Mark Ryan

This paper analyses the ethical aspects contained within the precautionary principle's approach towards its goal of risk minimisation/prevention, namely, balancing the views of the expert and non-expert within the environmental decision-making process. It will analyse views that either integrate or discount public opinion within the PP's decision-making process, and also the ethical issues surrounding the information received by the public in relation to environmental risks. It will be broken into three stages: (i) Libertarianism: Policymakers should provide the public with all of the information that is available, in relation to risks they face, and should let them decide for themselves about what actions should be taken. However, the general public might not understand the details of this information, leading to irrational actions being taken that do not represent the probability, impact, or importance of these risks. (ii) Paternalism: Deciding what is best for the public and implementing policies accordingly, or only providing limited information, is the best approach to take towards risk. The public would not understand a lot of the technical jargon used and their views towards risk are often irrational. However, this raises the ethical issue that these types of policies do not represent the public's interests. (iii) Risk Information: Information received about a specific risk(s), or lack thereof, is vital in how risks are perceived. There is the potential for alarmist-type reactions towards risk because of the quality and quantity of media coverage, which has the capacity to distort the reality and likelihood of a risk. This can blind individuals' capacity to understand accurate levels of probability, and can thus cause governments to act on their population's misguided views surrounding these risks.

Vaclav Smil's latest monograph offers a careful and well-detailed look at the origins, development, and essential importance that the diesel engine and gas turbine has had on globalisation and humanity's progress. His main reason for doing so, as he states at the beginning and end of the book, is to demonstrate the ubiquitous presence and universal importance of these two inventions within the modern world. As Smil himself puts it, when individuals are questioned about what have been the paramount inventions that helped globalisation develop into its present state, they reply with answers such as 'computer chips' or the 'internet', while completely overlooking our ultimate dependence upon diesel engines and gas turbines. Smil's research on the historical development of the diesel engine and the gas turbine is meticulously thorough, giving the reader a great insight into the different figures and periods responsible for these prime movers' widespread use. The book gives a broad overview of the progressive developments of humankind throughout the past half millennium, including thesignificant expansion of intercontinental trade. Smil traces the technological historicity of global trade and the apparatuses that have emerged from it, with such examples as the expansive propensity for sea innovation, culminating in the monstrous ULCCs crude-oil shipment vessels that can carry in the excess of 500,000 deadweight tons (dwt), and which claim a third of total of total dwt on the waters (116). Smil gives an informative account of speed and carrying capacity progressions, from wind powered sea transport to the early developments of steam engines, right up to the use of diesel powered engines and gas turbines. He illustrates how these advances have enabled globalisation to grow, and how humankind's burning desire for better standards of living, and for wealth and dominance, have essentially fuelled the invention of many of our

Barry's latest book, The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability, outlines many different problems within the sustainability debate and proposes that we change our goal from sustainability to tackling our present unsustainability instead. The book contains both philosophical analysis and political theory, and gives a fresh perspective on these topics with Barry's own particular form of green republicanism.