Chapter Two
Science against the People

Claiming that they were a source of syphilis infection, the U.S. Navy removed doorknobs from a number of battleships during World War I.1 Like many members of the nonscientific public, even the military shared in the "hysteria" over venereal infection during the first two decades of this century. Although the fear of doorknobs was misplaced, worries about venereal disease were not completely irrational. As late as 1910, about 25 percent of all blind persons in the United States had lost their sight through venereal insontium, blindness of the newborn.2 Today, instead of venereal disease, AIDS is perhaps the greater object of public fear and ignorance. Florida legislators tried (unsuccessfully) to have students with AIDS kept out of the classroom,3 and hospital workers in North Carolina, fearing contamination, put a living AIDS victim in a body bag reserved for corpses.4

Given such behavior, it is not surprising that scientists have often accused nonscientists of irrational fears concerning public health and safety. Recently, for example, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded $85,000 to a Washington psychiatrist to help "counter the public's 'irrational fear' about nuclear power." Robert L. DuPont, a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, received the funds for a study described as "an attempt to demonstrate that opponents of nuclear power are mentally ill." DuPont says that he will study unhealthy fear, a phobia that is a denial of reality.5

Citizens who fear public-health or environmental hazards, however, would probably claim that their concerns are both realistic and justified. After all, AIDS cases are currently doubling every six months.6 And with respect to nuclear power, December 1989 government reports indicate that the cancer risk from radiation is three to four times higher than previously thought.7 Environmentalists also continue to point out that a Chernobyl type of accident could happen in the United States.

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erators to $7.2 billion—less than 3 percent of the current Soviet estimates ($283-358 billion) for the cleanup and economic loss associated with

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nied their due-process rights to sue for more than approximately 3 percent of their total losses, in the event of a catastrophic nuclear accident.68 Now suppose Congress doubles the current liability limit ($7.2 billion). A reasonable person could still claim that she was not satisfied and that more protection was needed; she could argue that doubling the liability limit would mean that less than 5 percent of total losses were covered, given current government estimates about the total damages from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. But then suppose Congress responded by quadrupling the liability limit, making it $28.8 billion. A reasonable person could still claim that she was not satisfied, since quadrupling the liability limit would nevertheless result in coverage for less than 10 percent of total losses in the Chernobyl accident. But suppose Congress responded a third time to this demand for protection and made the liability limit ten times its current level, raising it to $72 billion. A reasonable person still could respond that she was not satisfied, since less than 30 percent of total Chernobyl losses

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This law limits the liability of nuclear power plant owners to $7.2 billion, even though property damages alone, typically only about one-fourth of total accident costs, could go as high as $358 billion for a

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Angeles: Planning Research Corporation, 1965]). The Chernobyl accident, not a worst-case nuclear disaster, will cost approximately $283-358 billion in clean-up costs, according to a 1990 study by the Chief Economist of the Soviet Research and Development Institute of Power Engineering. See M. Koryakin, "State of the Soviet Nuclear Industry," WISE (World Information Service on Energy) News Communique 332 (18 May 1990): 2 (P.O. Box 5627, NL-1007 AP Amsterdam).

9. For information on the latest Price-Anderson liability limit, see Price-Anderson Amendments Act of 1988, P.L. 100-408. See Stat 102, pp. 1066-1095.

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1983), p. 78. See note 9, chapter 2, for current liability limits/amendments.

31. See notes 8-9, chapter 2 for Chernobyl costs. See also M. Silberman, "Risky Business: Congress Debates Nuclear Insurance," Not Man Apart, May-June 1987, p. 1.

