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DEFENDING ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDA
September 30, 2004
THE CHEMICAL WARS, Final Part
[Continuing: The current system of environmental regulation considers new chemicals and new technologies "innocent until proven guilty." As a result, the public must "prove harm" before alternatives will be considered. Such a system requires large-scale harm to occur (to humans and ecosystems) before anyone is asked to change their destructive behavior.
The present regulatory system was set up to grease the skids for economic growth, back when the world seemed empty and growth was needed to expand the supply of basic necessities. But now the world is full (of humans and their stuff), and the basic needs of everyone could be rather easily met. In this full world of abundance, further growth requires the artificial creation of "demand" through advertising, and it requires rapid innovation to churn the economy. Churning the economy is considered necessary because it offers the owning class new opportunities for profit, regardless of whether it provides any real benefits.
To defend themselves against a public that is dismayed by the high price of modern "progress," corporations have wrapped themselves in a kind of intellectual body armor called "risk assessment" and cost-benefit analysis, both of which reduce everything to numbers. As a result, decision-makers can no longer consider ethical principles of right and wrong. Democratic questions of fairness, justice and informed consent must be set aside. The public is not allowed to ask, "Is this the best we can do?" or "Who gets to decide?" But it doesn't have to be this way...]
In truth, the most fundamental problems of a "risk-based" approach lie even deeper than I have so far described. Some cause and effect relationships between industrial contamination and disease will most likely never be established because causes and outcomes are multiple, latency periods are long, timing of exposure is sometimes critical, unexposed "control" populations do not exist, and complicating factors remain unidentified. In many instances, combinations of these factors are probably at work simultaneously.
Science works by simplifying reality into manageable chunks that can be manipulated under controlled conditions. Under such circumstances, science can sometimes clarify cause and effect relationships between one chemical and one disease, but in the real world, cumulative impacts of contamination from multiple sources muddle the picture in ways that are often unknowable. In many instances, no amount of time, money, expertise, epidemiological investigation, or laboratory work can resolve this fundamental conundrum. Because of these realities, we are often faced with strong suspicion of harm combined with irreducible scientific uncertainty and ignorance. Under these circumstances, reliance on the "prove harm" system can only lead to the steady erosion of human health and the biosphere, upon which our entire economic enterprise depends.
So the "prove harm" (or "assimilative capacity") system of environmental protection, based on risk assessment of single options, stands discredited, bereft of scientific integrity or validity. The system is intellectually bankrupt and has always been so. A cynic might conclude that the system was designed to fail and its design goal has been met.
Happily, there is another way. The European Union (E.U.) in 1994 adopted a different approach to environmental protection, based on the "precautionary principle," and reaffirmed the approach in 2000. The E.U. and its member nations are presently working out the details of coherent chemicals policies based on precaution. If they succeed, it will undermine the "growth and rapid innovation" culture. Perhaps this is why the U.S. has mounted a major campaign to block the European effort, using name-calling, lawsuits, and open threats of commercial, financial and political retribution.
The "precautionary principle" evolved in the 1970s from a concept that was developed to guide environmental planning in Germany, "Vorsorgeprinzip," which translates best as "the principle of forecaring" but which also carries the connotation of foresight and preparation for the future, not merely precaution. In recent years this new idea has made its way into several international covenants and treaties.
For example, the precautionary principle appears in Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, as follows: "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation." "Cost-effective" means "least expensive."
Another formulation of the precautionary principle is known as the Wingspread Statement on Precaution, which says,
"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.
"In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.
"The process of applying the Precautionary Principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action."
The Essence of Precaution:
In all formulations of the precautionary principle, we find three elements:
1) When we have a reasonable suspicion of harm, and
2) scientific uncertainty about cause and effect, then
3) we have a duty to take action to prevent harm.
The precautionary principle does not tell us what kind of action to take when we have reasonable suspicion of impending (or ongoing) harm. But the Wingspread statement offers these suggestions for action:
1) Consider all reasonable alternatives and adopt the least-damaging;
2) Place the burden of proof of acceptable harm onto the person whose activities raised the suspicion of harm in the first place;
3) In making decisions, fully involve the people who will be affected.
In sum, the precautionary principle says we should all take responsibility for our own actions. This simple prescription runs contrary to the fiduciary obligations of the large, publicly-traded corporation. The managers and directors of a publicly-traded corporation are required by law to try to return a more-or-less steady profit to investors by any legal means necessary. This legal requirement to consider profit above all else creates a powerful incentive for the modern corporation to "externalize" its costs -- that is, to get the public to pay as many of the corporation's costs as possible, ranging from the cleanup of toxic waste to medical care and disability payments for a damaged workforce.
Other ways of stating the precautionary principle are more familiar: a stitch in time saves nine; look before you leap; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; do unto others as you would have others do unto you; better safe than sorry. Thus the precautionary principle has immediate appeal to most people because they can understand it, and it makes sense to them.
