The Green Week Blog, Part 2: What is wrong with biodiversity?
What sort of Luddite would argue not to worry about the loss of biodiversity? No one. That then allows well-meaning public officials to propose any measures to address biodiversity loss. Who after all...
View ArticleThe Green Week Blog, Part 3 – The best and the worst
After a long, not so green week, the Risk Monger has selected some of the best and worst moments with a suggestion for next year's theme.
View ArticleHow much does silence cost? Ask BP.
The ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is outrageous. But where is the outrage? Outside of spontaneous actions on YouTube, the main NGOs charged with protecting the planet have largely pretended...
View ArticleThe Impotence of Open Health Forum 2010
Solving EU health issues should be simple. But when those who appear to know better start to lecture us, things get complicated.
View ArticleReal Risks #1: Old People
The following is the first part of a summer series of disquiet. While the Risk Monger writes this blog to ridicule the fear mongers, there are certain risks that keep him awake at night. No it is not...
View ArticleReal Risks #2: Poverty
Part 2 of a summer series on real risks. 24,000 children died today from poverty. That is a real risk we can do something about. Climate change is a potential risk we can't do very much about. Guess...
View ArticleReal Risks #3: Policy-makers
After old people and poverty, the third biggest real risk to humans is policy-makers. Environmental-health policies decided under stakeholder pressure and without reliable scientific information costs...
View ArticleAddressing climate change: The ultimate comb-over
The Risk-Monger compares climate change to his receding hair-line. Sadly, our policies and paths of action make us look more like Elton John than Bruce Willis.
View ArticleDo Facts Matter?
Ten years ago, the Risk Monger was one of many working on science communications, science, society and governance issues. He believed that facts mattered. Today he has lost his faith.
View ArticleForget Knowledge! Welcome to the Influence-based Society
Following his admission that facts don't matter, the Risk-Monger considers how the policy world has evolved. The knowledge-based society has been replaced by the influence-based society.
View ArticleEuropean Innovation: Fast trains on slow tracks
European innovation gurus talk up targets for investments in research and technologies, but without serious changes in political and societal mindsets, we are simply building fast trains to run on slow...
View ArticleLamenting the loss of leadership
The participatory policy process is being clogged by environmental activists who would rather see states not function than be led by elites and experts who might make decisions. This neo-anarchism is...
View ArticleAttack of the Killer Cucumbers – The real risk
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...
View ArticleE. coli and the failure of precaution
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...
View ArticleHoly Cow: Why breast is best
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...
View ArticleIPSO – Facto – the decline of the BBC’s media integrity
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...
View ArticleCan you be bought?
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...
View ArticleClimate Ninnies
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...
View ArticleCorporate Europe Create-a-story
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...
View ArticleCancel Rio+20
The UN’s Rio+20 Sustainable Development Conference is promising to be an entirely politicised, misguided event already hijacked by the eco-activists, certain to achieve nothing and cause great...
View Article
