The Precautionary Principle is part of a political philosophy that is meant to strike a balance between 'playing god' and technological development.

To understand the Precautionary Prinicple it is important to know the meaning of risk.

Risk

Risk is often a very subjective topic when each person has there own definition of which events should be followed. However simply it judged as this:

Risk = Likelihood of an event (frequency) X Severity of the outcome (Hazard)(Impact)

In the case of nuclear power which as a contriversial issue can be judged as a risk. The likelihood of an event such as a nuclear meltdown is low however the severity of the outcome is extremly high.

Frequency

This can also be a measure of probability.

Hazard

These are the effects of the risk.

Impact

Not all risks are bad. There are a varying types of impact as there are morals.

An undefined impact: This is plain and simple uncertainty. Not knowing the full extent of the impacts is one of the defining principles of uncertainity however the majority of human development has been to the extent of not entirely knowing the full science behind it. For example, Catapults and Trebuchets were long used before the theories of Isaac Newton. CFC gases were used before any found a correlation between their emissions and the widing Ozone hole.

Negative Impact: These are often refered to as threats. Most serious risks are defined as having a negative impacts because a high severity of these can cost people their lives, money or the next election.

Positive Impact: These are often called opportunities. These can often weighed up against the negative impacts but because of the morality issues sometimes positive impacts are never judged.

In the example of the nuclear power station. The 'good' risk is the likelihood that it can generate a sizeable portion of the country's electricity is high and the severity of the outome is extremly low. Putting the two arguements together creates balanace and contriversy is the result.

Factors of risk

In the scientific and polotical world there is the foundation of ethics and in the more decent decades the ideology of humanism. This as well as cultural values can often alter the position of a risk depending on the audience of the outcome.

Women and children first!

What often we do for granted we would heavily restrain on our own children to protect them. In the post-feminist world, there is large degree of equality between women and men with regards to risk except in clichéd Hollywood action flicks when the hero saves the heroine at every available opportunity and said heroine avoids conflict as much as possible.

Likewise the view of the child as an innocent means that any person, corporation or government that targets children in a negative light will be burnt alive by the media or the lynch mob that has formed outside. Adults tend not to get the same treatment.

The rich also get preferential treatment in regards to risk. As it stands your life is the price of everything you own. Everything you own is considered your home.

The imminence

The long-term is starting to play an important role espically in development. Goals now stretch from 2050 all the way up to the 22nd century. Given that the modern world is sixty years old can another sixty years be accuratly accounted for?

The long term effects of climate change often what scuppers the arguement. If the effects were to be next week the risk would have been less exceptable however with the ice caps expected to melt fully in 2050 the risk suddenly becomes viable again. Being dead when the hazard occurs is somewhat of an incentive.

So what is the Precautionary Prinicple then?

In the mountain of European Union definitions they call it "The appropriate response to a given situation is the result of a political decision, a function of the level of risk that is 'acceptable' to the society on which the risk is imposed".

In the UK, this is done by a very nice traffic light colour coded system:

Colour - Level of Risk

1. Dark Red/Black - Critical
2. Red - Severe
3. Orange - High
4. Yellow - Medium
5. Blue/Green - Low
6. White - Very Low