The key difference between the "prove harm" system and the "precautionary" system is the way each responds to scientific uncertainty. Under the "prove harm" system, scientific uncertainty creates a green light -- full speed ahead until someone can line up the dead bodies. Victims must prove harm before decision-makers can act.
Under a precautionary approach, scientific uncertainty flashes a yellow light or a red light -- urging us to take preventive action, assess all available alternatives, shift the burden of proof of safety onto the proponents of a questionable activity, and move ahead slowly (if at all) until we have a better idea of what we're doing. Thus this new approach harnesses scientific uncertainty to protect the environment and human health. But it also demands a slower pace of innovation because it requires careful consideration about future consequences.
Shifting the burden of proof requires the purveyors of exotic chemicals (or other novel technologies) to provide evidence that their activities will not interfere to an unacceptable degree with living things -- and of course "acceptable" requires an informed judgment by those affected. A precautionary approach puts the burden of proof on the corporate sector to produce information, not on government or the public. Legal scholar Margaret Berger has proposed that we create a new toxic tort that would condition culpability on the failure to develop and disseminate significant data. Berger says, "In order to minimize risk in the face of uncertain knowledge, the law ought to concentrate on developing the required standard of care regarding a corporation's duty to keep itself reasonably informed about the risks of its products. If a corporation fails to exercise the appropriate level of due care, it should be held liable to those put at risk by its action."
Science gets at the truth through an open process of criticism and revision; precautionary decision-making works by a similar open process, respecting the fundamental democratic principle that citizens should have a real say, at least some of the time, in the decisions that affect their lives. In 2001 the European Commission of the E.U. proposed a new policy for chemicals, called REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization of Chemicals). The original REACH proposal would have required safety testing of 30,000 chemicals now on the market in Europe, and pre-market testing of new chemicals. The proposal has been summarized as, "No data, no market." The EU had formally estimated that the REACH proposal would cost the chemical industry $36 billion but would avoid $60 billion in health costs to the public. Despite these public health benefits and the obvious common sense of testing chemicals for safety, the U.S. government and the global chemical industry weighed in heavily against REACH, and, according to documents leaked by United Press International, "The United States has got 90 percent of what it wanted." The final REACH proposal requires testing of only about 6000 chemicals, and it may be watered down further before it becomes law. The dispute over REACH gave us all a glimpse of the raw power and ethical priorities of the wealthiest 1% of the population.
As the European Union works out the details of its new approach to chemicals policy, we can all keep abreast of their work at https://www.chemicalspolicy.org, a web site maintained by the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and at https://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/endocrine/index_en.htm , a web site on hormone-disrupting chemicals and precautionary action, maintained by the European Commission.
No matter what the outcome of this particular skirmish in the chemical wars, the precautionary principle has now been adopted, in one form or another, in many international treaties and conventions, such as the North Sea Declaration (1987), The Ozone Layer Protocol (1987), the Ministerial Declaration of the 2nd World Climate Conference (1990), the Maastricht Treaty that created the European Union (1994), The United Nations Law of the Sea (2001), and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2000), among others. In the summer of 2003, the City and County of San Francisco adopted precaution as a guide for all their environmental policies. The handwriting is on the wall.
It must be obvious that these precautionary ideas are profoundly subversive of "business as usual," which is to say, growth and innovation at any cost. Systematically assessing alternatives, by itself, would alter the rapid innovation system because alternatives assessment asks, "What are we trying to accomplish and what is the least-damaging way to accomplish it?" It would even ask, "Might we be better off without this particular innovation?" These are questions we could have been asking profitably for more than a century.
If we learn to apply a precautionary approach to such questions routinely, we may yet find ways to bring the chemical wars to a peaceable close and stop the massive killing that the chemical industry is causing today.
Conceivably, we might even be able to solve the riddle of Humpty-Dumpty and put the world back together again. But to do so would require us to make explicit the values underlying our contemporary culture of rapid innovation and growth. To what extent are we willing to share our good fortune with those less fortunate than ourselves, within our own society, and world-wide? Will tiny elites continue to amass uncountable wealth and unaccountable power, or will a spreading precautionary approach allow us, as a society, to take firm steps to reverse these destructive trends and restore democracy?
"It is no secret that President George W. Bush and Congress want to bury us under 77,000 tons of radioactive waste that will remain deadly for more than 100,000 years. The president put the target on Nevada's back in 2001, and Congress has made it stick." - Las Vegas Sun editor Brian Greenspun in the September 24 column entitled "Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: Not without a fight" on the federal government's effort to bury high-level nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
(1) WASTE: A Trust Goes Bust
(2) CLEAN AIR: Condemnation in the Air
(3) TAKE ACTION: Increase Security at Chemical Plants
1. WASTE: A Trust Goes Bust
On this day in history: Fergie hosted her very first episode of "Sarah: Surviving Life." The Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize. The World Series was first broadcast on the radio. And, one year ago on this date in history, the Superfund trust fund went bankrupt. In 1980, Congress decided to protect the health and safety of Americans by forcing polluters to pay to clean up toxic dump sites. But the Bush administration is now forcing taxpayers, not polluters, to pay to clean up toxic waste sites. With the trust fund dry, taxpayers' bills have risen dramatically: from $300 million in 1995 to more than a billion dollars this year -- a jump of more than 300 percent.
