The toolbox for evaluations of environmental performance

Abstract

In chapter 2, I indicated that problems plagued by conflicting frames and great uncertainty about (scientific) facts can be defined as ‘messy’. Such problems are hard to structure in decision making. Nevertheless, we have to be able to cope with ‘messy’ problems in practice. In order to grasp how this can be done, two case studies of ‘messy’ problems will be studied in this book: the chlorine debate and the PVC debate.

[H]ow much can a human being tolerate? Even small animals react very differently: guinea pigs, for instance are ten to twenty times more sensitive than mice and three to five thousand times more sensitive than hamsters. The results for lions are not yet available, elephants are already being selected...(..)

Acceptable levels certainly fulfill the function of a symbolic detoxification. They are a son of tranquilizer pill against the mounting new reports on toxins.

Ulrich Beck (1992), Risk Society, Sage Publications, p. 68

A good working definition of a catastrophe is an effect so large that even an epidemiological study can detect it.