Washington Times (pg. A15), June 25, 1997

PRECAUTIONARY RISKMONGERS

[Rachel's introduction: This early attack on the precautionary principle appeared in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's newspaper, the Washington [D.C.] Times, in 1997, long before the Wingspread statement on the precautionary principle had been written. This article set the pattern for all later attacks on precaution: it distorts and misrepresents precaution, then attacks its own distortions and misrepresentations as if they were the real thing. The old "straw man" tactic. We have never seen a single attack on precaution that did not rely on this tactic.]

By Marlo Lewis, Competitive Enterprise Institute

The Precautionary Principle -- the proposition that new technologies or products should not be permitted until we know they won't endanger health, safety, or biodiversity -- is central to the modern environmentalist vision and underlies most Nanny-State regulation. Indeed, for environmentalists, precaution has become a categorical imperative. Thou shalt not tolerate even the risk of a risk. A good illustration of the Precautionary Principle at work is Superfund, the government's toxic waste cleanup program. Although you are more likely to be struck by a falling airplane than be harmed by an abandoned toxic waste site (there is no documented case of anyone dying from groundwater contamination caused by a Superfund site); and although public health could often be protected by inexpensive measures (such as surrounding a dump with a chain link fence and a warning sign), the EPA routinely commands businesses and municipalities to spend millions cleansing the soil to pristine cond! itions. Imbued with precautionary zeal, EPA proudly compels Americans to pay any price, bear any burden, to eliminate the risk of a risk.

Had this risk-averse mentality held sway since ancient times, men would never have brought fire into their huts and caves, domesticated wild animals, plowed and mined the earth, founded cities, crossed the seas, unlocked the secrets of electricity and the atom, or developed open-heart surgery. Every technology extending man's dominion over nature has been a two-edged sword, creating some risks in the process of reducing and eliminating others. On balance, the benefits have outweighed the risks; technological innovation has made the world a safer place.

But to precautionary zealots, such risk-benefit comparisons are irrelevant. All that matters is whether a substance or technology may do harm. If the risk of harm cannot be ruled out, then the risky product or activity should not be permitted, period. Since no invention is risk-free (aspirin is deadly to some people, for example), the Precautionary Principle is a recipe for technological stagnation -- perhaps the most perilous condition of all. Nonetheless, better safe than sorry easily persuades a public unversed in the hazards of overcaution.

In the great climate change debate, the precautionary imperative has become the greenhouse lobby's trump card. Science does not support predictions of a global warming catastrophe. The Earth seems to have warmed half a degree since 1880, but most of this temperature rise occurred before 1940 -- before the largest increase in greenhouse (heat-trapping) emissions; the effect preceded the cause. Moreover, satellite and weather balloon observations over the past 18 years reveal no warming at all, but rather a slight cooling. Finally, a modest warming that occurs mostly in winter and at night (which many scientists consider the most probable scenario) would benefit mankind, producing milder weather and longer growing seasons.

Finding science an unreliable ally, eco-apocalysts resort to precautionary rhetoric. Since industrial civilization could be warming the planet, and global warming might accelerate dangerously in the next century, we should take no chances. Curbing energy use to reduce emissions may be expensive, but what is money compared to the lives that might otherwise be lost?

The fatal flaw in this argument -- as in environmental advocacy generally -- is its complete one-sidedness. Environmentalists demand assurances of no harm only with respect to actions that government might regulate, never with respect to government regulation itself. But government intervention frequently boomerangs, creating the very risks precautionists deem intolerable.

Examples abound. Federal fuel-economy mandates force automakers to produce smaller, lighter, less crash-resistant cars, causing thousands of highway deaths per year. FDA regulations delay the availability of life-saving therapies, killing tens of thousands over the past decade. Banning DDT revived malaria epidemics in the Third World, afflicting 2.5 million people in Sri Lanka alone.

Frank Cross of the University of Texas at Austin notes that regulation can kill just by misdirecting resources and destroying wealth. Resources available to protect public health and safety are limited. Regulatory schemes that divert attention, effort, and money from major threats to minor risks make us less safe. For example, the millions local governments waste on gold-plated Superfund cleanups cannot be used to improve police and fire protection.

Even more important is the fact that, for individuals as well as nations, wealthier is healthier and richer is safer. Precautionists ignore the obvious connection between livelihood and life -- as if jobs and income were not the chief safety net for most of the world's people. Even in relatively wealthy countries like the United States, studies indicate that every $5 million to $10 million drop in economic output translates into one statistical death.

So how can greenhouse alarmists be sure their anti-energy policies won't destroy millions of jobs, and that the economic hardship won't cause the death of even one child? They can't. And how can they know spending trillions on global warming won't impair our ability to survive other possible calamities (another ice age, a new viral plague, a meteor encounter)? Again, they can't.

The Precautionary Principle says we should not go upsetting apple carts until we're sure nobody will get hurt. Since draconian energy restrictions would jeopardize health and safety, the Precautionary Principle cannot justify such measures. Indeed, far from mandating drastic action to avert a greenhouse crisis that may never materialize in any event, the Precautionary Principle forbids us to adopt risky climate change policies.

For far too long, environmentalists have gotten away with precautionary deception. In the global warming debate, they admonish us not to gamble with the planet. Yet they are more than willing to gamble with industrial civilization. They cannot logically have it both ways.

Of course, environmentalists may allege (despite strong evidence to the contrary) that the risks of climate change exceed the risks of climate change policy. But if they do so, they can no longer pretend that slogans like "err on the side of caution" settle the argument; they can no longer posture as defenders of a categorical imperative. They will have to make their case on prudential and empirical grounds, weighing and balancing one set of risks against another. Which means, they'll have to fight on unfamiliar terrain.

Marlo Lewis Jr. is vice president for policy of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Copyright 1997 News World Communications Inc.