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Table of Contents...

San Francisco Is First City to Consider Impact of Its Purchases
  In June, San Francisco became the first city in the nation to take
  public health and environmental stewardship into consideration when
  purchasing products -- from toilet paper to computers. This levels
  the playing field for "green" businesses, making it easier for them to
  compete.
The Pacific Northwest Is Warming Faster Than Anywhere Else
  "The region's elected officials and agencies now address climate
  change here on the basis of the 'precautionary principle' --
  acknowledging that they do not know everything about the long-range
  effects of global warming, but are taking steps now before it's too
  late."
Philadelphia Moves to End Homelessness
  Philadelphia has set a goal -- to end homelessness in 10 years --
  and is now evaluating ways to get there. That's foresight in action.
Precautionary Principle Raises Blood Pressure
  Henry I. Miller is one of the most flamboyant opponents of the
  precautionary principle. He is a professor at Stanford University who
  rarely lets mere facts stand in the way of a good yarn about the
  dangers of foresight and forecaring.

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From: San Francisco Chronicle, Jun. 18, 2005
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SAN FRANCISCO IS FIRST CITY TO CONSIDER IMPACT OF ITS PURCHASES

San Francisco became the first city in the nation Friday [June 17,
2005] to enact a law that requires the city to take public health and
environmental stewardship into consideration when purchasing products
-- from toilet paper to computers.

The law, which goes by the cumbersome name of Environmentally
Preferable Purchasing for Commodities Ordinance, requires city
departments to buy products that do as little harm as possible to
people and the Earth.

The potential reach of the ordinance is far, from jail uniforms to
office carpeting, from street-cleaning suds to construction materials.

The city makes about $600 million in purchases a year to supply City
Hall, the Hall of Justice, fire and police stations, the parks and
other municipal operations.

"By exercising our economic power, San Francisco can encourage market
development of new products which are healthier and more
environmentally friendly," said Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who worked
three years to get the new law on the books.

Mayor Gavin Newsom made it official with his signature during a
ceremony in his office attended by environmentalists and public health
advocates. The law, he said, "basically says it's better to be safe
than sorry... as it relates to our purchasing powers in the City and
County of San Francisco."

City officials say one of the goals is for the law to be used as a
model for other jurisdictions. The more that sign on, the more
economic incentive manufacturers will have to make environmentally
friendly products.

From now on, San Francisco will look at such things as whether
products can be recycled, whether they pollute the air or water, their
energy efficiency and whether they emit toxic substances that have
been found to endanger public health.

The program has been tested on an limited basis for the past several
years, and officials report that desirable products are available, and
usually don't cost more.

As an example, the city buys 87,000 fluorescent light tubes a year and
recently put in an order for ones produced with the least amount of
mercury, a toxic substance. The ordinance will not affect every
purchase overnight. Instead, when specific products come up for bid
the regulations may kick in.

The Department of the Environment, working with community groups,
technical experts and other city staff, will set priorities for which
products should be assessed for application of the ordinance.

"We may decide as a community that computers are our next item that we
want to look at through the lens of environmental and public health,"
said Debbie Raphael, the city's toxics reduction program manager.

"Traditionally, we have a list of specifications we use to decide
which computer to buy," she said. "Those specifications do not include
things like how much lead is in them? Can you recycle them? What is
their energy use? What it does not mean is that cost and performance
is ignored. We're expanding the universe of criteria."

The Department of the Environment will identify products that present
threats to human health and the environment and then identify
comparably priced nontoxic alternatives that city departments will be
allowed to buy. If the product proves too expensive, the department
can request a waiver from the city purchaser to buy the cheaper,
though more toxic, product.

E-mail Rachel Gordon at rgordon@sfchronicle.com

Page B-2

Copyright 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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From: Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 27, 2005
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A RAPID WARM-UP FOR THE NORTHWEST

By Brad Knickerbocker

ASHLAND, ORE. -- It's unlikely that Seattle's 605-foot Space Needle
will be under water any time soon, or that Alaska will become as
famous for its fruit trees and berries as Oregon is.

But there are growing indications that the Pacific Northwest, from
Oregon to British Columbia to Alaska, is warming up faster than
elsewhere on the planet -- a trend that's likely to accelerate,
according to scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Glaciers and snowpacks in the Cascade and Olympic Mountains are
shrinking. So is Arctic sea ice in Alaska, where the permafrost in
some areas is turning mushy. Record-setting temperatures in Anchorage
this summer reached a balmy 79 degrees F. Water levels in Puget Sound
are rising. Annual patters of stream flow are changing in ways that
could adversely impact irrigation, domestic water supplies, fish runs,
and hydropower production, while increasing the risk of forest fires
and tree-killing insects.