The U.S. government itself concluded that a catastrophic core melt could wipe out an area the size of Pennsylvania and kill 145,000 people.8 According to many citizens, if such accidents were as unlikely as industry and government claim, then nuclear utilities would not need the Price-Anderson Act; this U.S. law limits the liability of reactor operators to $640 million—less than 1 percent of all total possible losses and far below the estimated cleanup for either Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. Since industry maintains that it does need the liability limit, in order to protect itself against bankruptcy, environmentalists conclude that catastrophic accidents must be likely.9 And if such accidents are likely, then opponents of nuclear power are not necessarily mentally ill or irrationally fearful.10

Consumer activists maintain that there are indeed real environmental hazards, and that people are often reasonable in fearing them. These activists are wary, for example, of many current pesticides. They note that, according to a National Academy of Sciences report, 60 percent (by weight) of all herbicides used in the United States can cause tumors in animals, as can 90 percent (by volume) of all fungicides and 30 percent (by volume) of all insecticides.11 Environmentalists also point out that rational people are likewise afraid of hazards such as depletion of ozone, the shield protecting life on earth from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation.12

Attacks on the Public's Aversion to Risk

At least three groups of persons maintain that citizens' worries about environmental risks, from carcinogenic pesticides to loss of global ozone, are typically biased or irrational: (1) industry spokespersons, (2) risk assessors, and (3) a small group of contemporary, antipopulist social scientists. All three have attacked the environmental fears of laypeople. Industry spokesperson Edith Efron, for example, maintains that both citizens and scientists have been corrupted by ideology. She says that the ideology takes the form of attempting to incriminate industry in the name of "cancer prevention." The politics of citizens, she says, derive from "warring attitudes toward the American industrial system." In Efron's view, most persons who fear environmental hazards (such as alleged carcinogens and nuclear power) are irrational because their concern is dictated not by the facts about risk but by their paranoid and primitive "fantasies" about "industrial mass murder."13

Risk assessors, often experts in the employ of industries responsible for the hazardous technologies they are paid to evaluate, constitute a second class of persons critical of alleged citizen "irrationality." Norman

Rasmussen and Christopher Whipple, for example, each authors of famous risk analyses, have accused the public of "inconsistency" in its attitudes toward hazards.14 In their view, people who travel by automobile and, at the same time, oppose commercial nuclear fission are inconsistent, because they accept a large risk but reject an allegedly smaller one. Other hazard assessors claim that, if laypeople understood the relevant mathematics involved in calculating risk probabilities, they would no longer have "pathologic fear" of contemporary technologies like atomic energy. In other words, risk assessors claim that there are few rational reasons for fearing existing environmental threats, and that public concern is primarily a matter either of irrationality or of ignorance.15

A minority group of contemporary, antipopulist social scientists constitutes the third main camp of persons who are critical of lay evaluations of technological and environmental risks. Perhaps the most famous members of this group are anthropologist Mary Douglas and political scientist Aaron Wildavsky. Although their individual views are somewhat different, they are coauthors of a best-selling book, Risk and Culture.16 In his Searching for Safety and in the coauthored Risk and Culture, Wildavsky argues, just as Weinberg does, that Americans are biased, witch-hunting opponents of technology. He and Douglas claim that laypersons ("sectarians" not at the center of industrial or governmental power) are dominated by "superstitions" about environmental risks and by fundamentalist desires for unrealistic environmental "purity." Like Hoyle, Fremlin, Weinberg, Thompson, and other critics, they allege that these contemporary "superstitions" and "biases" of contemporary environmentalists are no different in kind from those of pre-scientific, primitive people.17

Admitting that they have a "bias toward the center,"18 Wildavsky, Douglas, and others (such as Efron and Thompson) claim that "America is a border country," a nation whose citizens, in general, are "sectarians" who reject the technological and environmental risks imposed by those at the economic and political "center" of the nation.19 They identify Americans, in general, as environmentalists and sectists. Hence, when they attack U.S. environmentalists and sectarians, they are attacking the U.S. lay public as a whole.

