Engaging Energy

I’ll say it up front – I find some advocates of ‘strong’ implementation of the Precautionary Principle incredibly frustrating.

Just as a reminder what we’re talking about here’s the EU version

“The precautionary principle applies where scientific evidence is insufficient, inconclusive or uncertain and preliminary scientific evaluation indicates that there are reasonable grounds for concern that the potentially dangerous effects on the environment, human, animal or plant health may be inconsistent with the high level of protection chosen by the EU”

Great. Looks good. No problem there.
Well, yes & no.
The problem is that using terms such as ‘insufficient’, ‘inconclusive’, ‘uncertain’, ‘indicates’ and ‘reasonable’ is that they are open to interpretation when the scientific evidence used to reach conclusions about ‘potentially dangerous effects’ is simply evidence, not proof. My issue with this is that you are using subjective, interpretive legal status to regulate objective investigations. In effect the Precautionary Principle is opposed to scientific method.

This is where I start to loose my cool. Scientific method is one of the foundations of our society and our primary means of interpreting the world around us. Most of us don’t know what it is explicitly, but whenever things like evolution vs creation or mysticism vs medicine come up, most of us go with the option that we believe has the greatest chance of successfully explaining reality.
Most us us choose to have the cancer treated with drugs & radiation and choose not to believe the Usherian age of the Earth. Most of us choose scientific method.

You can’t say ‘our models of the atmosphere show with a 95% certainty that global warming is a real danger we should take action’ and then turn around to say that you shouldn’t investigate ways to mitigate the risk of that scientific prediction coming true. Its nonsense.
Unfortunately that is what we are seeing in the world right now. Decision-makers and people of influence propagating anti-scientific twaddle and using the Precautionary Principle to justify it.

I agree with the fundamental tenet of the Principle, but not with the way that it is expressed or often interpreted. If you want to mitigate risks you should use a risk-based approach not a voodoo-based approach. To do that you have to at least try and understand some of the basic science and not just run away at the merest mention of empirical evidence.