Today, I’ll uncover one of the worst, and most insidious, of all the bad things that are being done to us human beings today. That is, the perversion of the so-called “precautionary principle” into a tool for tyranny and predation.
I have written on this subject several times, with
emphasis on different aspects of the matter. But today, for the first time, I
will try to bring my thoughts on it all together in one place.
The origins of the precautionary principle
When I was young, I was taught a precautionary principle that
said, “Look before you leap.” In other words, don’t take any rash step until
you are pretty damn sure that the overall results are likely to be good rather
than bad. Good advice, no?
But this has not always been the way the principle has been formulated.
This article from 2021 in the British Medical Journal gives a good view of its early
history: [[1]].
It traces the principle from ancient Chinese origins to “First, do no harm,” which
many people think of as the Hippocratic oath for doctors. So far, so good.
The start of the perversion
But then, German environmentalists, with their lop-sided
view that all air pollution is bad, even if the nett benefits of an activity
are greater than the costs of the pollution it causes, got in on the act. The
precautionary principle was changed. Gradually and subtly at first, it moved
from “first, do no harm” to “take regulatory action, even if the evidence is
uncertain.” This change was intensified by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP),
particularly in the drafting of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which banned
emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
This paper [[2]]
documents some of the steps, by which the precautionary principle began to
morph into something very different. It tells how activist scientists, combined
with power-hungry regulators, perverted the earlier approach that “emphasizes
precaution and scientific knowledge before action” into a system of “rules…
that compel lower-level decision makers (households, firms and other
organizations) to not engage in activity that risks tipping-points and other
irreversible outcomes.” The coin had flipped from reactive regulation based on
actual, measurable damage, to proactive regulation, based on speculation and
scares.
With hindsight, we can see that all this was a “perfect
storm” for tyranny. It allowed to the unscrupulous abundant opportunities for
ever more, and ever tightening, government overreach, without any need for them
ever to have to prove anyone guilty of anything.
The precautionary principle might sound like an abstract,
even a “philosophical” idea. How can such an innocuous sounding idea make
people’s lives a misery? But in truth, its perversion has had profound,
negative effects on all our lives.
The 1992 Rio Summit
The UK Tory party, for one, had by 1992 already formed a
perverted view of the precautionary principle. In their 1992 election
manifesto, they described it as: “the need to act, where there is significant
risk of damage, before the scientific evidence is conclusive.” That is a far
cry from “Look before you leap!” Indeed, it is not at all far away from its
opposite.
At Rio, John Major and cohorts signed up to the “Rio
Declaration on Environment and Development.” [[3]]. And,
in particular, to Principle 15: “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.”
Now, I find that idea rather bizarre. For, if you don’t have
a high degree of scientific certainty about the size and likelihood of a
problem, how can you possibly assess whether or not a proposed counter-measure
is cost-effective? Yet, with a recklessness typical of dishonest, unaccountable,
psychopathic politicians, they signed us up to it anyway.
That was an egregious violation of the true precautionary
principle. And it marked the first of the three major steps, in which the UN,
the EU, the UK government, and the globalist and corporate ruling classes and
their hangers-on, perverted it into a tool for tyranny and predation on us
human beings.
The 1998 Wingspread Conference
In early 1998, the Wingspread Conference on the
Precautionary Principle was held in the USA. It was hosted by Samuel Curtis
Johnson, long-time chairman of S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc., a founder of the
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and described by
Fortune magazine as “corporate America's leading environmentalist.” It was
convened by a shadowy organization, only founded in 1994, called the Science
and Environmental Health Network (SEHN).
This was the second of the three major steps, in which the
principle was perverted, in effect, from “Look before you leap” or “First, do
no harm,” to “If in doubt about a risk, government must act to prevent it.”
The SEHN’s (much later) account of the conference is here: [[4]]. It
described the participants as “treaty negotiators, activists, scholars and
scientists from the United States, Canada and Europe.” It says: “The key
element of the principle is that it incites us to take anticipatory action in
the absence of scientific certainty. At the conclusion of the three-day
conference, the diverse group issued a statement calling for government,
corporations, communities and scientists to implement the ‘precautionary
principle’ in making decisions.”