Numerous industry spokespersons, engineers, hazard assessors, and natural and social scientists tend to use at least five basic arguments to attack the societal risk evaluations of laypersons: (1) Laypeople, the "border" citizens, are anti-industry and antigovernment and are obsessed with environmental impurity. (2) Laypeople are removed from centers of influence and power, and therefore attack the risks chosen

by those who are at the "center." (3) Laypeople are unreasonably averse to risks because they fear things that are unlikely to occur, and they are unwilling to learn from their mistakes. (4) Laypeople are irrationally averse to risks because they do not realize that life is getting safer. (5) Laypeople have unrealistic expectations about safety and make excessive demands on the market and on hierarchies of power.20

Not all those with antipopulist risk views are consistently antisectarian.21 Douglas, for example, is not antisectarian in some of her other works.22 However, in Risk and Culture, Douglas and Wildavsky specifically admit that they are biased in favor of centrists (nonsectarians; those with market and hierarchical views); Wildavsky makes the same admission in his Searching for Safety.23 Apart from whether Thompson, Wildavsky, or Douglas, for example, gives an antisectarian account of risk aversion, it is clear that many other risk writers do so (for example, Maxey, Cohen and Lee, Whipple, Weinberg, Rothschild, Hoyle, Efron, and Fremlin). Hence, the five arguments, apart from their specifics, represent paradigmatic attacks on lay evaluations of societal risk. Because they are representative, it is important to assess them.24

Is the Public Anti-Industry?

Antipopulist risk writers argue that the environmental movement (and therefore the public) is antiscience, antitechnology, and anti-industry. Their evidence for this claim is that environmentalists (such as Epstein) link cancer to the profit motive; Samuels attributes it to industrial "cannibalism," and Ralph Nader calls it "corporate cancer."25 Others claim that public concern about societal and technological risk is largely evidence of a recurrent "cultural bias" manifested in "criticism of industry." They maintain, for example, that—just as members of the Lele tribe of Zaire face highly probable risks of leprosy and ulcers, but irrationally choose to focus on the much less likely hazard of being struck by lightning—contemporary Americans face highly probable harm from fires and from leisure-time sunburn but focus instead on technology-created risks, such as those from pesticides. According to these antipopulist risk writers, "hazards are selected for public concern according to the strength and direction of social criticism," especially criticism of industry, not according to their inherent danger. Weinberg, for example, says that environmental "hypochondriacs" engage in irrational "witch hunts" against industry.26

According to these antipopulist writers, U.S. public aversion to asbestos hazards is a good example of a risk response motivated by sectarian, antitechnology sentiment. Environmentalists, however, main-

tain that, with the expected deaths of 400,000 asbestos workers in the United States, they have good grounds for their aversion to asbestos.27 Criticizing "the danger establishment," the antipopulist authors respond that hazards such as asbestos poisoning are seen as "fearsome" merely because laypersons (sectarian environmentalists) in the United States "choose to be panic-struck about dangers from technology, rather than from threats to the economy or education. . . . they [environmentalists] serve their own moral purposes by focusing on dangers emanating from large organizations [asbestos manufacturers] rather than on dangers arising from inadequate investment, blundering foreign policy, or undereducation. . . . [Environmentalists are] set against technology and institutions . . . [and are in] permanent opposition [to] government."28

Claiming that environmentalists respond to any level of risk in the same way that a member of a highly sectarian religious group would view any sort of "guilt" or moral "impurity," antipopulist writers say that "sectarian" fear of pollution is extreme. They allege that such fear is based on "ideology" and the need to "blame" industry for "impurity," for a "secular version of original sin."29 They point out that "an internal social problem about guilt and innocence is stated in the pollution belief," and that there is "not much difference between modern times and ages past" in this regard.30 Just as the Hima people believe that women's being near the cattle causes the animals to die, and just as medievalists believed that witches caused misfortune, so also, the anti-populists claim, contemporary persons believe that industry causes people to die through pollution. "Impurities in the physical world or chemical carcinogens in the body are directly traced to immoral forms of economic and political power."31

How plausible is the argument that aversion to environmental hazards arises because of an anti-industry and antigovernment risk-selection bias and because of an obsession with environmental purity? The attack is problematic for a number of reasons, the most basic of which is that the attackers are attempting to argue for a particular cause of risk aversion. As Hume pointed out long ago, however, it is virtually impossible to establish knowledge of causality of any kind.^[32] Moreover, even if they were able to show that some sort of anti-industry social sentiment caused environmentalism, establishing these origins of environmental beliefs would not be sufficient to show that the attitudes were not justified. Freud made a similar mistake, the genetic fallacy, in assuming that arguing for the psychological origins of belief in a divine being was alone sufficient to discredit religion.^[33]

