Chris Cook
speaker
25 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2013
last heard Aug 2013
Chris Cook’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So Evan's question was undoubtedly a bit bizarre, but actually spoke to an incredibly fundamental question in public policy, which is,
When you do a cost benefit analysis, you have to make sure that you include as many of the relevant costs and benefits when you do that.
Now, some of those costs and benefit can be relatively easily ascertained.
So we know what the cost of a head of cattle is.
For example, we just go down to an auction, listen in and find out what people are willing to pay for a cow.
It's much harder to work out what's the value of the life of a badger.
It's actually something of a philosophical question.
But they do undoubtedly have a value.
And we can tell that because people really care when you shoot badgers.
And now it is very peculiar that in the government's cost benefit analysis, it's the cost of the bullets that's really the limitation on how many badgers you kill.
It's nothing about the badger.
It's not enthusiasm for the badger.
There is no care for the badger in the cost benefit analysis.
I think the fact that there are people that care about the badger enough, like Brian May, to devote large amounts of their time to campaigning for its survival suggests that the average valuation of a badger's life is probably something above zero.
It's probably not a million pounds a badger, right?
We're not saying they are terribly important.
We're not saying also that you could never justify killing a badger.
I live in zone one in London.
I'm really the last person to be telling other people what they should be doing with their badges.
But it seems very, very unlikely that the correct evaluation of a badger's life is zero.
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