The Statement extended Principle 15 from the Rio
Declaration on Environment and Development. It 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.”
This is a radical re-write of the precautionary principle,
in at least four ways. First, the idea that the action to be taken must be
cost-effective, which had been included in the Rio Declaration, was thrown out
of the window. As a result, the principle became a recipe for predation on
taxpayers. Second, the re-written principle required precautionary action to be
taken, even if there is no proof, or even hard evidence, that there is any
danger at all. Third, it inverted the burden of proof, and undermined the
presumption of innocence until proven guilty. And fourth, when they talked of
“the public,” they didn’t mean us ordinary people. What they meant is that government
shouldn’t have to bear the burden of proving its accusations. So, all of us,
for simply going about our daily lives, are to be treated as guilty, unless and
until proven innocent (and that won’t be easy!) That is tyranny.
However, the Statement also said: “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.”
That one concession apart, with a few strokes of the pen,
the Wingspread activists gave the political and corporate élites and their
hangers-on carte blanche to violate our human rights as they please in
matters affecting the environment. They put something they called “the
environment” up on a pedestal, above the human environment; the rights
and freedoms, justice and honesty that we human beings need in order to
survive, flourish and prosper.
In summary: They inverted the burden of proof. They rejected
the presumption of innocence. They required the accused (that’s us) to prove a
negative. They mandated “precautionary” action, however much pain it would
cause. And they threw out all consideration of objective cost-benefit or
risk-benefit analysis.
The 2002 Inter-departmental Liaison Group for Risk Assessment report
2002 was the year in which the perversion of the
precautionary principle, which had begun with the Rio Declaration and been
extended by the Wingspread Statement, was not only explicitly incorporated into
UK government policy, but strengthened too. The Interdepartmental Liaison Group
for Risk Assessment, a working party originally set up in 1994, produced a
report called: “The Precautionary Principle: Policy and Application”: [[5]].
It followed on from a corresponding EU document, agreed in 2000.
They saw the purpose of the principle as “to create an
impetus to take a decision notwithstanding scientific uncertainty about the
nature and extent of the risk.” They saw it as to be applied whenever “it is
impossible to assess the risk with sufficient confidence to inform
decision-making.” They wanted to invoke it “even if the likelihood of harm is
remote.” They said, too, that “the precautionary principle carries a general
presumption that the burden of proof shifts away from the regulator having to demonstrate
potential for harm towards the hazard creator having to demonstrate an
acceptable level of safety.” And they misused an aphorism attributed to Carl
Sagan, saying: “‘Absence of evidence of risk’ should never be confused with, or
taken as, ‘evidence of absence of risk’.”
This goes further even than the Wingspread Statement did. It
doesn’t just invert the burden of proof and require us, the accused, to prove a
negative. But it enables them to take “precautionary” action against any risk,
even one that is minuscule or very unlikely, instead of requiring an objective
risk analysis accurate enough to support good decision making. Moreover, they
want the decision to be taken before all the evidence has been mulled over. And
even if there’s no evidence at all that our activity causes any harm to anyone,
they wouldn’t accept that as evidence!
In essence, the UK government decreed, in contradiction to
the norm of presumption of innocence, that absence of evidence of guilt is not
evidence of absence of guilt. They decided to re-write the precautionary
principle to say, in effect: “If in doubt about a risk, government must act to
prevent it.” Regardless of how much harm, or costs, their action causes to the
people they are supposed to be serving. This, again, is tyranny.
Related cultural perversions
As I have outlined above, the precautionary principle has,
over time, been subverted and all but inverted. The UN, the EU, the UK
government and the globalist and corporate ruling classes have perverted it
into a tool for tyranny and predation on us human beings.
But in the process, this perversion has spawned two more
cultural perversions, from which we all suffer today. One is a culture of
arbitrary, collective, ever tightening targets and limits on what we may do.
The other is a culture of “safety at any cost.” Together, these bad cultures
make our lives today all but unliveable.
Creeping targets and limits
The culture of arbitrary, collective, ever tightening
targets and limits was conceived by the European political élites in the 1980s.
It was initially designed to be applied to all kinds of air pollution, as well
as to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Since then, it has been taken
on eagerly, both by the UN and its World Health Organization (WHO), and by UK
governments of all parties. And in the 2010s, the EU became its policeman
across Europe.