In attributing risk aversion to misguided environmental purity, the

argument also ignores the origins of much risk aversion in "centrist," "hierarchical" (i.e., governmental) values. Rather than being antigovernment, many U.S. environmentalists invoke government-sanctioned values to justify their positions. For example, when Allied Chemical Company in Virginia polluted the James River with the pesticide Kepone, environmentalists did not appeal to antigovernment sentiment. Instead, they used the government and the law to further their environmental concerns. They invoked strong centrist values of due process under law.^[34] Environmentalists are also often angry not because they are anti-industry but because hazards threaten a constitutional "right to know"—a right that is at the heart of centrist values. Likewise (to return to a case mentioned earlier in this chapter), one of the most basic reasons why persons are so averse to commercial fission technology is that they see it as a threat to the very civil liberties that are championed and protected by centrist institutions such as government.^[35]

If antipopulist risk writers are correct in asserting that environmentalists are anti-industry and antigovernment, however, then their own logic requires them to say something highly implausible: that environmental opposition to the Kepone spill or to nuclear fission, on constitutional grounds, is merely an example of antigovernment, anti-industry sentiment. Far from being antigovernment, many environmentalists may want to use government (or co-opt it) to serve their ends. Moreover, even if anti-industry feelings were correlated with environmentalism, it would be difficult to tell which was the cause and which was the effect.

The allegation of environmentalists' anti-industry bias also errs in ignoring reasonable human desires for preservation. In the wake of the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Love Canal, and Challenger disasters, one need not be anti-industry or antigovernment to be averse to the risks posed by certain technologies. Those who claim that the public's risk evaluations are motivated by anti-industry bias ignore other causes of risk aversion, just as they ignore U.S. environmentalists' support of the solar, biomass, and recycling industries.^[36]

They also cannot substantiate their charges about the alleged anti-industry causes of lay aversion to many technological risks. They say that the aversion is "ideological," "political," and the product of biased choices that are "never made directly."^[37] However, the claim that environmentalists directly choose to be members of a sectarian, anti-industry, antigovernment group, and therefore indirectly choose to minimize technological risks, seems highly questionable. What is to count as an indirect choice? What is the evidence for it?^[38] Why couldn't

persons choose to be members of a given group, but neither indirectly nor directly choose all of the values associated with the group? Likewise, why couldn't persons choose certain values or positions associated with a group, but never directly choose membership in the group?

Such questions suggest that the antipopulist writers are vulnerable to some of the same objections that Popper leveled against vague, non-empirical theories in the history of science.^[39] Because such theories made no precise predictions, and could be interpreted as consistent with almost any evidence, they were nonfalsifiable and nonempirical. To the extent that those who attack risk evaluations of the public appeal to "indirect" reasons (as Popper argued that Freud, Marx, and astrologers do), their arguments are vague, nonfalsifiable, and nonempirical. Hence, they are unable to sustain the claim that anti-industry, anti-government bias causes public aversion to societal risks.

Are Environmentalists Distrustful?

Other risk writers allege that those averse to environmental risks, in addition to being anti-industry and antigovernment, are remote from power and influence. Thompson says that they are "ineffectuals" instead of "entrepreneurs." According to this argument, U.S. environmentalists distrust those at the "center" of economic power and political influence, and therefore reject any risks imposed by these "capitalists."^[40]

The most basic problem with this argument is that it reduces all causes of risk aversion to social structures. Such reductionism, however, is difficult to support. For example, if the psychometric studies of Fischhoff, Slovic, and others are correct, then risk aversion is highly correlated with personal preferences, such as the desire to avoid catastrophic consequences. Fischhoff and his associates have also argued that ethical beliefs (such as a commitment to equity of risk distribution or a belief in the necessity of obtaining free, informed consent from potential victims before imposing risk on them) are highly correlated with risk aversion.^[41] If they are correct, then (contrary to this argument) risk choices are multifaceted and determined in large part by both one's philosophy and one's personal psychology. Moreover, there is some evidence that risk aversion is dictated in part by physiological and biochemical factors not correlated with social structures. Risk takers, for example, exhibit lower levels of monoamine oxidase, an enzyme that normally breaks down certain neurotransmitters related to emotion and cognition.^[42] These findings suggest that the sociological reductionism inherent in this argument is suspect. Perhaps some persons reduce all causes of risk behavior to social structures because they are social scientists.

