So . . . in the town where I live there is a tempest in a teacup raging. It seems that the evil cell phone companies want to erect a wireless tower in a generally residential area, and the inhabitants of that area are up in arms about it. Sure, they want wireless service, but not in their backyard. But this post is not about NIMBYism in general or the hypocrisy involved (wanting the benefit without bearing the cost) but instead about ignorance, and its positive and negative effects.
What is funny about the wireless tower story is that people only know about it because it is just going up now. Quick, can you tell me where your nearest wireless tower is? Probably not, and I know I couldn't until I read a letter to the editor of our community newspaper that informed everyone that it's about 100 meters away from where I live. So we are ignorant of where the current danger is, but we know we don't want any more. Nuclear power plants were not dangerous, not really, until that reactor in Japan started having problems. We weren't worried about our overpasses until that one in Montreal collapsed a while back. We choose to focus on what catches our attention rather than the existing "threat."
Why put threat in quotation marks? Because who knows if these wireless towers actually pose any danger. Because of our aforementioned selective focus, we tend to give too much importance to less dangerous, but more vivid possibilities (like a nuclear meltdown, for example). Drivers ignoring stop signs or not signalling turns is not a very sexy issue, but likely causes more deaths than wireless towers or nuclear plant problems.
A report came out a couple of weeks ago that the World Health Organization has now classified cell phones as "possibly carcinogenic," which sounds scary. The headlines further hyped the issue (Your Cell Phone Could Be Giving You Cancer!) and soon the message received by the public was that cell phones cause cancer. Well, for those of you who took the time to read the article (here's the version from the CBC), you already know that this "finding" is based on one study in which they asked cancer patients to remember how much they used their cell phones 10 years earlier. First of all, that's a long time to remember back, especially considering it's not something you generally keep track of. Second, it's one study, for one type of cancer, and isn't enough to label something carcinogenic (which is why the WHO didn't; "possibly carcinogenic" is also the category that they put coffee and pickles in). But it kinda makes sense that something like a cell phone could cause cancer, and cancer is a vivid threat, so the danger is overweighted.
There's two ways that we can go with this kind of stuff. We can either look at the potential danger (e.g. cancer) and conclude it is so great that we want to forgo any benefits in the meantime just to reduce the likelihood that we will be stricken; or we can enjoy the benefits up to the point that the costs become too high. We face the same decision on the environment. We can throw a huge amount of resources at the climate change issue in the hope that it will reduce the chance that the earth will become a huge ball of molten lava, or we can have air conditioning and cars and electricity, and when the picture becomes clearer, and if said picture shows a lava-istic future, we change behaviours at that point.
I opt for the latter. Now, off to make phone calls while hanging out under the wireless tower. You know, to get better reception and stuff.
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