Precautionary tools for reshaping environmental policy

Opponents of the precautionary principleoften complain that it is not a sufficienttool for decision making. They’re right—except that, as far as I know, no one eversaid it was. It should be part of the process,but it can be only a part, and Myers andRaffensberger have put together an excel-lent guidebook for those who want to implement it.Perhaps they’ll even convince some who still doubt its usefulness. The volume begins with a checklist of points that we should con-sider when decisions are being made. Nothing dramatically new—allgood common sense, really—but the ideas are important and too oftenoverlooked. The contributors then expand on the points and giveexamples of how they have—or have not—been put into practice.These illustrations are valuable intrinsically; also, when you are tryingto convince your government to act, it helps to have examples of howother countries have taken similar action without dire economic orsocial consequences, and how doing nothing may turn out to be moreexpensive in the long run, or even the not-so-long run.Anyone interested in environmental policy will find this book stim-ulating and useful, but the editors themselves acknowledge that there ismuch more to be done, and in my view what is most needed is moreinput from scientists. As far as I can tell, although some of the contribu-tors were trained in science, none is currently employed as a scientist.That’s not really surprising in a book about policy, but working scien-tists do have a different perspective on things.People who are not scientists often place too much credence inwhat the corporations and the scientific establishment tell them. It iscertainly important to understand that the arguments are about valuesas well as science, but that doesn’t mean we should let the science-basedpoints go by default. Just as we demand that our opponents take valuesinto account, we must fully understand the scientific arguments. Andthere is no more effective way of making your case than to show thatyour opponents are wrong even on their own terms—as they often are.Despite what you’ve been told about the uncertainty that is inherentin science, many scientists are not above making unjustifiably sweepingclaims, especially when writing for laypeople. In particular, you shouldalways be suspicious of any statement that begins “There is no evidencefor …” You often hear this said about the possibility that geneticallymodified (GM) organisms can be harmful. Yet there is no shortage of evi-dence that they can: rats fed on GM potatoes, mice fed on GM peas(especially worrying because the protein involved is harmless in the beanfrom which the gene was transferred), and, most alarming of all, humansin the Philippines who were affected by pollen from GM maize.If there seems to be no evidence, that may be only because no onehas ever looked for any. The sort of research that is needed is oftenunattractive to scientists, not least because it can make them unpopularwith many of their colleagues and with the big corporations, and sohinder their careers. The case of Quist and Chapela’s finding of trans-genes in GM maize, described in the book, is just one example amongmany that have been reported, and we have no way of knowing howmany others there have been that never came to light. There is also, ofcourse, the simple fact that it costs money to do research, and work thatdoes not suit the people who control the funding tends not to get done.So I would add to the checklist that we should not take for grantedwhat the other side says about the science. If they tell you there is no evi-dence for something, ask what experiments, if any, have been carried outto look for it. If you are not satisfied with the answer, get on the web andsee what you can find. You don’t have to be able to debate the issues withthe experts; simply raising a problem that they would rather ignore maybe enough to alert the regulators. There was a lot more official concernabout horizontal gene transmission in the United Kingdom after it wasdiscussed in an episode of