Caution, Precaution, and the Precautionary Principle

Great Debates
1

I’m getting increasingly frustrated by the confusion going around regarding the “precautionary principle”. People seem to think it means being cautious, or in many cases super cautious, to the point of ridiculous action or inaction.

It means nothing of the sort.

Let me start with the birth of the “precautionary principle” (I’ll call it PP for short), which comes from the UN Rio Declaration on the Environment (1992). Here’s their original formulation:

“In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capability. 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.”

This is an excellent statement of the PP, as it distinguishes it from such things as wearing condoms, denying bank loans, approving the Kyoto Protocol, invading Afghanistan, or using seat belts.

The three key parts of the PP (emphasis mine) are:

  1. A threat of serious or irreversible damage.

  2. A lack of full scientific certainty (in other words, the existence of partial but not conclusive scientific evidence).

  3. The availability of cost-effective measures.

Here are some examples of how these key parts of the PP work out in practice.

We have full scientific certainty that condoms and seat belts save lives. Thus, using them is not an example of the PP, it is simply acting reasonably on principles about which we are scientifically certain.

There are no scientific principles or evidence that we can apply to the question of invading Afghanistan, so we cannot apply the PP there either.

Bank loans are neither serious nor irreversible, nor is there partial scientific understanding of them, so they don’t qualify for the PP.

Finally, the Kyoto Protocol is so far from being cost-effective as to be laughable. The PP can be thought of as a kind of insurance policy. No one would pay $200,000 for an insurance policy if the payoff in case of an accident were only $20, yet this is the kind of ratio of cost to payoff that the Kyoto Protocol involves.

On the other side of the equation, a good example of when we might use the PP involves local extinction. We have fairly good scientific understanding that removing a top predator from a local ecosystem badly screws things up. If you kill the mountain lions, the deer population skyrockets, then the plants are overgrazed, then the ground erodes, insect populations are unbalanced, and so on down the line.

So, if we are looking at a novel ecosystem that has not been scientifically studied, we do not have full scientific certainty that removing the top predator will actually cause serious or irreversible damage to the ecosystem. However, if there is a cost-effective method to avoid removing the top predator, the PP says that we should do so. It fulfils the three requirements of the PP – there is a threat of serious damage, we have partial scientific certainty, and a cost-effective solution exists, so we should act.

I see the PP being invoked in all kinds of situations where it has no application at all, to justify an approach which is so cautious as to be absolutely paralyzing. Dear friends, caution is good in its place … but caution is not any part of the precautionary principle.

w.

2

Well done, sir. You just fought off ignorance I didn’t even know I had. Really, nicely done.

3

Maybe you didn’t. intention’s take on the subject is disputable in several respects:

Why should this event be considered the “birth” of the precautionary principle? A 2005 report by UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, The Precautionary Principle (pdf), gives a different backstory:

This doesn’t support your assertion that the intrinsic definition of the PP includes any specific measure of cost-effectiveness.

The Kyoto Protocol by itself is certainly inadequate as a means of drastically reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions. However, it’s a start at negotiating international agreements and mechanisms to use for emissions reduction. If you don’t think that’s worth paying for, you’re entitled to your opinion, but that doesn’t make it a fact.

4

Thanks, Kimstu, I was unaware of that. I should change the post to read something like “one of the first definitions” rather than “the first”.

I don’t understand. Are you advocating a definition of the PP that recommends actions which are not cost-effective? I fear that doesn’t make sense …

I fear that “certainly inadequate as a means of drastically reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions” still wildly overestimates the projected effects of Kyoto.

What both supporters and opponents of the Kyoto Protocol agree on is that it will have no measureable effect on temperature. This is a fact. It is a fact even if the US had signed on, and even if the countries that signed on were able to meet their committments under the protocol, neither of which have occurred.

Now, perhaps you think it is worth spending billions of dollars on a temperature reduction program that will not measurably reduce the temperature … I don’t.

