Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 30, 1993 TAG: 9303300391
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICK J. MICHAELS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Item No. 1: Get rid of the Endangered Species Act.
Right now, if any economic activity is associated with ("causation" need not be proved) the extinction of one of the literally uncounted millions of species of life on this planet, that activity can be proscribed.
Thus can the spotted owl, which in fact mates with other owls on the margin of its range (making its definition as a species already a little suspect), stop logging in first-growth forests in Oregon. The result: massive local unemployment, consequent family strife and instability, and skyrocketing timber prices, all at a time when the economy (says the Clinton administration) needs a little stimulus.
The logic behind the Endangered Species Act goes like this: Every species, from Sequoias to earthworms, contains complex and individual chemistry, and therefore is a font of compounds that may in fact prove profoundly useful. Destroy this biochemical diversity and there may be no cure for cancer. Maybe we've even already lost one cure for cancer because of our pernicious industrial activity.
In fact, the genetic diversity of the planet is represented by the order of possible combinations in the primary genetic material, DNA. Wiping out a species does next to nothing to overall diversity. A very large percentage of genetic diversity can be captured in a surprisingly small number of species, as long as the ones that remain are spread out among the various phyla of worms, mollusks, corals, and so forth.
What is more - and this should surprise no one - at the same time that our technology becomes capable of destroying species, it also has begun to develop genetic material on its own. In fact, the ability to direct plants and animals to produce new chemicals is dramatically outstripping the rate at which we could possibly destroy entire classes of organisms, which is what is required to truly reduce diversity.
Item No. 2. Get rid of the Delaney Clause.
Here's something that should go extinct: a 1958 dinosaur stating that any compound that can be associated with (again, no "causation" need be proved) even one cancer cannot be added to the food supply. By applying the logic of this standard to Alar, a benign growth-regulator in apples, growers went into bankruptcy, long-standing farm families were disrupted and people didn't get enough roughage.
In fact, Delaney and ESA are quite analogous: They can be used to witch-hunt any product, industry or group of people that you might choose to bum. And they are effective for one obvious reason - you cannot prove a negative.
The relative risks are quite analogous, too. If a compound results in one cancer in a population of 10 million, Delaney says it is illegal. If an industrial activity results in the elimination of one of the millions of species, that activity too can be stopped.
Item No. 3. Bag the "precautionary principle."
This idea - which underlies Delaney, the Endangered Species Act, biodiversity, global warming and just about every other putative threat to our well-being - states that something which may cause harm must be removed from the environment, whether or not it does cause harm.
Its implication is profoundly damaging to science and society: Scientific uncertainty, rather than the normal verified hypothesis of cause and effect, becomes the basis for policy. The subjunctive becomes government imperative.
Government imperatives can destroy entire communities. Consider the town that was Times Beach, Mo.: a plot of land bought lock, stock, and barrel by the Environmental Protection Agency because of the alleged (and unverified) threat from the chemical dioxin. The precautionary principle, in the absence of confirmatory data, allow the government to destroy a town.
Ten years later, one official who urged the evacuation told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that, had he known then what he knows now about the lack of morbidity caused by dioxin, "I would not be concerned about levels of dioxin at Times Beach."
Next up is going to be power lines and their attendant magnetic fields. Whether or not they cause cancer will remain unproved, and may even prompt the logical question: Since we are bathed by magnetic fields of our own manufacture from birth to death, why aren't we dying like flies? Where are the emperor's clothes?
But the precautionary principle will dictate that, since we cannot prove the negative that power lines don't cause cancer, great separations be mandated between them and residences or businesses. Whole towns may again be bought and the residents relocated.
And who's going to pay for all of this? Obviously, all of us. We will pay for the timber shortages caused by Endangered Species Act, for increased food spoilage brought on by Delaney, and for the massive lawsuits that are about to hit the power industry because some people who die of cancer happen to live near power lines.
But there will be a dearer price: It is impossible to claim that all of these policies are scientifically based without ultimately harming science itself. And when people start to blame science as the reason that their electricity or their house costs a fortune, they'll stop supporting science itself, a resource more dear and more easily destroyed than the spotted owl.
Patrick J. Michaels is professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and is affiliated with The Science & Environmental Policy Project in Washington, D.C.
by CNB