Canadian Politics Today

In health and safety there's an approach that says you need to consider both the likelihood of a hazard occurring as well as the gravity of the hazard. So you end up with a contingency table that looks like this:

Likely to occur Low consequences	Unlikely to occur Low consequences
Likely to occur High consequences	Unlikely to occur High consequences

*Bold requires intervention

The only time preventive action is not necessitated is when something is BOTH unlikely to occur and has low consequences.


One of the moments you intervene is if something has low consequences, but is likely to happen over and over again. Say there's a corner on a desk that's sticking out and people constantly stub their toes on it. It's low consequences (nobody's going to die here), but it's a hazard that is repeatedly encountered and needs to be addressed.

Obviously, if something is likely to occur and has high consequences you absolutely need to intervene. This is where we are with anthropogenic climate change, but those who don't "believe" what scientific observation has shown will argue differently.

If something has dire consequences, but is unlikely to occur, you still need to intervene because of the gravity of the consequences should that thing occur. In this case, we are talking about global catastrophy. That is not exaggeration. Scientists are fairly certain that the interaction of climate systems means that the collapse of even one or two of them, could create a cascading effect amongst the rest of them. Even if you don't believe climate catastrophy to be likely, if there is ANY chance then the consequences are dire enough that they require action.

So the only time non-intervention even makes sense is if you buy into the argument that climate change is NOT happening. That's demonstrably wrong based on all of the evidence that has been analyzed by the scientific community.

There's no doubt climate change is happening. 

If the desk was steel, and bolted to the floor, and growing year by year, the people stubbing their toe on it would still rather walk around it than get rid of it if some of them had to be laid off to pay for it.