Another jewel from Risk & Culture (pg 67),
"The risk-averse side starts from the point that unbridled economic growth has hurt the natural environmental and human life. the land has been despoiled, the seas polluted, and people diseased. the advantages of quantitative growth, the arguments goes, have to be sacrificed to improve the quality of life. the other (risk-takers) side says that economic growth is good; it advises citizens not to lower standards of living by very much in order to reduce risk a little. It tries to convert the currency of discourse to a common denominator--lives saved or accidents prevented. Risk-assessment techniques are the expert answer to the question of how much wealth should be scarified for how much health. Experts try to show that many more lives could be saved or accidents prevented by far more efficient alternative uses of the same resources. The risk averse will have no part of this argument. They insist that human life is priceless and cannot be measured by vulgar money. The object that the whole exercise is immoral when life and nature seem to be brought and sold. "
It is interesting that the same set of argument is often used in the discussion of whether it is appropriate to value ecosystem services.
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