Risk Assessment and Climate Change: The in-built Problems of Commission Policy

when parallax fallacies emerge from institutional knowledge, risk and time management

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of institutional biases - in other words, ‘parallax fallacies’ - in the European Commission’s risk management system. Building on sociological understandings of risk and the recent EU timescape approach in EU studies, we identify six potential fallacies: 1) a misrepresentation or underestimation of risk, 2) an unrepresentative estimation of risks, 3) normatively contestable estimations of risk, 4) an institutionally or functionally limited view on risk, 5) a blurred focus on the political aspect of the risk due to risk transformation, 6) a time-lagged risk assessment. These fallacies are evaluated with regard to the 2° Celsius target of the Commission’s climate change policy.