precautionary principle

CEI Podcast for November 3, 2011: Scary Makeup

by Ryan Young on November 3, 2011

in Podcast, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Have a listen here.

Senior Fellow Angela Logomasini debunks scare stories that chemicals in makeup and other household products cause cancer, neurological disorders, birth defects, and other health problems. The cardinal rule of toxicology is that the does makes the poison. That dose just isn’t there in cosmetics, no matter how loud the shouts of some activists. For more information, see the new CEI study, “The True Story of Cosmetics: Exposing the Risks of the Smear Campaign,” by Dana Joel Gattuso.

Blowout Prevention Act Would Blowout Domestic Oil Production

by Marlo Lewis on July 1, 2010 · 2 comments

in Global Warming, Natural Resources, Precaution & Risk

Yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held a hearing on H.R. 5626, the Blowout Prevention Act of 2010. Although the sponsors claim their intent is simply to prevent a disaster like the blowout of BP’s Macondo deepwater well from ever happening again, the bill would establish, as a precondition for obtaining a permit to drill, a test no oil company can pass.

Let’s look at the bill’s first substantive provision:

SEC. 2. NO DRILLING WITHOUT DEMONSTRATED ABILITY
 TO PREVENT AND CONTAIN LEAKS.
(a) FEDERALLY PERMITTED HIGH-RISK WELLS.—
Effective one year after the date of enactment of this Act, the appropriate Federal official shall not issue a permit to drill for a high-risk well unless the applicant for such
permit demonstrates, the Chief Executive Officer of the applicant attests in writing, and the appropriate Federal  official determines that—
(1) the blowout preventer and other well control measures will prevent a blowout from occurring;
(2) the applicant has an oil spill response plan that ensures that the applicant has the capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail; and
(3) the applicant has the capability to begin drilling of a relief well within 15 days, and complete such drilling of a relief well to control a blowout within 90 days of the well control event that causes such blowout.

The unattainable standard is in Section 2(a)(2). Under this provision, no oil company may obtain a permit to drill for a high-risk well unless it demonstrates the ”capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail.” But, as is painfully obvious, the Macondo well has been gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months with no clear end in sight. Nobody has the capacity to “promptly stop” the blowout after the preventer and other well control measures failed — not BP, not the oil industry working as a team, not the federal and state governments working with the oil industry.

In short, the bill would hold applicants for drilling permits to a standard that none can meet. Moreover, as fully documented here, the sponsors of the Blowout Prevention Act know very well that once the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail, physics takes over and there is no way to stop oil from spilling into the ocean environment. Consider these excerpts from a colloquy between Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson:

Stupak: . . . so no matter which one of the oil companies here before us had the blowout, the resources are not enough to prevent what we’re seeing day after day in the gulf, not only the loss of 11 people, but we’re on, what, day 56 or 57 of oil washing up on shores. There is no other plan. There is no way to stop what’s happening until we finally cap this well, correct?

Tillerson: That is correct. . . . There is no response capability that will guarantee you will never have an impact. It does not exist and it will probably never exist.

Now, you might suppose that although Section 2(a)(2) would effectively bar all drilling of “high-risk wells,” it would not affect offshore wells that are low-risk. Alas, no. Sec. 16(12)(A) defines “high risk” to include any “offshore oil or gas exploration or production well within 200 nautical miles of the coast of the United States.”

At yesterday’s hearing several members criticized this language as indiscriminate, because it ignores the site-specific circumstances (such as oil pressure, temperature, and geology) that would affect the risk level of a particular drilling operation. Chairmen Waxman (D.-Calif.), Markey (D-Mass.), and Stupak may thus agree to define “high risk” more narrowly — for example, offshore wells in water deeper than 1000 feet.

Even with this modification, however, the bill would still wreak havoc on offshore oil production. As the Department of Interior notes in its May 27 report, Increased Safety Measures for Energy Development on the Outer Continental Shelf, U.S. deepwater offshore oil production surpassed shallow water oil production in 2001, and in 2009, 80% of offshore oil production and 45% of offshore gas production “occurred in water depths in excess of 1,000 feet.” The future of offshore oil is in deep water. Even if “high risk” applies only to deepwater wells, H.R. 5626 would sabotage the industry’s future.