If so, they illustrate Mark Twain's observation: If one's only tool is a hammer, then all problems look like nails.

This sociological reductionism is also questionable because it identifies U.S. environmentalists as egalitarian sectarians, removed from the sources of power and influence. Even some sociological data contradict this identification, since environmentalists tend to be white, middle-aged, middle-class professionals—not young, blue-collar workers, or blacks.^[43] White, middle-aged, middle-class professionals hardly seem distant from power and influence. Indeed, they constitute groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, groups whose influence has stopped nuclear power plants, saved snail darters, and protected wetlands.^[44]

Other environmentalists likewise do not seem removed from power and influence and therefore averse to technological risks. The late Orville Kelly was founder of the cancer support group "Make Today Count." Hardly a typical, powerless "outsider," he had been U.S. Navy Commander of Eniwetok Atoll. During his command, in the 1950s, he was within five miles of ground zero during twenty-three nuclear weapons tests. Like approximately 500,000 other American soldiers, many marched to within 300 yards of ground zero immediately after atomic tests, he was exposed to high levels of fallout. Like all these other servicemen, he was at a high risk for the radiation-induced cancers leukemia and myeloma. Arguing for benefits for his wife and four children, Kelly claimed that the leukemia that eventually killed him (during middle age) was caused by the fallout. The government denied benefits to him and to all but ten of the hundreds of thousands of servicemen overexposed to radiation. Instead, Kelly's supervisors claimed that his allegations about the cause of his leukemia were evidence of "psychiatric disorders."^[45]

If the antipopulists are correct, then Kelly's risk aversion was caused by his powerlessness and lack of influence. But Kelly, as a naval commander, was not powerless or lacking in influence. Moreover, his risk aversion was arguably caused by the leukemia that killed him, not merely (if at all) by his desire to attack a centrist government institution. He had a flawless service record with many commendations. Indeed, he was an important part of a centrist institution, the United States Navy.

To the Kelly case, the antipopulist risk writers would likely respond that individual counterexamples (like Kelly) do not negate their social hypothesis, a hypothesis that is generally or statistically true.^[46] To establish statistical truth, however, they would need to provide statistical data to support their point. This they have not done.

Are Laypersons Fearful and Ignorant?

Those who attack the risk evaluations of the public also provide no data to support their claim that laypersons (environmentalists) give "blind acceptance" to charges of environmental risk, because they are fearful and "almost totally ignorant of science." Even the National Research Council accuses the public of "misunderstanding" societal risks, yet provides no evidence for this charge.^[47] Many antipopulist risk writers claim that laypersons are unreasonably averse to risk, fear things that are unlikely to occur, and do not realize that life is getting safer.^[48] They argue that uncertainty ought not to inhibit societal or technological risk taking,^[49] since taking risks is an opportunity that teaches us how to learn from our mistakes.^[50]

In maintaining that it is not reasonable to be averse to a particular risk when one is uncertain about its probability and consequences, the antipopulists ignore the fact that most reasonable people accept a serious risk only when they have fairly reliable knowledge about its probability and alternatives to it.^[51] Hence, in the face of uncertainty about a potentially catastrophic environmental hazard, laypersons could be acting reasonably when they take a conservative position on risk imposition.^[52] Moreover, to claim that laypersons ought to take risks, since they provide opportunities to learn from mistakes, begs the question because it presupposes that the dangers are not serious.^[53] But this is the very point at issue: whether the risks are serious, and whether a reasonable person ought to take them.

Do Laypersons Forget That Life Is Getting Safer?

