Eric Allen makes a powerful case against there being anything to worry about from the possibility of a massive rail spilling polluting Prince George's water supply. As he explains in his column, City of Prince George staff have already spent a considerable amount of time researching the issue, as evidenced by the 87-page report presented to city council on Monday about what could happen.
In his book Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, Dan Gardner provides numerous examples about how everyone thinks they can assess the level of risk in their lives and actually how rotten they are at it. People are able to ignore great risk right before their eyes as easily as they can heighten a low-risk threat.
Being able to imagine something really bad happening automatically increases our belief that it could happen, even if it's never happened before. People are willing to invest far more of themselves emotionally in that one terrible -- but remote -- outcome than they are over the prospect of frequent and numerous minor mishaps. In other words, even though minor rail accidents are relatively common and tragedies like Lac Magentic are almost unheard of, Lac Magentic could happen again. Seen from the opposite perspective, everybody fantasizes winning the Lotto Max jackpot but nobody spends time thinking about what they'll do if they win $20, even though the odds of winning $20 are significantly more likely.
Gardner identifies other factors that heighten people's sense of risk, including news stories, mistrust of the participants, how tough it would be to fix the problem if it did happen and whether the problem was caused naturally or by people. Man-made messes are seen as riskier propositions, even when the opposite is true.
Most people also see greater risk when matters are outside of their control. Flying to Vancouver is far safer than driving but that's not how it feels to many people, who would prefer the odds behind the steering wheel. Furthermore, many people have no problem with the obvious fallacy that winter highway driving is more dangerous for other people than it is for themselves.
Lastly, people often make rapid links between higher risks and lower benefits without making a rational assessment of whether someing is high-risk and high-reward, high-risk and low-reward, low-risk and low-reward, or low-risk and high-reward.
That's too many options to consider and too many variables to weigh before picking the likely scenario.
For some, living in fear is easier than thinking about whether there's anything to be afraid of.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
