHE RISK AND RESPONSE RICHARD A. POSNER 1 2004 1 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Posner, Richard A. Catastrophe : risk and response / by Richard A. Posner. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-517813-0 1. Emergency management. 2. Disasters. 3. Risk assessment. 4. Technological innovations—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title. HV551.2.P675 2004 363.34—dc22 2004009728 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Preface Certain events quite within the realm of possibility, such as a major as- teroid collision, global bioterrorism, abrupt global warming—even cer- tain lab accidents—could have unimaginably terrible consequences up to and including the extinction of the human race, possibly within the near future. The scientific and popular literature dealing with possible megacatastrophes is vast. But law and the social sciences, with the par- tial exception of economics—there is an extensive economic literature on global warming—have paid little attention to such possibilities. This seems to me regrettable. I am not a Green, an alarmist, an apoca- lyptic visionary, a catastrophist, a Chicken Little, a Luddite, an anticap- italist, or even a pessimist. But for reasons explained in chapter 1, I have come to believe that what I shall be calling the “catastrophic risks” are real and growing and that the social sciences, in particular economics, statistics, cognitive psychology, and law, have an essential role to play in the design of policies and institutions for combating them. As may the mathematical methods sometimes used in the analysis of extreme events, such as the promisingly named “catastrophe the- ory,” which has some economic applications 1 and is used in some of the studies I cite; or chaos theory, 2 or the branch of statistics known as reliability theory, which is used “where a single copy of a system is de- signed: space ships, huge dams, nuclear research equipment, etc. All these objects must be extremely reliable. At the same time we very often have no prototype or any previous experience. How to evaluate their reliability? In what terms? What is the ‘confidence’ of such evaluation?” 3 Lack of relevant previous experience is one of the frequent character- istics of the catastrophic risks discussed in this book. 4 But apart from a brief discussion of chaos theory in chapter 1, I do not employ these methods. They are highly technical, and I have wanted to make the book intelligible to the general reader, including the mathless lawyer, so no math beyond the junior high school level is employed. Nor for that matter is any knowledge of economics, statistics, or the other fields on which I draw presupposed—not even law. Granted, there are dangers in an age of specialization in attempting to bring different disciplinary perspectives to bear on the analysis of catastrophic risks—or indeed in attempting to analyze the different risks in a lump. No one individual can be a master of all these perspectives or an expert in the full range of risks. But specialization has its draw- backs and the occasional generalist study its advantages; and it is dif- ficult to see how the catastrophic risks can be understood and dealt with sensibly unless they are occasionally viewed together and from all relevant points of view. The germ of the book is a review I did of Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx and Crake. 5 Set in the near future, her novel depicts the virtual extinction of the human race by a bioterrorist against a back- ground of global ruination caused by uncontrolled technological ad- vance. I was curious whether there was any scientific basis for her dark vision—and discovered that there was and that the social sciences were not taking it as seriously as it deserved. The law was paying no attention at all, because law is court-centric and there have been no cases involving catastrophic risks in the sense in which I am using the term, and because a cultural gulf separates lawyers from scientists. I had agreed to review Atwood’s novel because of my growing in- terest not in catastrophe as such but in technology, an interest awak- ened by a trial that I had recently conducted involving the validity and infringement of the patent on the antidepressant drug Paxil. 6 At the trial, distinguished scientists testified about fascinating but abstruse is- sues of biochemistry and I was led to wonder whether the law’s con- Preface vi ventional methods for resolving science-laden legal disputes were ad- equate in an era of increasing scientific complexity. The research that I have done for this book has convinced me that law is indeed lagging dangerously behind an accelerating scientific revolution. So rapid is the advance of science that some of the scientific find- ings reported in this book will undoubtedly have changed by the time the book is published. Nevertheless I hope that my discussion of the ana- lytical techniques and institutional reforms necessary to meet the so- cial challenges of modern science is sufficiently general to retain, for a time anyway, its relevance in the face of continuing scientific advances. I have received a great deal of help with this book. Amanda Butler, Nicole Eitmann, Roger Ford, Adele Grignon, Phil Kenny, Carl LeSueur, Grace Liu, Paul Ma, Gavin Martinson, and especially Paul Clark and Liss Palamkunnel, provided exemplary assistance with the research re- quired for the book. I had fruitful discussions concerning the subject matter with Gary Becker, Shana Dale, Daniel Dennett, Timothy Ferris, Michael Fisher, Christine Jolls, Barry Kellman, Lawrence Lessig, Daniel Levine, John Mearsheimer, Eric Posner, Stanley Sokul, Stephen Stigler, Larry Summers, Cass Sunstein, and John Yoo, as well as with distin- guished scientists who gave generously of their time to this scientific innocent with his dumb questions: Stephen Berry, John Deutch, Henry Frisch, Robert Haselkorn, Richard Kron, Raymond Pierrehumbert, and Chung-I Wu. I also wish to acknowledge the helpful suggestions and