I am always mystified by people who say, in essence, “spending hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve nothing is OK, because it’s a good start at attacking the problem” … if that’s a good start, spending billions for nothing, then what’s the finish?

Finally, even if you are right that what follows after Kyoto is actually effective, my point still stands – Kyoto is not effective, or as you say, it is “certainly inadequate”. No matter which definition of the PP you wish to follow, there is nothing in the PP that recommends pouring billions of dollars down the drain just to make “a start at negotiating international agreements”. Are you saying that we can’t start negotiations without first pissing away billions of dollars just to get warmed up?

w.

5

I don’t think it’s a question of “advocating”. I’m just pointing out that there is nothing in the early formulations of the precautionary principle that mandates taking cost-effectiveness into account. You claimed that cost-effectiveness is by definition a key part of the PP, and I argue that you’re wrong.

Right, but reducing global temperature is not the purpose of the Kyoto Protocol. As far as we can tell, we are already committed to enduring whatever global temperature rise our current elevated CO2 levels may cause. There’s no possible emissions-reduction program that could turn the clock back on previous emissions and return us to pre-industrial CO2 levels and temperatures.

Its purpose is to start the reduction of carbon emissions so that we can reduce the risk of catastrophically increasing global temperatures in the future by massively increasing CO2 concentrations. The whole point of Kyoto is not to eliminate whatever climate problems we may already have caused—that can’t be done*—but to start putting the brakes on our current headlong gallop toward much more serious problems.

The Kyoto Protocol is not a temperature reduction program. I think this misunderstanding is at the root of the widespread (and, in the case of climate change deniers, carefully fostered) concern over the Protocol’s usefulness.

  • Short of some pretty gee-whizzical fancy technology for atmospheric carbon removal and sequestration on an immense scale, which does not look at all likely in the near future.
6

And now even more ignorance slayed. Thanks. I’ve learned quite a lot in just two posts.

7

Well, that depends. No climatologist I know of considers a CO2 concentration of more than, say, 650 parts per million (ppm) to be anything other than extremely dangerous. The overwhelming majority consider around 500 ppm as the absolute limit. We’re currently at 380 ppm, having shot up from the millennia of 280 ppm in just a few decades. And we’re shooting up by 3 ppm per year, undeniably from digging up safely stored stockpiles of CO2 and burning them.

That’s the maths: at the current rate of increase, we’ll reach an undeniably dangerous concentration this century. Kyoto tries to buy us time - to give us a few more years or decades before we reach the danger limit and have to stop emitting CO2 at all or face the consequences.

I guess the question is, what will the cost-effectiveness of a dangerous CO2 concentration be compared to the cost of reducing our rate of increase per Kyoto?

8

SentientMeat, thanks for your comments. You say:

  1. If Kyoto would have a measureable effect, this question would make much more sense … but since even the Kyoto backers agree that it will make no measurable difference (estimated temperature reduction if everyone signed up and complied, ~0.07°C), I fail to see how it is “cost-effective” at all.

  2. The overwhelming majority of nations that signed up to Kyoto have not been able to make the cuts required by the Protocol. Thus, in addition to making no difference, it also appears to be impractical … what is the cost-effectiveness of a project that is costing billions and billions of dollars, which would make no difference if it succeeds, and which shows no sign of success?

w.

PS - The annual CO2 increase is only 2/3 of the figure you quoted … see Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations

9

Let me just start out by saying that I loathe the precautionary principle to the depths of my soul.

So who gets to decide what is serious? And isn’t almost everything irreversible when it comes to the ecology of ‘natural’ systems.

Let’s look at the example of controlled burns in forests. If we don’t burn there is a very serious risk of open forests reverting to the pre-Indian closed forest system, and that change will then become irreversible. But if we do burn there is a serious risk that the burn cause unintentional damage which is, of course, irreversible.

