The Precautionary Principle: Civilization’s self-induced nightmare

[rman]

A new era in political thinking is here. This is the era of the "Precautionary Principle"; Ashcroft's "Paradigm of Prevention" (http://record.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/3829.html) and the Neocon's "Preventative War" (http://hnn.us/articles/924.html) are exponents of this new doctrine.


"Waiting for a crime to be committed or waiting for there to be evidence of the commission of a crime, didn't seem to us to be an appropriate way to protect..." - Ashcroft

"The government short-circuits all the processes that are designed to distinguish the innocent from the guilty, because it simply doesn't fit this mode of locking people up based on what they might do in the future."

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Excerpts from the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear", part 3: "The Shadows in the Cave".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

...
Tony Blair: "Not a conventional fear about a conventional threat.
But the fear that one day these new threats of weapons of mass destruction, rogue states and international terrorism, combine to deliver a catastrophe to our world."
...
"I just think these dangers are there, i think that it is difficult sometimes for people to see how they all come together. I think it is my duty to tell it if i really believe it, and i do really believe it. I may be wrong in believing it but i do believe it."


"What Blair argued, was that faced by the new threat of a global terror network the politician's role was now to look into the future, and imagine the worst that might happen and then act ahead of time to prevent it.

In doing this, Blair actually followed an idea that had been developed by the Green movement. It was called the Precautionary Principle.
Back in the 1980's thinkers within the ecology movement believed the world was threatened by global warming. But at the time there was little scientific evidence to prove this.
So they put forward the radical idea that governments had a higher duty: they couldn't wait for the evidence because by then it would be to late.
They had to act imaginatively, on intuition, in order to save the world from a looming catastrophe.

In essence the precautionary principle says that not having the evidence that something might be a problem is not a reason for not taking action as if it were a problem.
That's a very famous triple-negative phrase, that effectively says that action without evidence is justified.
It requires imagining what the worst might be, and applying that imagination upon the worst evidence that currently exists.
...
But once you start imagining what could happen, then there's no limit; "what if they had access to it", "what if they could effectively deploy it", "what if we weren't prepared".
What it is, is a shift from the scientific "what-is", evidence-based decision making, to this speculative, imaginary "what-if"-based worst case scenario.

And it was this principle that now began to shape government policy in the war on terror.

In both America and Britain, individuals were detained in high security prisons, not for any crimes they had committed but because the politicians believed or imagined that they might commit an atrocity in the future, even though there was no evidence they intended to do this.
The American Attorney General explained this shift to what he called the Paradigm of Prevention. Ashcroft: "Waiting for a crime to be committed or waiting for there to be evidence of the commission of a crime, didn't seem to us to be an appropriate way to protect the American people".

Under the preventative paradigm, instead of holding people accountable for what you can prove they have done in the past, you lock them up based on what you think or speculate they might do in the future. ... The government short-circuits all the processes that are designed to distinguish the innocent from the guilty, because it simply doesn't fit this mode of locking people up based on what they might do in the future.

The supporters of the precautionary principal argue that this loss of rights is the price that society has to pay when faced with the unique and terrifying threat of the Al-Qaida network.
But as this series has shown the idea of a hidden organized web of terror is largely a fantasy. And by embracing precautionary principal the politicians have become trapped in a vicious circle. They imagine the worst about an organization that doesn't even exist. But no-one questions this, because the very basis of the precautionary principal is to imagine the worst without supporting evidence.

How will we ever know when it is over, how will we know when the threat is gone?"...

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And what if the threat is gone, wouldn't there be a next-biggest threat that would then become be the new biggest threat that has to be dealt with "preventativly"? By follow this way of dealing with potential threats we will forever be living in fear.

[Eric J in MN]

1. Usually the phrase "precautionary principle" is that

we shouldn't grow genetically-modified food when there is no need for it.

I've never seen the phrse used to describe locking up people who may commit crimes someday before.

[D-Notice]

2. It's what's known as

"Thinking out of the box"! ;-)

[Crunchy Frog]

3. I object to the way this article equates

a policy of taking reasonable environmental precautions, with unprovoked invasions of other countries on the possibility that they might pose a threat, or the locking up of people that might commit a crime.

In the case of the environment, I think that the burden of proof should be on those who are tampering with the system, to prove that what they're doing is safe. The burden of proof should not be on others to prove that it is unsafe. That's the same principle that's used in introducing new drugs. They are supposed to be proven to be safe and efficacious before they can go on the market.

When you are talking about invading a country or arresting someone, the burden of proof is on those wanting to take those actions to show that the country or person represents a genuine threat.

I think that the author of this article is lumping two very different principles together with the effect of subtly discrediting the taking of environmental precautions, by equating them with things like the Iraq invasion. I find it disengenuous.

[rman]

4. It does not equate environmental precautions with unprovoked invasions

The documentary points where the concept of the Precautionary Principle originates, that's all.
The environmentalists may have had a good idea, the neocons turned it into a very bad idea.

So it isn't a matter of putting blame on the green movement or anything like that.

The point of the documentary is to show that this is the reality of the way the most powerfull politicians in the world are thinking and acting these days. If we (the people) allow this to continue, we will forever be living in fear of disasters that *might* happen, while our leaders bomb the shit out of all these potentil threats and lock up anyone who they think *might* commit a crime in the future.

The significance of it is not so much where the concept originates, nor that certain ideas are being lumped together (they aren't), but that our leaders do no longer think that "the burden of proof is on those wanting to take those actions (war, imprisonment) to show that the country or person represents a genuine threat."

I think that if people disagree with this reversal of the burdon of proof (as you seem to do) then we should let our leaders know that.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. I just don't agree that its the same concept.

I think it's two different concepts that are being conflated with each other.

Declining to put something in my body that hasn't been demonstrated to be safe, ie, is a potential risk, is different than going and killing my neigbor who I think might want to kill me, ie, a potential risk.

It's not just two different actions that are based in the same concept. It's two different concepts.