Introduction: The Challenges of Prevention

Abstract

In the opening sequence of Roland Emmerich’s blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow (2004), a palaeoclimatologist played by actor Dennis Quaid reports on his findings on climate change at a United Nations conference in New Delhi. The diplomats and politicians present, including the Vice President of the United States, remain unconvinced by his vague if forceful warning. We draw attention to this film not for its cinematic qualities or its popularisation of climate science. Rather, it illustrates western, and in particular US, concern over potentially catastrophic perils in the future, which is also reflected in subsequent academic writing about new global threats and vulnerabilities: the meltdown of the financial system, terrorism with nuclear and biological weapons, the unintentional dangers of new technologies and sudden changes in the earth’s environmental system (Posner, 2004; Homer-Dixon, 2006; Delpech, 2007; Fukuyama, 2007; Perrow, 2007; Bostrom and Cirkuvic, 2008). The film also encapsulates popular mythology about warning and prevention, which portrays decision-makers as cynical and narrow-minded, while expert ‘warners’ are extraordinarily foresighted and altruistic individuals who put their reputation on the line to speak (scientific) truth to power and prevent the worst. Implicit in this Cassandra-mythology is the expectation that warning is bound to fail.

Diplomat 1: I’m confused. I thought you were talking about global warming, not an ice age.

Dr Hall: Yes, it is a paradox, but global warming can trigger a cooling trend […]

Diplomat 2: Excuse me. When do you think this could happen, professor? When?

Dr Hall: 1 don’t know. Maybe in a hundred years, maybe in a thousand. But what I do know is that if we do not act soon, it is our children and our grandchildren who will have to pay the price.

Diplomat 3: And who’s going to pay the price of the Kyoto Accord? It will cost the world’s economy hundreds of billions of dollars.

Dr Hall: With all due respect, Mr. Vice President, the cost of doing nothing could be even higher. Our climate is fragile.

The Day After Tomorrow, Scene III