And this is one of the biggest reasons why the precautionary principle is a crock. It sounds fine while sitting at a desk but in the real world it can be used to justify any course of action in any siutuation, and usually is. When we are delaing with natural systems all management decisions are ireversible since we can not bring back to life even one single dead anaimal or plant or replace a single gram of leaf litter. And all risks are serious. Yet the precautionary principle never bothers to say what level of risk it should be applied to.

The problem is that there is some scientific evidence for almost any position and as a result this criterion is totally superfluous. When people get publioshe din credible science journals advocating intelligent design and that that germs don’t cause disease you can imnagine that in an inherently fuzzy field like ecology all positions can be supported by at least some evidence.

So there is no point stipulatiung partial scientific evidence. All positions have partial scientific evidence.

Once again no attempt is made to define what is cost effective or who decides cost effectiveness. What exactly is the cost of the extinction of every brown bear in the US? The cost is either negligible or infinitely high. And that applies to almost every situation. Whatis the cost of the loss of a thousand hecatres of forest to fire? IS it just the economic cost of the lumber? Is it the cost of the environmental services of that forest area? And what about the converse? What is the cost of not burning that patch of forest? Is it higher or lower?

The problem with the precautionary principle is that it has no practical boundaries or qualifiers whatsoever. I have far too often seen people make cases for diametically opposing positions usingthe precuationary principle on both sides. And because that can always be done the precautionary principle is worthless. The only vlaue is that it allows people with weak scientifica and economic cases to try to bolster them with some sort of guiding principle thatis itelf without foundation.

That’s neat. But in the real world every action has a reaction, and failure to take action is an action in itself.

What is the effect of not removing the mountain lions? There must be an efect. Deer for example are important as browsers in mitigating fires in woodlands. And mountain lions are predators on endagered species as well as common deer. And they also prey on livestock and reduce the ability of landholders to manage their land for environmental services. Now I can make a case using the precautionary principle that we should remove the mounatin lions.

So how much value is the precautionary principle in the real world? It seems like it is of no value at all. Both of us can produce arguments with some scientific evidence that irreversible results will pertain to our suggested courses of action. Yet you are proposing conserving the mountain lions and I am proposing extermination.

The precautionary principle is worthless because in any case such as this either side can use it to provide support for their position.

No, it doesn’t.

If we are looking at a novel ecosystem that has not been scientifically studied, we do not have full scientific certainty that failure to remove the top predator will actually cause serious or irreversible damage to the ecosystem. However, if there is a cost-effective method to remove the top predator, the PP says that we should do so.

This is the point that you have repreatedly overlooked: failure to take action is still an action. The fact that all ecosystems on continents and major islands were extensively managed and modified by indigenous populations prior to recent disruption by western culture makes the proposition all the more ludicrous. Any acton or inaction we decide on is equally an action and can be validly ajudged by the precautionary principle. That means that we can make as good an argument that we should remove the ptop predators as that we should not.

But failure to remove the top predator also presents a threat of serious damage, we have partial scientific certainty, and a cost-effective solution exists. So does that mean we should act to remove the predators.

The fact that we can argue diametrically opposing positions using the precautionary principle shows just how worthless it is.

10

Kimstu, thank you for your contribution. You say:

Paragraphs 1 and 3 say that reducing current temperatures is not the purpose of Kyoto. I never said it was, nor have I heard anyone else claim that, so perhaps you could provide a cite for the “misunderstanding” that you say is “carefully fostered”.

Paragraph 2 says that reducing the risk of future increases in temperature is the purpose of Kyoto.

But it won’t do that in a measurable way, even if it were to succeed, and there appears to be no chance of it succeeding. The future reduction in the projected temperature increase due to Kyoto is estimated to be ~0.07°C, too small to measure. And that’s only if everyone achieved the reductions, which there is no sign of their doing.

Finally, you say:

Certainly the OP quote of the PP from 1992, although not the earliest (as you point out), is an early and very important formulation of the PP. It is the only definition directly quoted in the European Union document adopting the PP, COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION on the precautionary principle. Also, it is the definition from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, so it is clearly relevant to Kyoto. By that definition, cost-effectiveness is a key part.