leads of Michael Aronson, Edward Castronova, Kenneth Dam, Eric Drexler, Dedi Felman, Andrew Franknoi, Howard Kunreuther, Herbert Lin, Richard Lindzen, William Nordhaus, Mark Siegler, Jonathan Wiener, and an anonymous reader for the Oxford University Press. Andrew Baak, Gary Becker, Eric Drexler, Jonathan Masur, John Mearsheimer, Shelley Murphey, Todd Murphey, Martha Nussbaum, Ian Parry, Char- lene Posner, Eric Posner, Martin Rees, Jay Richardson, Cass Sunstein, Victoria Sutton, and John Yoo gave me valuable comments on portions of the manuscript itself; David Friedman’s and Scott Hemphill’s de- tailed comments on the entire manuscript deserve a special acknowl- edgment. An early version of the book formed the basis of a talk that I gave at the University of Chicago’s Workshop on Rational Choice in the Social Sciences. I thank the participants in the workshop for their comments. Preface vii This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction 3 What is catastrophe? 5 The organization of this book 12 Some useful distinctions 15 1 What are the catastrophic risks, and how catastrophic are they? 21 Natural catastrophes 21 Scientific accidents 30 Other unintended man-made catastrophes 43 Intentional catastrophes 71 Catastrophic synergies and lesser-included catastrophes 89 [...]... catastrophic risks, and how catastrophic are they? The number of extreme catastrophes that have a more than negligible probability of occurring in this century is alarmingly great, and their variety startling I want to describe them and in doing so make clear the importance of understanding what science is doing and can do and where it is leading us I begin with the natural catastrophes and move from... life and limb seriously Some useful distinctions S everal distinctions, some already hinted at, cut across the organization of the book and should be borne in mind throughout One is the distinction between the promotion of technology and its control Another is the distinction between, on the one hand, natural and manmade catastrophes that technology might prevent, and, on the other hand, catastrophic risks... costs that would have to be borne, and the psychological and political obstacles that would have to be overcome, in order to implement effective methods of reducing the risks The analytical and institutional challenges are formidable In part this is because of the centrality of science and science policy10 to the catastrophic risks and their prevention A number of the risks are actually the product of... biodiversity depletion are consequences of energy generation, land clearing, gene splicing, and other human activities that affect climate and genetic variety The fourth and final class of catastrophic risks consists of deliberately perpetrated catastrophes, comprising “nuclear winter,” bioweaponry, cyberterrorism, and digital means of surveillance and encryption Because the employment of these tactics by... accidents, other unintended man-made catastrophes, and intentional catastrophes Natural catastrophes Pandemics T he 1918–1919 flu pandemic is a reminder that nature may yet do us in The disease agent was an unexpectedly lethal variant of the commonplace flu virus Despite its lethality, it spread far and wide because most of its victims did not immediately fall seriously ill and die, 21 so they were not isolated... applications.11 Some are preventable by modern technology — and often by modern technology alone Of still others technology is both cause and potential cure The intertwining of catastrophe and technology is thus a major concern of the book The challenge of managing science and technology in relation to the catastrophic risks is an enormous one, and if it can be met it will be by a mosaic of institutional... billionth of a meter), and artificial intelligence Technology is the cause of these risks, and slowing down technology may therefore be the right response The third class consists of other unintentional albeit man-made catastrophes, such as exhaustion of natural resources (the traditional, yet least likely, disaster scenario), global warming, and loss of biodiversity Both global warming and biodiversity depletion... great flu pandemic (“Spanish influenza”) of 1918–1919, which is estimated to have killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide,3 or the AIDS pandemic, which may well exceed that toll—already more than 20 million have died in sub-Saharan Africa alone,4 though over a much longer period of time and out of a much larger world population — is only marginal to my concerns Pandemics are an old story, and can... combined effect of these developments has been to reduce the demand for marriage and increase the demand for extramarital sex, the public role of women, the age of marriage and of giving birth, the incidence of births out of wedlock, and tolerance for sexual deviance (a word rapidly going out of fashion), while reducing the overall birth rate and the amount of time that mothers spend with their children... of this introduction Chapter 1 describes them at length and with many references to the scientific literature in order that the reader will understand the scientific reasoning and evidence that have persuaded me that these are risks worth worrying about Chapter 2 explores why such risks are analytically, psychologically, politically, economically, and practically so difficult to cope with or even to perceive . Catastrophe: Risk and Response RICHARD A. POSNER OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS CATASTROPHE This page intentionally left blank CATASTROPHE RISK AND RESPONSE RICHARD A. POSNER 1 2004 1 Oxford. Richard A. Catastrophe : risk and response / by Richard A. Posner. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-517813-0 1. Emergency management. 2. Disasters. 3. Risk assessment. 4. Technological innovations—Moral. “catastrophic risks” are real and growing and that the social sciences, in particular economics, statistics, cognitive psychology, and law, have an essential role to play in the design of policies and