Read more about how taxpayers, not polluters, are paying for toxic waste cleanups: https://info.sierraclub.org/ct.html?rtr=on&s=arz,8pvo,km3,m4b9,8ocg,irqz,5w4u
2. CLEAN AIR: Condemnation in the Air
The EPA Inspector General today issued a scathing report on the Bush administration's implementation and enforcement of New Source Review, a provision of the Clean Air Act that requires America's oldest and dirtiest power plants, refineries, and factories to install modern pollution-saving technology when they expand in ways that increase soot and smog. The Inspector General concluded that the Bush administration had no basis for weakening New Source Review, that its changes to the program have severely hampered enforcement efforts against existing polluters, and that the rule change would have an even more disastrous impact over time.
Click here to access the full report: https://info.sierraclub.org/ct.html?rtr=on&s=arz,8pvo,km3,63cf,7v1q,irqz,5w4u 2004-P-00034.pdf
3. TAKE ACTION: Increase Security at Chemical Plants
American communities are being put at risk by industrial facilities who use and store large quantities of chemicals and whose security is minimal to nonexistent. A large release from these plants would likely put large numbers of Americans at risk of serious injury or death. These facilities need incentive from the federal government to protect surrounding communities by increasing security and using safer chemical alternatives. Senator Jon Corzine's (D-NJ) amendment to the 9/11 intelligence reform bill would require plant managers to develop prevention and emergency response plans. Senator James Inhofe's (R-OK) proposal offers no enforceable federal chemical safety oversight.
Tell your Senator to support the Corzine Compromise Chemical Security Amendment: https://info.sierraclub.org/ct.html?rtr=on&s=arz,8pvo,km3,3vra,81aq,irqz,5w4u
"I'm tired of rattling the companies' cage. I'm at a point where I'm ready to turn it upside down." - New Mexico rancher Chris Velasquez who has testified before Congress on the increasing pace of oil and gas development after nearly 80 of his cows died from consuming toxic oilfield byproducts.
(1) ENERGY: I Don't Want to Go to Mars!
(2) WASTE: Letter Rip
(3) TAKE ACTION: Snowcoaches over Snowmobiles
1. ENERGY: I Don't Want to Go to Mars!
We've only got one planet, and we've only got one America. The Bush administration's empty vision for our country includes an energy plan that fails to aggressively pursue efficient and renewable energy, guts key environmental and worker protections, and actually embraces America's increasingly dangerous dependence on oil. It's time to wake up to the true direction of our energy policy and the impact it has on our environment. To focus attention on the need for a responsible energy plan, the Sierra Club and Apollo Alliance have combined forces to present "Mission2Mars," a short video by Balcony Films that is currently running as a trailer to the independent film "Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America."
Click on https://info.sierraclub.org/ct.html?rtr=on&s=arz,8o1s,km3,a7ii,ffye,irqz,5w4u to see the video and learn how you can help the Sierra Club and Apollo Alliance call on the Bush administration to rebuild our cities and create the next generation of good industrial jobs in America without an energy policy driven by oil.
2. WASTE: Letter Rip
Today marks the four-year anniversary of George W. Bush's letter to Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn promising to authorize the storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain but only with backing of the best science. A look at the Bush administration's record, however, proves that it continued to push for storing nuclear waste at Yucca despite repeated warnings from scientists. Last July, the administration reaffirmed its plans to deliver nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain by 2010 despite a U.S. Appeals Court ruling that the administration's Yucca designs failed to meet safety standards set by the National Academy of Science.
Check out the Sierra Club press release: https://info.sierraclub.org/ct.html?rtr=on&s=arz,8o1s,km3,awr6,9d8a,irqz,5w4u 09-28.asp
3. TAKE ACTION: Snowcoaches over Snowmobiles
The National Park Service released a new three-year plan allowing up to 720 snowmobiles a day into Yellowstone and 140 a day into Grand Teton National Parks. The new plan is disappointing for Americans who have shown overwhelming support for phasing out snowmobiles which are a threat to public health and wildlife in our parks. The Park Service's analyses have three times confirmed that providing visitors access on snowcoaches are a better option and less intrusive to visitors and wildlife in America's most- loved National Parks.
Tell the Park Service to support multi-passenger snowcoaches (comment period ends at midnight on October 7): https://info.sierraclub.org/ct.html?rtr=on&s=arz,8o1s,km3,bzj0,3wvp,irqz,5w4u
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