However, a more interesting question is not whether cost-effectiveness is a part of a given definition of the PP or not, but whether it should be a part of the definition

I agree that you were not advocating whether it should be a part of the PP or not … me, I think it has to be, or the PP becomes meaningless. So, despite the fact that you were not “advocating” anything in your previous post, do you think it should be part of the PP, as the UN Climate Change folks obviously think, or do you think cost-effectiveness should not be a part of the PP?

w.

PS - my main reason for posting this thread had nothing to do with either Kyoto or cost effectiveness, and I don’t want to see the thread hijacked (by myself or anyone) into a discussion of Kyoto. The reason for posting the thread was that I see far too many definitions of the PP that are along the lines of this sad example:

SOURCE

BZZZZT! This idea, that the precautionary principle means “better safe than sorry”, or that society should assume that all potential problems are real, is a tragic joke … in my opinion, anyone who thinks all potential problems are real needs professional help dealing with reality, but clearly there are people out there who think that’s what the PP means.

That’s the ignorance I was fighting.

11

Well, you called it a “temperature reduction program”, which sounded to me exactly as though you were saying that its purpose is to reduce temperatures.

You are now clarifying that you meant that Kyoto is intended to reduce the projected increase in future temperatures. Which is somewhat different.

But I think you’re still misunderstanding the way the Protocol works. The chief value of Kyoto is not in the direct effect of the emissions reductions that it explicitly mandates (which as you correctly note is nearly zilch), but in its establishment of working prototypes for agreements and mechanisms for how to reduce emissions.

Yes indeed, we definitely, desperately, need emissions reductions agreements much stronger than Kyoto if we’re to seriously address the problem of anthropogenic atmospheric forcing. But you’ve got to start somewhere, and Kyoto is at least a start in figuring out how a real solution would work. It has set in motion the long laborious trial-and-error process for marketizing and regulating the global climate commons.

Kyoto opponents like to complain about its shortcomings, but they don’t seem to have any better ideas for solving the problems that it addresses. It is not okay to ignore a problem just because you don’t have an ideal solution.

I agree that there is a lot of sense in taking cost-effectiveness into account when applying the PP in practical strategies for solving problems. But it isn’t what the PP is essentially about, so I see no point in demanding that the definition of the PP should include appeals to cost-effectiveness.
I think the main problem here is that some people, both among advocates and opponents of the PP, are trying to make it into something it isn’t: namely, a set of explicit criteria for how to address problems. I really don’t think the PP can fulfill that role. It’s a principle, not a strategy. It can inform or be part of decision-making about strategies for solving problems, but it doesn’t prescribe how to make those decisions. Trying to reformulate it as an explicit decision-making strategy seems to me kind of pointless.

12

Again, you’re thinking rather too linearly, in terms of a slightly higher temperature or not. The point about Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference (DAI) is that climatologists believe you can only push the system so far off equilibrium before rapid and destructive changes occur. Yes, Kyoto is only a gentle press of the brakes, but the point is that there is a metaphorical cliff somewhere up ahead, and we need more time to work out how to stop the car completely before we reach it. Small steps themselves are indeed insignificant, but the small step over the edge is the most significant of all, and we’re blindfolded.

Even if they sadly do not reduce to 1990 levels their efforts don’t make no difference: They are still applying the brakes to a greater or lesser degree. Even the US has stopped accelerating towards the edge (while, of course, still providing the biggest share of the forward momentum from any country). Again, if Kyoto is “costing billions” (and some countries have achieved or will get very close to 1990 levels with no apparent economic detriment), one must ask what DAI will cost.

Beg pardon: 2.6 ppm per year, or 86% of my quoted figure. But this annual increase is accelerating, thus perhaps getting us to undeniably dangerous levels in mere decades rather than the end of the century.

If the probability of some situation costing a vast amount of money and lives were extremely unlikely, I’d agree that the PP would be unnecessary scaredy-cattery. But the probability approaches certainty the higher the CO2 concentration rises. Kyoto merely makes it rise slower. We’ll still ultimately have to stop to avoid passing the limit.