Sec. 16(12)(B) also defines ”high risk” to include any ”onshore oil or gas exploration or production well in the United States . . . that, in the event of a blowout, could lead to substantial harm to public health and safety and the environment.” Is there anyone in the environmental movement who does not think an oil spill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) “could lead to substantial harm to . . . the environment”? Let’s call this provision the ANWR Prohibition Clause. Of course, it could effectively prohibit onshore drilling in many places besides ANWR.

Federal officials won’t be able to finesse these strictures, even if they want to, because the bill would empower “citizens” to enforce the Act and its associated regulations and orders via litigation:

Any person may commence a civil action in Federal district court of appropriate jurisdiction on such person’s own behalf to compel compliance with this Act, or any regulation or order issued under this Act, or any regulation or order issued under this Act, against any person, including the United States, and any other government instrumentality or agency (to the extent permitted by the eleventh amendment to the Constitution) for any alleged violation of any provision of this Act or any regulation or order issued under this Act. [Sec. 16(a)]

Enact the Blowout Prevention Act, and every eco-litigation group will be able to sue any agency that fails to hold any oil company to an unattainable standard.

All of this would be okay if oil were evil and abolishing U.S. oil production could not happen too soon. That seems to be an unstated premise of the Blowout Prevention Act.

That premise, however, is outrageously false. Although oil spills are bad, oil is good. Without oil, there would be no modern commerce and no mechanized agriculture. Life for most of humanity, including most Americans, would be poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Indeed, many of us would not even be alive.

Banning offshore drilling would increase consumers’ pain at the pump, destroy tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, cripple the economy of the Gulf coast states, and make America more dependent on OPEC oil. Presumably, those are not results most Members of Congress want to bring about. Yet Congress will set the stage for just such a policy disaster if, applying the so-called Precautionary Principle to domestic oil production, it demands proof of absolute safety as a precondition for approving the operation of offshore and onshore wells.

Wishing for a Regulatory Monster?

by Angela Logomasini on September 30, 2009

in Environment

Be careful what you wish for because sometimes you might not like the result. And big-government advocates should be particularly careful since government rarely meets the goals it sets. That’s what some leftists are learning about the European Union’s chemical law called REACH, which stands for “registration, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals.” It sounds bureaucratic because it is. In fact, even its supporters are learning that it is a green regulatory monster. And Animal rights activists, which relinquished their opposition to appease left-wing allies, are now learning that the law has become a gratuitous lab-rodent extermination program. And despite all the problems with this law, U.S. lawmakers are looking at this law as a model to emulate!

Read all about this in my recent piece for National Review.

Image Attribution:  Sukanto Debnath on flickr.

Rise of the Luddites

by Fred Smith on April 7, 2009

in Environment, Natural Resources, Odds & Ends, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Private Conservation, Regulation

When it comes to things such as environmental policy, the Progressives have been rather successful at promoting their world view.  They realized that it would be futile to argue that property rights and human ingenuity could not solve anything – so they did not try (immediately) to socialize oil or other sub-surface minerals but they did succeed in derailing the evolutionary process by which institutions emerged to resolve emerging problems.  The economist Ronald Coase  noted this in an essay pointing out that the EMS (Emergency Medical Services) was well on its way to being homesteaded with rules for allowing multiple uses – and then the Feds created the Federal Communication Commission and the spectrum is still terribly managed to this day.  

The environment is valuable and valued by many.  The difficulty is that we have relegated its “protection” and “management” to bureaucrats – and suppressed the evolution of property rights in environmental resources (wildlife, groundwater, fisheries).  These resources remain as common property resources – and we experience repeatedly the Tragedy of the Commons.  However, the most distressing aspect of the debate over environmental policy,  is that the view gaining prevalence from the Progressive side is decidedly anti-human, and anti-technology at its core.  

There are many features of the growing anti-human-relevant-science campaign.  

