ie/objects/complex-and-committed.html
2004.03.21

Complex View of Committed Environmentalism

There are two camps within Committed Environmentalists

• causal view
• complex view

These sub-groups agree on the actions that need to be taken, but their description of the underlying systems are different.

The key difference, in terms of policy, is their view of science and the value of scientific proof.

• examples of what people might say who believe in:
• causal
  • "Better and more science will help describe the system and the causes to acceptable levels of scientific certainty (such as 95% confidence interval)."

   

• complex
  • "The best thing we could do is to try to detect patterns that could be costly or disastrous. Our sophisticated inference techniques may detect these processes but not prove them."