In Seattle and Victoria, British Columbia, this week, agency
officials, scientists, tribal leaders, and others are participating in
major conferences addressing climate change.

"Even the most conservative scenarios show the climate of the Pacific
Northwest warming significantly more than was experienced during the
20th century," the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group
reported last week. The Puget Sound region warmed at a rate
"substantially greater" than that of Earth's average surface air
temperature, the scientists found.

Brad Ack, director of the Puget Sound Action Team, a partnership of
federal, state, and tribal agencies that commissioned the report,
likens what's happening to a "slow-motion natural disaster."

"This is often talked about as something that's going to happen," says
Mr. Ack. "But what this shows is that this is already happening. We're
well into climate change."

Economists in the region warn that this could come with a big price
tag. Global warming "is likely to impose significant economic costs,"
52 leading economists from around the country warned in a recent
letter to government and business officials in Oregon.

"The adjustments that businesses, households, and communities will
have to make are without precedent," the economists wrote. "Many
changes seem largely unavoidable, and some are clearly imminent."

That's mainly because of diminishing snowpacks due to warmer winter
temperatures. Snowpacks act as water "banks" throughout the region,
but smaller snowpacks mean reduced river and stream flows in the
summer, which negatively affect agriculture, forestry, tourism, and
hydropower -- major portions of Oregon's $121 billion economy.

Changes in nature from global warming also can exacerbate
environmental problems, especially the natural balance in ecosystems
and the wildlife they include.

"Climate change is an additional stress to systems that have already
been affected and changed by human activities," says Amy Snover, a
research scientist and member of the University of Washington's
Climate Impacts Group.

Politically, the region -- sometimes referred to as "Cascadia" -
appears to have heard the message.

Since February, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has been pushing his
colleagues in city halls around the country to sign the Mayors Climate
Protection Agreement.

That pact commits them to meet or exceed the Kyoto Protocol standards,
reducing greenhouse gas emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
So far, 186 US mayors -- from Issaquah, Wash. to Laredo, Texas to
Schenectady, N.Y. -- have signed on.

While it still relies heavily on hydropower dams for electricity
(which have environmental problems of a different sort -- mainly
profound damage to ecosystems that support endangered salmon and other
wildlife), Washington State has been building wind farms in its wide-
open spaces east of the Cascade Mountains.

In Oregon, Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) is pushing state lawmakers and
reluctant auto dealers to adopt California's tougher emission
standards for motor vehicles, enacted last year. If Oregon takes that
step, Washington State, which shares the market for cars and trucks
with its neighbor to the south, will do so also.

Portland, Ore. and surrounding Multnomah County have nudged carbon
dioxide emissions to a level below 1990, a first for any major
American city.

With help from two new light-rail public transit lines, the planting
of some 750,000 carbon-absorbing trees, financial incentives for
energy-efficient "green" buildings, and weatherization of more than
10,000 apartments and houses, per capita emissions in Portland dropped
13 percent over the past 10 years. Nationally, there's been an
increase of about 1 percent per capita.

Mayor Tom Potter, the city's former police chief, drives a Prius
hybrid and promotes Portland as a bike-friendly city with 750 miles of
bicycle paths.

Still, officials and scientists around the region agree that more
needs to be done.

"We can no longer stop this," says Ack. "We can hope to ameliorate it
by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, but we cannot stop this. So
either we ignore it and suffer, or we prepare for it and suffer less."

Urged on by the group of economists, the region's elected officials
and agencies now address climate change here on the basis of the
"precautionary principle" -- acknowledging that they do not know
everything about the long-range effects of global warming, but are
taking steps now before it's too late.

"It's about hedging," says Dr. Snover. "It's about risk management.
It's about acknowledging that uncertainty is not going to go away,
expecting to meet surprises, being prepared for that change and
designing flexibility right in."

Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor

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From: Associated Press, Oct. 13, 2005
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PHILADELPHIA MOVES TO END HOMELESSNESS

PHILADELPHIA -- City officials announced a 10-year plan to eradicate
homelessness in Philadelphia after meeting with advocates and others
trying to best tackle the problem.

Mayor John F. Street said $10 million in city, state and federal funds
have already been earmarked for the plan. However, he said that it was
unclear where additional funding will come from in subsequent years,
and how much will be needed beyond the initial amount identified.

"The political will is here," Robert Hess, a city deputy managing
director, said Wednesday. "Can we be the first American city to end
homelessness? Yes, we can."

Street estimated that about 400 people currently are homeless in
downtown Philadelphia. That is up from recent years, though still
fewer than half the number from 1998, Street said.

The $10 million is in addition to the $64 million annual budget of
Philadelphia's emergency services office and $30 million annually in
other funds for counseling and medical care to the homeless.

