What is sustainability? We have a lot of lofty definitions, hyperbole and weighty normative responsibilities tied to this concept, but what does it mean? In honour of Rio+20, coming in June 2012, the Risk-Monger thought this word should be more deeply analysed. Some people might not be happy with his conclusions. Back in September, I [...]

The mobile phone industry is busier chasing profits than ensuring that their 4G technology is safe. The Risk-Monger laments that, as an industry abandons ALARA, regulators don’t seem too concerned.

There are many good reasons to be a vegetarian. So why then does the Risk-Monger still eat meat?

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) have the ability to take information, skew it with politically-biased invective, and deliver a fiction with such hostility and rudeness that only those with the thickest of skins would dare to stand up to them.  Most in Brussels put their heads down and wait for this pack of wolves to move [...]

The Climate opportunists are showing up all over Durban for the COP 17 UNFCCC Climate Conference. Not only are there clopportunists from the environmental NGO world  … who have all found the budgets and the carbon offsetting to fly to South Africa (in order to complain about how so few others are attending). Some clopportunists [...]

Policymakers are developing a reflex to require that the research community determines the scientific consensus on certain issues, climate change and electro-magnetic fields being recent examples.  Should we be surprised that scientists are rarely able to deliver a clear consensus or that they resent that their debates are interfered with? At the recent European Commission [...]

This is electro-magnetic field week in the European Commission in Brussels. For risk analysts like the Risk-Monger, such a meeting of emotion-rich, evidence-poor debate on the science of EMFs is just like an early Christmas. I admire the Commission for relenting to these public consultations with people who so vehemently hate each other. I have [...]

The world did not celebrate the arrival of the seven billionth member of humanity. Rather, it shuddered. Seven billion mouths to feed with an unsustainable agriculture. Seven billion polluters crowding into impoverished cities. Seven billion violators of the planet’s fragile biodiversity. Seven billion flames to heat the planet and emit carbon. A billion people ago, [...]

Denmark has introduced a fat tax on foods high in saturated fat. It won’t work, sends the wrong message and hurts the poorer population. It is as politically incorrect as taxing fat people, which the Risk-Monger finds more workable.

If you care about the environment, don’t buy an electric car. I have just spent some time in the Great State of Michigan, and while the enthusiasm for electric cars there is palatable, the conversations I have had with people in the field have not been reassuring. Bottom line: if you care about the environment, [...]

By September 1, the Risk Monger should have been dead. Chemicals have kept him from dying and now radioactive isotopes are helping to find a way to keep him living. During the time in and out of hospitals, I have been able to reflect on the benefits to society of chemicals and nuclear and I [...]

The plan is pretty simple. Forest product companies pay WWF undisclosed sums, memberships, donations and country fees to be part of a forest network. They buy the right to put a panda logo on the back of their loggers’ shirts. And then: Chop! Chop! Chop! To celebrate the 20th anniversary of WWF’s Global Forest and [...]

There has been an insidious shift recently in environmentalist thinking that is both clever and dangerous: that the planet (biodiversity) has rights that must be respected. Man’s actions that have an effect on the balance of nature are judged morally repugnant and that man living sustainably (without having an impact on the planet) is the [...]

The Risk-Monger relentlessly holds to the belief that people do things for good reason. When reasons are unclear, he either admits that he doesn’t understand or judges that people are not very rational. With those determined to implement costly measures to try to stop global warming, he is beginning to judge towards the latter. This [...]

This is the first part of a summer series on ethics and environmentalism. In a lobbying course I have just finished, I posed the question to my students: Can you be bought? The answer was easy; the challenge was “How much?” The more disquieting question I then threw at them was: “Should you sell your [...]

Shocking! Outrageous! Unacceptable! Barroso has to fire Lewandowski, point! Such are the cries of EU environmental activists concerning recent remarks by EU Budget Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski. His crime? The Commissioner made certain remarks in an interview that were factually correct but counter to what NGO climate activists have been saying. And rather than engaging in [...]

The BBC website announced today (20 June 2011) a “shocking decline” in the state of the oceans. With lines like: “The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now” or that we are ‘heading for a sixth mass extinction event’, my eyebrows got raised by the source of the shock factor that [...]

This month we learn that both Argentine and Chinese researchers have been able to modify genes so that a cow can produce human-like breast milk. As we begin to ponder the societal value of the mass production of more nutritious milk that is less toxic to humans (plus other options that could be “designed in” [...]

The Risk-Monger can now announce that the source of the E. coli outbreak is German pork. He has no evidence to support this claim, but he doesn’t need any. He has the precautionary principle and a nervous population. First it was Spanish cucumbers (and maybe tomatoes and lettuce).  No evidence! Now we are told the [...]

There is a new contagion spreading across Europe from Spain – not related to sovereign debt or tummy bugs, but rather, to the spread of hysteria about what we eat and feed our children. It is causing well-intentioned public officials to commit an outrageous sin: to start testing all types of food for E. coli. [...]