Yet he is wrong to say that “both person and planet are threatened by the same enemy—the bigness of things.” What is at issue is the interlacing of distance and proximity, of the personal and the large-scale mechanisms of globalisation. “Bigness” is not in itself either an enemy of the person or a phenomenon to be overcome in life politics. Instead, it is the coordination of individual benefit and planetary organisation that has to be the focus of concern. Global connections of many kinds are the very condition of forms of individual self-actualisation, including those that act to minimise high-consequence risks.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 371