The plan came together as officials talked with 300 people citywide,
including advocates for the homeless, about how to best tackle the
problem, Hess said.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

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From: American Council on Science & Health (ACSH), Jun. 25, 2002
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PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE RAISES BLOOD PRESSURE

By Henry I. Miller, M.D.

It used to be said that the most fearsome statement in the world is,
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." Now, government
officials have the "precautionary principle," which supposedly will
make our lives safer. In fact, the principle -- which is not really a
principle at all but a seemingly plausible excuse for opposing
innovation -- has already laid waste to several industries and boasts
a body count in the millions.

The Environmental Protection Agency has just provided another
egregious example: a crackdown on the most reliable kind of blood
pressure cuffs -- which I and other doctors consider to be the
standard for accuracy -- in order to cut down on the use of mercury,
which can pollute the air and water if disposed of carelessly.

The basic idea of the precautionary principle, which the EPA and other
regulatory agencies often employ senselessly, is that even if there is
no scientific evidence of actual dangers of a product, technology or
activity, merely conjectural concerns should be a reason to limit or
prohibit it. For example, although used for decades, I have never
heard of a mercury spill from a broken blood pressure cuff. In any
event mercury toxicity under these conditions would be modest. The
EPA's action is ill-considered, myopic and dangerous: Inaccurate blood
pressure measurements can lead to under- or over-medication of a
person with a life-threatening disease.

The precautionary principle is sometimes represented as being like
Mom's admonition "better safe than sorry," or is said to reflect
regulators' remonstrations that they're just "erring on the side of
safety." But the way the precautionary principle is typically applied
can actually increase risk.

The principle focuses on the possibility that technologies could pose
unique or unmanageable risks, even after considerable testing has
already been conducted. Missing from precautionary calculus is an
acknowledgment that even when technologies introduce risks, most
confer net benefits -- that is, their use reduces many other, more
serious hazards. The danger in the precautionary principle is that it
distracts from known threats to health. For example, in eighteenth-
century Europe, excessive precautionary bias delayed for decades the
introduction of the first smallpox vaccine, while millions died
unnecessarily.

And thirty years ago, on the basis only of suspicion of toxicity to
fish and migrating birds (but no evidence of harm to humans), the EPA
drastically restricted production and use of DDT, an inexpensive and
stunningly effective pesticide once widely used to kill mosquitoes and
other disease-carrying insects. With the ensuing reduction of global
DDT use, the World Health Organization estimates that 300 million to
500 million cases of malaria occur annually and more than one million
people die. (See our article "DDT and Chemophobia" and ACSH's press
release and report on the DDT ban.)

Another horrendous example of the precautionary principle in action
occurred in the late 1980s, when environmental activists, claiming
that carcinogenic byproducts from the chlorination of drinking water
posed a potential cancer risk, persuaded Peruvian officials to stop
chlorinating much of their country's drinking water. That decision
contributed to the acceleration and spread of Latin America's 1991-96
cholera epidemic, which afflicted more than 1.3 million people.

Anti-chlorine campaigners recently have focused their attacks on
certain plastics used for important medical devices, particularly
fluid containers, blood bags, tubing and gloves; children's toys such
as teething rings; and household and industrial items including
flooring. Invoking the precautionary principle, activists claim that
these plastics might have numerous adverse health effects -- even in
the face of significant scientific evidence to the contrary.

Whole industries have been terrorized, consumers denied product
choices, and doctors and their patients deprived of lifesaving tools.
The precautionary principle inflates the cost of research, inhibits
new product development, wastes resources, restricts consumer choice,
creates serious new risks, and costs lives.

Just thinking about it raises my blood pressure.

Henry I. Miller, a physician, is a fellow at the Hoover
Institution and a Director of the American Council on Science and
Health. He was an official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
from 1979 to 1994.

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  Rachel's Precaution Reporter offers news, views and practical
  examples of the Precautionary Principle, or Foresight Principle, in
  action. The Precautionary Principle is a modern way of making
  decisions, to minimize harm. Rachel's Precaution Reporter tries to
  answer such questions as, Why do we need the precautionary
  principle? Who is using precaution? Who is opposing precaution?

  We often include attacks on the precautionary principle because we  
  believe it is essential for advocates of precaution to know what
  their adversaries are saying, just as abolitionists in 1830 needed
  to know the arguments used by slaveholders.

  Rachel's Precaution Reporter is published as often as necessary to
  provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the subject.

  As you come across stories that illustrate the precautionary 
  principle -- or the need for the precautionary principle -- 
  please Email them to us at rpr@rachel.org.

  Editors:
  Peter Montague - peter@rachel.org
  Tim Montague   -   tim@rachel.org
  
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  To start your own free Email subscription to Rachel's Precaution
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