Many risk authors also accuse laypersons of ignoring the fact that life is getting safer. They claim, for instance, that the cancer rate is not going up, even though alleged pollution is increasing. They attack numerous government studies on carcinogenicity, fail to provide any alternative data of their own, and then call the government evidence on carcinogenicity "ephemeral."^[54] Likewise, in response to government claims that nickel, chromium, and nitrites are carcinogens, some anti-populist risk writers respond that they are "essential nutrients for human growth."^[55] They conclude that only irrational persons would fear DDT (since its carcinogenicity has not been established) or high levels of chromium exposure (since some amount is essential for growth). They also say that "there is no unequivocal body of evidence that life is (or is becoming) less safe; on the contrary, such tentative evidence as there is leads in the opposite direction—life is growing longer not

shorter; health is better not worse." Therefore, they conclude, environmentalists' aversion to public risks must be caused by their biased sectarianism and not by increasing hazards.^[56]

This attack on environmentalists is an example of what Quine called a "what else" argument.^[57] It is of the form: "Increasing risk cannot explain increasing risk aversion among the public; what else could explain it but the sectarian tendencies of environmental groups?" But a number of things besides alleged environmentalist sectarianism could explain increasing risk aversion. Some laypersons might, for example, be unwilling to consent to the risk because they regard its distribution as unacceptable. In this case, one might not care whether overall safety was greater but instead might ask: "Safer for whom? " "Safer in which respects? " If a person's own life were less safe, particularly because of industry irresponsibility, that person might be averse to industry-imposed risks, even though the overall safety of the public was increasing.^[58]

Another possible explanatory factor might be that life could easily be even safer, or that the benefits associated with taking a particular risk are minimal. Even if our lives are getting longer and safer, reasonable persons might become more averse to environmental hazards if they believe that their current risk burden, albeit small in magnitude, is not worth the benefits generated. In fact, Fischhoff and his colleagues have demonstrated that scientists and nonscientists share roughly the same opinions about nuclear reactor safety but disagree sharply on whether the alleged benefits of atomic energy are worth the risks.^[59] Antipopulist risk writers therefore may err in presupposing that the magnitude of hazard is the only factor that can explain public risk aversion.^[60]

Is the Public Unrealistic?

If other factors can explain rational risk behavior, then perhaps anti-populist risk analyses fail because of the narrow way in which they define rational risk evaluation and environmentalists' views. This same narrowness is also exemplified in another argument against the public: "it is best to recognize that sectarians [laypersons or environmentalists, as opposed to proponents of markets or political hierarchies] can never be satisfied. If extensive effort were devoted to reducing risk, sectarians would not feel they had won what they wanted. [They believe that] there can never be enough [safety]."^[61] "They [the public] do not tolerate rational limits on their knowledge."^[62]

The most obvious problem with this argument is that there is no

evidence to support it; it appears to be a mere ad hominem attack. And if there is no supporting evidence, how can one define or discover the characteristics that are allegedly associated with each of the three societal groups? For Thompson, these groups are sectists, entrepreneurs, and autonomists. For Douglas and Wildavsky, they are members of environmentalist sects (the public), market proponents, and advocates of political hierarchies. Why are U.S. laypersons and environmentalists, per se, said not to be satisfied with their victories? Why are market persons not charged with being "never satisfied"? The prototypical capitalist seeking profits appears to be as much the sort of person who would never be satisfied, who would always want bigger profits and more successful products. Moreover, even if members of one or another group were correctly said to have the characteristic of "not being satisfied," how can Efron, Thompson, Maxey, Wildavsky, and others say that this is a quality associated with social structures rather than with individual psychology? Perhaps such extreme dissatisfaction is a result of individual, rather than group, characteristics. None of these questions is answered by any of the risk assessors or industrial exponents who attack the public. This lack of answers is puzzling, given their expressed aims. These aims are "understanding . . . technological risk," giving "an overview of this environmental movement," and examining "the foundations of each set of arguments . . . for or against the center,. . . . market or hierarchy."^[63] Because they do not answer key questions and because they do not empirically substantiate their claims, they run the risk of providing, not "explanation," as they assert, but mere "ideology."^[64] This is especially unfortunate, since they themselves attribute ideology to the public.

