Precautionary Principle Speakers
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The University of Maine at Machias will host several speakers this fall on the Precautionary Principle, a prescription for policy and process in areas of risk and uncertainty, including climate change, public health, and national security policy.
Jonathan H. Adler, this year's Koch Speaker on Environmentalism and Freedom, will open the series at 4 p.m. on Thursday, September 13.
Here is some background on the Precautionary Principle in Maine
UN agenda on chemicals
I carefully read your editorial calling on Sens. Snowe and Collins to support the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011. Before imposing the green nanny state on the entire country, I hope they will press for an open discussion and clear understanding of two terms which were not surprisingly omitted from your editorial: “precautionary principle” and “Agenda 21.”
According to the United Nations Sustainable Development bureaucracy, Agenda 21 is a “comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, governments, and major groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.”
The UN’s 1992 Rio Declaration on the Environment contained the following version of the precautionary principle: “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by states according to their capabilities. 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.”
More recent versions of the precautionary principle have called for requiring that products be proved safe before allowing them on the market and have advanced a very risk averse and technophobic agenda. It’s a prescription for sustainable poverty, not sustainable development.
Climate change and chemicals policy efforts are firmly grounded in Agenda 21 and various versions of the precautionary principle, despite the fact that environmental advocates have been generally unwilling to admit it.
Jon Reisman
Associate professor of economics and public policy
University of Maine at Machias
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"More recent versions of the precautionary principle have called for requiring that products be proved safe before allowing them on the market and have advanced a very risk averse and technophobic agenda. It’s a prescription for sustainable poverty, not sustainable development."
They have no standard of "proof". What they want is control over the design, manufacturing and distribution systems of private industry (as in their legislative "take back" recycling campaign). They want to expand bureaucratic discretion to have the power to decide on the fly and interfere with whatever they decide is a "risk" or a "shared responsibility" to be imposed on industry. It has nothing to do with "proof" of anything. It's an excuse for power seeking and political control of everything in sight. It's the same mentality of the 1960s SDS demanding the "right" to "participate in decisions affecting" them, i.e., the power to meddle in and obstruct everything and anything.
What's the alternative? It's called the "pass the buck" principle, or "my kids and their tax dollars and their health will pay for it" principle, as in, "this Superfund site and mysteriously high cancer rates brought to you by..."
Matt, the alternative is sound science and good reasoning.
Today, it's possible to detect trace amounts of things in parts per billion - a capability that's only been around for a short time. This doesn't mean that one part per billion of a toxic chemical is likely to have any effect. And sadly, it's not uncommon for grant-seeking academics and the members of gullible "activist" groups to raise holy hell about otherwise benign substances in their search for grant and member support. If you REALLY look into the BPA brouhaha, for example, you'll see a perfect example of that. NO government research or regulatory body has EVER found a link between BPA as we're commonly exposed to it and health problems. Used in can liners, for example, BPA helps protect us from deadly illnesses like botulism - nor have the alternatives to it undergone testing and study as rigorous as that for BPA.
The Precautionary Principle essentially states that NOTHING can be used or introduced to the public unless it can be clearly demonstrated that it can cause NO harm to ANYONE, anywhere, anytime. I trust you can see the issues with such an approach. If aspirin were a new product, the Precautionary Principle would hugely delay - or even render impossible - its use.
Recognizing that no one can prove a negative is not "passing the buck". The precautionary principle itself is irrational, which is why they can't tell us what the standard of proof would be.
Check out the live stream of Professor Adler today at 4 PM at http://www.machias.edu/umm-live
You need Quicktime (free download)
I bought some extension cords the other day.
I grabbed one last night, and took it out of its cardboard 'package.'
It had 4, repeat FOUR safety label thingies on the cord. Two appeared identical. I did not read them.
I think it cost $1.50; 4 tags stuck on, plus the safety stuff on the cardboard liner.
Geez I'm glad we have all these regulations to protect us.
How many of you know, or know of, someone who was injured or killed because they did not have a safety label on their extension cord?
How many more must die, Mr. Speaker?
Glad to see we have some one at the University of Maine who is not indoctrinated into the socialist ideology, which is what Agenda 21 is cloaking.
Just wondering how much the faction that represents U of Maine's minor in Socialist and Marxist Studies has influenced this presentation. Is the person that you are addressing as "you" the speaker- Johnathan H Alder?
It is outrageous that they are basically saying that scientific proof is not required. The proponents of the Green Religion discount all scientific voices that disagree with the absolute truths asserted by their religion. The scientific community has never been the province of absolute truths but of insights which leaves room for doubt. Without such an approach, science could not advance. We would probably still believe that the earth is flat.
The words "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.” are a claim to negate genuine scientific inquiry. One just needs one person to say the first statement and then all other scientific views can be silenced (Any one who studies the economic development legislation written in Maine, also largely instrumental in implementing Agenda Twenty One, is well familiar with how such convenient statements, deeming such and such to be true, function to justify dubious and unconstitutional ends) The result will be serious and almost irreversible damage to our economies and our freedoms including all religious freedom that is not governed by the dominance of this secular and political religion.
I hope that there will be a strong resistance movement to this indoctrination at an event sponsored by the tax payer subsidized University of Maine. I also hope that someone will be paying attention to how strong those with links to the University of Maine's Department of Marxist and Socialist Studies are represented at this event-in the organization of it, the promotion of it, and the audience.
These events are at the University of Maine at Machias, part of the the University of Maine System, of which the University of Maine is as well.
I am waiting for practitioners of the Precautionary Principle to warn young men of the dangers of cannibis and to lobby the legislature to ban medical marijuana for young men.
Why? Statistically, marijuana use is associated with inceased risk of testicular cancer in men under 40 or 45 or something like that.
BPA has been banned for less cause.
In the University of Maine system, Marxist and Socialist Studies are a minor, which means said studies can be taken along side and inform any major.
MaineMom- what about Fish Oil? The government wants to make that a controlled substance as well- requiring a doctor's prescription to obtain. Next we will probably see people being prosecuted for the illegal distribution of Fish Oil. And what next? Vitamin C?
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