13

And, incidentally, if we are to throw out the Precautionary Principle regarding increasing emissions and hope that our climate won’t be unduly affected, why not throw it out regarding the consequences of reducing emissions and hope that our economies won’t be unduly affected, too?

14

SentientMeat, thank you for your thoughts.

Your point seems to be that it’s better to do something than nothing … however, this is hardly a general rule of life. In some cases, it’s far better to do nothing than something.

In particular, this is true when the “something” has no measurable effect but is horrendously expensive. The reason that the projected reduction in temperature from Kyoto is so small is because the projected reduction in emissions is so small.

So to use your example, if we are going towards the cliff in a car, Kyoto is not like gently pressing on the brakes to slow us down. That would have a measureable effect, but Kyoto doesn’t have any measureable effect at all. Kyoto is like putting your hand out the car window and claiming the air pressure will slow us down, while madly throwing money out the window with the other hand. Neither course of action makes much sense. I’m all for doing something about problems in the world … but Kyoto is doing nothing. It is a feel-good measure that allows people to believe they are actually doing something about the problem.

Let me state again that, according the the UNFCCC, which of course was the founding father of the Rio Convention and then of Kyoto, the PP*** requires cost-effective solutions. ***You certainly may take another definition if you like … but you can hardly fault me for applying to Kyoto the definition proposed by the people who brought us Kyoto.

w.

PS - you are right that last year, with much fanfare, the increase in CO2 was announced (as in your link) to be 2.6 ppm. This was taken as verification of something or other … however, the year before, there was only a 1.5 ppm increase, there was no fanfare, and nobody said anything about what that verified.

Nor does your claim that we are “shooting up at 3 ppm per year” agree with the previous year’s 1.5 ppm increase, or the increase over the last decade for that matter. Over the last ten years, the average has been slightly below 2 ppm per year, which is why I said “2/3” of your figure of 3 ppm.

15

If the emission rates (and, therefore, their increase or decrease) aren’t measurable, how do you know some countries will fail to return to 1990 rates?

Almost all industrialised democracies, even the US, have demonstrably slowed down in the last decade. Kyoto is merely a signed promise to slow down to a particular speed (1990 levels).

Yes, and I keep asking: cost-effective compared to what? If, hypothetically, the DAI limit was crossed this century and, say, the Great Ocean Conveyor changed radically, causing trillions of dollars of damage and millions of deaths, the costs of Kyoto (whatever they are, and hey, who cares about such Precaution? It might all work out economically peachy!) would be a drop in a rapidly rising ocean.

Read the article again: it’s an average over several years in which the skeing effects of an enormous El Nino (which ramps up the increase one year but retards the increase in the next few) must be accounted for. In any case, even a 2 ppm rise per year (and it’s not - it’s 2.6 over the last four) would put us above 570 ppm this century.

16

I have this ugly habit … I don’t believe articles in the popular press, so I go to the data itself. Your article refers to NOAA data. According to NOAA , the CO2 increases for the last few years have been:

1990 1.31
1991 0.99
1992 0.45
1993 1.31
1994 1.89
1995 2.01
1996 1.19
1997 1.98
1998 2.95
1999 0.91
2000 1.78
2001 1.60
2002 2.55
2003 2.31
2004 1.54
2005 2.53

There are a few things worth noting in this data:

  1. The article lied, it wasn’t 2.6 ppm, it was 2.5 ppm. Typical media exaggeration

  2. Your claim that the average increase over the last four years is 2.6 is either a sad commentary on the exaggeration typical of global warming proponents, or a sad commentary on your math ability … the actual average over the last four years is 2.2 ppm. Since not one of the last four years has been above 2.55, you’ll be very hard pressed to average 2.6.

  3. Read the article again? Dude, you read it again, they do not report an average as you blithely claim, it is a one year increase.