Another difficulty is that the allegation (that environmentalists are never satisfied, and therefore their risk demands are not reasonable) begs the question. To say that people who are "never satisfied" are not reasonable presupposes that they ought to be satisfied. And to presuppose that they ought to be satisfied, in a particular case of risk reduction, assumes that the danger in that situation is acceptable. But to presuppose that the hazard is acceptable is to beg the very question at issue.

Moreover, apart from the circularity, there are grounds for believing that reasonable people ought not be satisfied, in some cases, even when great improvements in risk reduction have been made. Consider the case of oil development on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the United States. Even though the technology for containing oil spills has improved, risk assessments for oil spills typically do not include damages to the public or funds necessary to handle liability claims. Instead, the costs of oil spills are defined only as the value of the product lost

and the cleanup cost, not as damage to the public or the environment.^[65] Since these latter data are not included, the distributive effects of oil-spill risks, on everyone from fishermen to motel owners, are ignored. Offshore operators are not required to demonstrate financial responsibility, and there is no current law requiring compensation to the public whenever there are damages that the cleanup cannot prevent.^[66]

Given such ways of managing and evaluating offshore oil risks, and given that no offshore spill has ever been cleaned up and contained on site,^[67] why should the public be satisfied with only limited improvements in reducing oil spills? Likewise, why should the public be satisfied with improvements in commercial nuclear fission technology, as the antipopulist arguments suggest? Consider the Price-Anderson Act, mentioned in the first section of this chapter. The act limits the liability of nuclear plant owners. Under this law, as amended, citizens are denied their due-process rights to sue for more than approximately 1 percent of their total losses, in the event of a catastrophic nuclear accident.^[68] Now suppose Congress doubles the current liability limit ($640 million). A reasonable person could still claim that she was not satisfied and that more protection was needed; she could argue that doubling the liability limit would mean that less than 2 percent of total losses were covered, given current government estimates about the possible damages from a catastrophic nuclear accident. But then suppose Congress responded by quadrupling the liability limit, making it $2.6 billion. A reasonable person could still claim that she was not satisfied, since quadrupling the liability limit would nevertheless result in coverage for less than 4 percent of total possible losses in a worst-case accident. But suppose Congress responded a third time to this demand for protection and made the liability limit ten times its current level, raising it to $6.4 billion. A reasonable person still could respond that she was not satisfied, since less than 10 percent of total possible losses would be covered. If one has a legal right (e.g., a due-process right) to full coverage of losses, whether from oil spills, or nuclear power, or hazardous waste, then a reasonable person need not be satisfied with any concession short of recognizing this right.

The allegations of Efron, Wildavsky, Maxey, Rothschild, and others—that U.S. environmentalists are dissatisfied and therefore unreasonable—are analogous to that of a racist counseling a black in the 1940s: "Look, you're not being reasonable in demanding more equality [just as environmentalists demand more protection from risk]; after all, things have been steadily improving since slavery was abolished." A reasonable black could maintain that everyone ought to be accorded equal rights and therefore that any improvement short of full equality

was not enough. Analogously, even if it is true that environmentalists are "never satisfied" with the level of safety, no one ought to assume that this dissatisfaction is irrational. One also needs to show that people have no grounds for being dissatisfied.^[69]

The Need for a New Theory of Rationality

If the preceding analysis of arguments (for the bias and irrationality of lay responses to societal risk) is correct, then many risk assessors, industry spokespersons, and natural and social scientists have built their view of "rational" risk evaluation on a questionable foundation. Without significant evidence, they have attributed motives to environmentalists who are averse to risk. They have confused causes of behavior with correlations; they have defined 'rational' and 'environmentalist' in highly stipulative, question-begging ways.

If such arguments against lay views of environmental risk are wrong, then we may need a new theory of rationality.^[70] We also may need new criteria for rational risk evaluation. After showing (in the next chapter) how risk experts subscribe to outmoded positivistic or relativistic notions of rationality, I shall sketch a new account of rational risk evaluation. Its main policy goal will be to enfranchise the very people who are most likely to be victimized by environmental hazards.