[-empyre-] Rigging the Risk Odds

[Stewart Auyash]

Love your term, Tim - "revenge of risk."  And good question.

The infrastructure managers (not that they are an organized group) did make
conscious decisions NOT to listen to those who recommended protecting New
York and the Jersey/Long Island shores.  Among those are insurance
companies.  They (at least some of the people who calculate risk for them)
are very concerned about the risk of climate change ecology. After all,
they make huge payouts for catastrophic events.  They could have severely
increased the cost of insurance to the businesses and residents along the
water thus pointing out to us all that they understood that the risk had
shifted over the years. This would have been a wakeup call.  Likewise, the
federal gov't direct subsidy (National Flood Insurance Program) takes aim
at the "real" risk rates offered by insurance companies and meddled  in the
markets offering lower cost insurance to those with the greatest risk
(though it's mostly on the Gulf Coast and Florida).  So here's an example
where private insurers knew the risk was high but a the program passed by
Congress diminished the perception of risk by offering lower than market
rates for insurance (hence the program was $15 billion in debt after
Katrina).

We can still rig the odds for to help secure health but we can never be
100% risk free. For example, estimates of the cost to protect NYC harbor
are about $15-20B if we start soon. The cost of dealing and cleaning up
after Sandy in NYC alone ranges from $40-80.  This brings up the psychology
of future risk. Most often we think "it won't happen to us." That goes for
the government as well as the residents and businesses along the coast. I
hope Sandy is a wakeup call with regard to both our health security and
ecological change.

I wonder if folks in other countries have any knowledge of how they deal
with ecological risk.

Thanks for your response.

Cheers,
-Stewarat

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 11:34 PM, Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>wrote:

>
> Thanks, Stewart.  In light of the devastation caused by Sandy along
> densely populated upper income coastal zones of the Northeastern US, I'm
> thinking that we've witnessed something of the revenge of risk, according
> to your terms.  For the comfort of the suburbs proved to be no more secure
> from this globally warmed storm than the inner zones of Newark ( although
> we are witnessing disparities in emergency response along economic lines
> (the Rockaways still seem to be receiving little assistance).   Most
> telling is the vulnerability to the digital infrastructure of vast
> population, commerce, and entertainment zones dependent on shared power
> grids.
>
> Interesting that even the institutions most relied on by New Yorkers for
> their combat of health risk, the hospitals, were brought to their knees by
> natural threats to the grid -- not immunological threats but power surges
> and burn outs.  An aging infrastructure sustaining the power grids of Wall
> Street.
>
> I'm wondering if you could say more about the linkage in your post between
> securities of health and those of ecology.  Thanks so much.
>
> Tim
>
>
> Director, Society for the Humanities
> Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
> A. D. White House
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York. 14853
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [
> empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Stewart Auyash [
> auyash at ithaca.edu]
> Sent: Monday, November 12, 2012 8:04 AM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: [-empyre-] Rigging the Risk Odds
>
> Rigging the Risk Odds
>
> Schools closed, concerts and public events cancelled, travel down to a
> drizzle of people and no one with a fever allowed in or out, quarantines
> (forced and self-imposed), shops nearly empty, N95 masks and anti-microbial
> products sold out, a large hospital devoted only to the diseased,
> temperature checks in malls, schools, and at borders. Friends, family, and
> colleagues back home begged, pleaded, and prayed for the expats to leave.
> “Fear has a mind of its own,” declares the newspaper.  All in the effort to
> decrease risk.
>
> So how far would you be willing to go to avoid risk in a pandemic that
> proved fatal to about 10% of all those infected and 50% for those over 65?
>  Would you be willing to voluntarily quarantine yourself and your family if
> you thought you might have been exposed? Would you accept a forced
> quarantine if someone you recently met had the symptoms? Or how would your
> react if you were not allowed to leave the country if you had a fever? (1)
>
> Be it making choices in a pandemic, avoiding an oncoming storm, becoming
> more  physically active, or driving old gas guzzlers paying no heed to
> climate change, why don’t we make better decisions about our health and
> those around us? Can’t we just do the right thing?
>
> As Bill Leiss said in his plenary talk during Risk at Humanities, we make
> choices about risks every day. But not all of us have the ability to make
> the “right” choices to avoid the risks we know. When contemplating future
> health risks, we are playing a game comparable to lottery as Dan Beauchamp
> explains in his editorial, Lottery Justice (2). Not everyone has the equal
> ability to avoid a pandemic, outrun a hurricane, or change our “lifestyle”
> to lower risks to our health. The lottery is rigged. Geography, for
> example, is destiny.  Born near the equator or sub-Saharan Africa, we can
> expect high risk of poverty and illness.  Living in an inner city with no
> safe recreation areas and lousy schools for your kids, what would you
> expect? Not everyone can pack up and move.  But live in a clean suburb with
> playgrounds and good schools and your kids will have a head start.  No need
> to move, is there?
>
> However, we can change the lottery odds for others to reduce risk. We can
> make the air healthier to inhabit, quarantine during a pandemic, restrict
> guns, design safer highways, restrict the size of soft drinks, and provide
> better primary education to all.  Beauchamp calls these policies “gifts to
> strangers.”
>
> One could look at the election last week as a way to change the odds of
> risk in the American lottery. One candidate clearly cared about rigging the
> odds for the wealthy while the other candidate argued the opposite
> approach.  As Bhaskar indicated last week, risk does not exist in a vacuum.
> By changing the odds, we can rig the risk in favor of all.
>
>
> (1) All these events took place in Singapore and elsewhere in 2003 during
> the SARS pandemic.
>
> (2) Beauchamp, D. (1981) Lottery justice. Journal of Public Health Policy,
> 2:3, 201-3.
>
> *Thanks to Renee and Tim for inviting me to participate in this forum.
>
> --
> Stewart Auyash, MPH PhD
> Associate Professor and Dept Chair
> Dept of Health Promotion and Physical Education
> Hill Center 7
>
> Ithaca College
> 953 Danby Rd |  Ithaca, NY 14850
> 607-274-1312<tel:607-274-1312>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>


-- 
Stewart Auyash, MPH PhD
Associate Professor and Dept Chair
Dept of Health Promotion and Physical Education
Hill Center 7

Ithaca College
953 Danby Rd |  Ithaca, NY 14850
607-274-1312
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20121114/13d2d122/attachment.htm>