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107 Colum. L. Rev. 503 (2007)
On the Divergent American Reactions to Terrorism and Climate Change

handle is hein.journals/clr107 and id is 539 raw text is: ESSAY ON THE DIVERGENT AMERICAN REACTIONS TO TERRORISM AND CLIMATE CHANGE Cass R. Sunstein* Two of the most important sources of catastrophic risk are terrorism and climate change. The United States has responded aggressively to the risk of terrorism while doing very little about the risk of climate change. For the United States alone, the cost of the Iraq War is in excess of the anticipated cost of the Kyoto Protocol. The divergence presents a puzzle; it also raises more general questions about both risk perception and the public demand for legislation. The best explanation for the divergence emphasizes bounded ra- tionality. Americans believe that aggressive steps to reduce the risk of terror- ism promise to deliver significant benefits in the near future at acceptable cost. By contrast, they believe that aggressive steps to reduce the risk of cli- mate change will not greatly benefit American citizens in the near future- and they are not willing to pay a great deal to reduce that risk. This intui- tive form of cost-benefit analysis is greatly influenced by behavioral factors, including the availability heuristic, probability neglect, outrage, and myopia. All of these contribute, after 9/11, to a willingness to support significant steps to respond to terrorism and to relative indifference to climate change. It follows that Americans are likely to support significant steps in response to climate change only if one of two conditions is met: the costs of those steps are perceived to be acceptably low; or new information, perhaps including a salient incident, indicates that Americans have much to gain from risk re- duction in the relatively near future. INTRODUCTION ............................. ....................... 505 I. BELIEFS AND PRACTICES .......................................... 509 A. Clim ate Change ..................................... 509 1. A ctions .......................................... 509 2. Public O pinion .................................. 512 3. Em issions ........................................ 514 B . T errorism ............................................ 515 C. Beliefs and Regulation ............................... 516 II. THE PSYCHOMETRIC PARADIGM AND AFFECT ................ 521 A. Qualitative Factors and Risk .......................... 521 * Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor, Law School and Department of Political Science, University of Chicago. I am grateful to Bruce Ackerman, Elizabeth Emens, Jacob Gersen, Robert Hahn, Martha Nussbaum, Eric Posner, Richard Posner, Adrian Vermeule, and Jonathan Wiener for valuable comments on a previous draft. Thanks too to participants in a work-in-progress workshop at the University of Chicago Law School. Thanks finally to Rachael Dizard,Jennifer Rho, and Matthew Tokson for excellent research assistance. A version of this Essay will appear in Cass R. Sunstein, Worst-Case Scenarios (forthcoming 2007). 503

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