Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist by Patrick Moore

—Charles A. Lindbergh, American aviator

    I have put “precautionary principle” in quotation marks above because it is not a principle. A principle is something you do as a rule, something you are not supposed to defy. If we actually followed something called the precautionary principle, we would never get out of bed in the morning for fear of the many risks involved in daily activity. We would certainly never voluntarily get into an automobile or cross a busy street. Yes, following such a doctrine sounds very high-minded and “principled” but it is simply not a very useful guide to daily life.
    The precautionary principle stems from the idea that you don’t need absolute proof of harm to ban a practice, chemical, or technology. So if one argues there is no proof that a certain chemical does cause harm, that is not sufficient. Activists will demand that the chemical’s manufacturer prove it does not cause harm. This is a scientific impossibility so it’s “Gotcha.” Then the activists point to some unproven “link” between the chemical and an abnormality relating to sex organs or cancer, preferably both, the precautionary principle is invoked, and development is halted.
    Greenpeace has been a leading advocate of the precautionary principle and has succeeded in having it enshrined in a number of international and national regulations. But a search of the Greenpeace International website does not reveal a very precise definition of what it thinks the principle is. [5] Greenpeace seems content to simply invoke the precautionary principle as if it is self-explanatory, when in fact there are many facets and angles to this idea. Is it enough simply to express the slightest doubt in order to stop producing new chemicals and technologies and grind everything to a halt? What degree of “uncertainty” is required before the principle kicks in? How does one measure “degree of uncertainty”? How are the benefits of doing something weighed against the risks of not doing it? Suppose you invent a genetically modified rice plant that can prevent blindness in 250,000 children each year, but Greenpeace says that planting the rice might pose a risk to the environment? Should Greenpeace have to prove the risk, or should it just have to blurt out “precautionary principle” to win the debate? And who is in charge of interpreting the precautionary principle on a case-by-case basis?
    This is just the tip of the iceberg, but Greenpeace doesn’t even want us to see the tip. It wants to be the final arbiter of all human activity. Many scholarly works have been written on the subject of the precautionary principle. For example, Indur Goklany has done a good job of explaining the concept in his book [6] and in his essays. [7]
    A much more useful term is the precautionary approach . This is not a principle but rather a way of thinking and an attitude toward how we do things. It is the opposite of recklessness and requires every stone be turned in considering the safety of doing something new. In a simple sense it is a bit like safely crossing the road. We want to cross the road because we may find an opportunity on the other side. But we should always look both ways, make sure we have steady footing, and look both ways again before we set forth. We look, and the coast is clear, so off we go. Still it remains possible that, once we are halfway across the road, a jetliner or a thunderbolt may hurtle out of the sky and kill us. That is the unforeseen risk of crossing the road.
    This example illustrates that there is no such thing as zero risk. The unexpected is always a possibility no matter how carefully we try to rule out risks. Some things remain unpredictable and can only be learned from experience, sometimes the hard way. This is perhaps the most important reason why the precautionary principle is an obstacle to progress rather than a safety feature. It can be used to block any activity at the whim of the enforcer. Strictly