  •  One is the selection of the fearful – the Malthusian wing of this movement that sees “technology” as change, as a move into an untested future and, thus, to be slowed if not banned.  These people champion the Precautionary Principle – a totally Luddite rule.  Has there ever been a market innovation (one that we hoped people would buy) that created more harm than good?
  • The Economic Rational wing, which has championed “comparative effectiveness” and so on.  After all, they argue, it would be foolish and wasteful to approve a new drug or device that was not “cost effective for the median individual.”  A wonderful capture of the rational language but, of course, that approach argues that we can know in advance that a specific innovation will or will not prove beneficial (the French minitel system comes to mind).  Most – all – innovations appear first as clunky, expensive toys or (for a very few) necessities.  The purchasers are the ‘Early Adopters’ – often rich or eager to “be the first on their block.”  However, the freedom to create an infant market for a product that would be too expensive and too inefficient for most people made it possible for the thousand dollar 1940s television sets with tiny blurry pictures and very low quality to become the few hundred 34-inch flat screen marvels of today.  We will suffer in many areas for this loss but the greatest losses may be in the medical innovation area.
  • The Government Research Must be Dominant school is characterized by those who sought on “scientific” grounds for removal of any restraints on stem cell research – not because such research was banned (private parties were largely free), but rather because it meant that their approved source of scientific funding – the government – was kept from the field.  Indeed, this group is much more ambitious – their effort to drive the market from the marketplace of ideas is one of the most threatening themes.  Research that has been funded by a company, individuals who have done consulting or worked for a company, groups who’ve received support from a company – all inherently more suspect that a government-funded scientist.  One can expect that such individuals and the research work they do will soon have to wear a yellow C (for corporate) patch on their clothes, appended on every page of their journal articles.  
  • The Science Good, Technology Bad sub-class.  This refers to the observations of Joel Mokyr and others.  That it has been the close link between (largely) non-economic driven science and (largely) economic-driven technology that transformed the slow progress of most of mankind’s history to the exponential growth we have experienced in the last several centuries.  Brilliant individuals have popped up from time to time throughout history.  They expand man’s knowledge and some small use is made of that knowledge to improve man’s welfare.  In the Industrial Revolution, however, the growth of economic freedom created a more receptive and attentive audience for such knowledge.  Electricity would be discovered and Edison and others would immediately begin to think, “What is it good for?”  Then, in turn, they would go back to the science and note – “this worked OK but … why?” and those questions would both prompt and interest the science community in expanding knowledge in directions more likely to prove human beneficial.  The resulting positive “feed back loop” is critical to progress. This group would sever that link — Science Good, Technology Bad!!

As I have stated above, the environment is valuable, and its preservation is valuable to many.  Therefore, at CEI, one of the things we have tried to do in our work is not ridicule the environmentalists or argue that environmental values are irrelevant.  We simply make the point that the Malthusian goals – less people, less consumption, less technology – is far less inspiring that the view of mankind as the Ultimate Resource.  

I am proud of the work we have done, but we have much work to do to improve our marketing skills.  The other side of this debate seems rather adept at garnering popularity, and is much better funded.  My message to those who may share our views is that we needed to find ways to create a more effective and powerful alliance between the entrepreneurial elements of the business community and the free market community.  We face many problems.  Keep up the good work – and help find the scientist-entrepreneurs who have not succumbed to this insanity.  There must be a handful of people who recognize that the politicization of science by conservatives was stupid, but the politicization of science by the Luddites is suicidal.

Let the Sunstein In

by Iain Murray on January 8, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment, Regulation

I was cheered this morning by the news that Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago is to be the next head of OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. While not someone a libertarian conservative would necessarily appoint, he is possibly the best choice possible that Obama could have made, and his friendship with the President-elect suggests he will have some power. In particular, Prof. Sunstein has been a very strong opponent of the Precautionary Principle, which is the rock upon which many environmental regulatory initiatives are built. He also called CEI’s litigation to draw attention to the fatal consequences of CAFE regulation “the principal case involving the issue of health-health tradeoffs.”

Todd Zywicki and Glenn Reynolds also applaud the appointment.