The desire to get away from this culture was one of the
motivations that led so many of us back in 2016 to vote for Brexit. But despite
leaving the EU, this culture has not been weakened. Indeed, the UK government,
particularly since 2019, have been pushing it ever harder and harder.
This culture, too, has characteristics that make it very
nasty to live under. One, it can never be applied fairly and justly. Collective
limits always weigh hardest on the people at the bottom of the political
ladder. The arrogant élites, both as individuals and as a group, will simply
ignore the limits they themselves promote. They think they only apply to “the
little people.” That explains, for example, why so many hypocrites fly in CO2-spewing
helicopters or private jets to conferences about ways to force ordinary people
to reduce CO2 emissions.
Two, a key part of the design is that the goalposts must be
kept moving. The job is never done; the problem, whatever it is, is never
solved. For example, the CO2 emissions goalposts have already been
moved many times, always in the direction of increasing restrictions. Exactly
the same is planned for particulate matter (PM2.5), and no doubt
other kinds of pollution as well. And we have had, for decades, ever tightening
speed limits on the roads.
Three, in the end, the targets or limits will always end up
becoming unrealistic and unachievable. This has already happened with “nett
zero.” It will do so with air pollution too, once the implications of the WHO’s
latest guideline for PM2.5 sink in to people’s minds. And it’s not impossible
that government may try to resurrect the 19th-century law that required
every car to be preceded by someone walking, carrying a red flag.
Safety at any cost
We are subjected today to a culture of “safety at any cost.”
This culture, applied by political governments, subjects us to ever more and
tighter restrictions, while spying on us to catch us out in the smallest
violation.
But who is supposed to feel “safe?” And who or what are we
supposed to feel safe from? This culture certainly doesn’t make me, for one,
feel safe against government overreach.
Moreover, this culture has led to ongoing failures to do
objective risk analysis on, or cost-benefit analysis from the point of view of
the people affected by, green projects. And in the latter case, to machinations
designed to prevent any such cost-benefit analysis being done. In a later
article, I will outline how the UK government has again and again plotted to
ensure that no objective cost-benefit analysis would ever be done for “nett
zero.”
This culture of over-safety, I think, has also been a major
force behind the ongoing assaults on our freedom of speech. For such a depraved
culture cannot survive the glare of the truth.
The demonization of opponents of the “climate change” meme.
The censorship, using Big Tech, of dissident voices who seek to reveal the
truth. The efforts to make any chance remark into a potential “hate crime.” All
these, I surmise, are different heads of the same hydra.
And this hydra has, if I am not mistaken, many more heads
still. The erection, on just about any excuse, of more and more “panopticon”
cameras to track and record us as we go about our daily lives. The ever-growing
list of situations, in which we are required to confirm who we are; and the
prospect of being forced to use a “digital ID,” that will be entirely
controlled by government for its own purposes. Projects such as
anti-money-laundering laws, the abolition of cash, and central bank digital
currencies, whose effects will be to destroy the last shreds of privacy in our
financial dealings. And immediate, permanent de-banking of people who cannot
provide a bank with ID when asked.
All these, I think, are being driven ultimately by this same
perversion, the culture of safety at any cost. Together with the psychopathic
nature of many of those in the ruling classes, or in positions of government
power today.
To sum up
The perversion of the precautionary principle into a tool
for tyranny and predation lies at the heart of many of the problems we suffer
today. This perversion, in effect, inverts the burden of proof, denies the
presumption of innocence, and requires the accused – that’s us – to prove a
negative. The perversion was originally sparked by German environmentalists,
but it was taken on and broadened by the UN, and acted on by the EU, governments
– particularly the UK, and the globalist and corporate ruling classes and their
hangers-on.
This perversion has led to two related cultural perversions.
One, of arbitrary, collective, ever tightening targets and limits on what we
may do. The other, a culture of “safety at any cost,” which throws out all
consideration of objective cost-benefit or risk-benefit analysis.
It is my view that all good people, including Reform UK supporters, should recognize these cultural perversions for what they are. And should start to push back not only against the perversions themselves, but also against those that are responsible for them, or have used them to harm innocent people.
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