  4. If the El Nino “ramps up the increase one year but retards the increase in the next few”, there is no need to adjust for it in an average, it’s already done that … and in any case, the El Nino was in 1998, so it can’t affect your four year average.

  5. Yes, if we increase 2 ppm per year for 100 years, we will break 570 … but this kind of extension of a series, by taking a lineal trend and extending into the future, is well known as a trap for the foolish. Mark Twain’s comment on this type of idiocy is relevant here:

17

Question. What is the presumed effect of going over the 500 ppm figure? Is it a sudden jump in average temperature of say 2[sup]o[/sup] instead of one? Or is it something like the onset of a runaway greenhouse effect?

If it is the latter then the use of “cost effective” is falacious. Cost effective is meaningful only if the difference between action and no action is manageable. When the result of no action is worldwide disaster, such as a trigger leading to runaway greenhouse effect over 500 ppm or so, then cost effective goes out the window.

Since we don’t have a gilt-edged, iron-bound guarantee from the scientific community as to either the limiting CO[sub]2[/sub] figure or the exact effect expected, it becomes a matter of probability. At what odds we willing to gamble that at some CO[sub]2[/sub] level the temperature will not rise as a step function to 500 C?

18

intention: Your attitude on the Kyoto Protocol completely ignores how markets work and how technology gets developed and implemented. The purpose of the Kyoto Protocol is certainly not primarily to hold emissions down for a 4-year period and thus reduce the warming because of that. Hell, if we totally stopped emitting CO2 for 4 years and then went back to emitting at the previous levels, we would have only delayed warming by 4 years. So, when you throw around this 0.07 C figure, would you kindly tell us exactly how that was calculated?

At any rate, the purpose of the protocol, besides those that Kimstu and Sentient Meat mentioned, is to put a cost on CO2 emissions so that the technologies to reduce or sequester those emissions get developed. Some people say we don’t yet have the technologies to drastically reduce emissions as if magically in the future those technologies will appear if we just continue on our merry ways. That is not how the world works. When you let everyone use the atmosphere as a free sewer, there is absolutely no market mechanism in place that pushes people to develop and implement such technologies. The only thing motivating them would be altruism.

If you don’t believe in market economics, then I would agree that Kyoto might not make that much sense. However, if you do believe in market economics and understand how it works, then Kyoto (or some similar mechanism to effectively put a cost on emissions) does make sense.

And, by the way, there has been some more rigorous attempts to look at the economic issue of how to deal with climate change. The one that I am most familiar with is this article in Science: “To Hedge or Not Against an Uncertain Climate Future”. It concludes:

19

It’s certainly foolish to extend lineal trends unreasonably far into the future, completely ignoring the appropriate timescales and producing meaningless results. That’s exactly why Twain’s joke is funny: because he’s facetiously trying to extrapolate a comparatively short-term local phenomenon to a timescale of a million years, so of course the answers he gets are ridiculous.

However, it is not foolish at all to extrapolate lineal trends along an appropriate timescale where they can reasonably be expected to persist. If Twain had suggested instead that ten years earlier the Lower Mississippi was about thirteen miles shorter, it wouldn’t have been funny, precisely because it would have been realistically plausible.

Similarly, there is nothing ludicrous about suggesting that humans look likely to go on increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations by an average of about 2 ppm per year for the next hundred years. The graph of long-term CO2 measurements that is linked to the NOAA page you linked to shows that between about 1960 and about 2005, CO2 concentrations have increased from under 320 ppm to over 380 ppm.

That’s an increase of over 60 ppm in the most recent 45 years. So it doesn’t seem at all absurd to suggest that we might well add another 190ppm over the coming 100 years, if we don’t make some major efforts to prevent it.

Certainly, that might not happen, because we might change our carbon-pumping habits. But as jshore pointed out, changing our habits doesn’t magically just happen. We have to establish regulations and market mechanisms that will provide incentives for our habits to change.

20

intention, thanks for setting me straight - you’re quite right, I should have said an average of at least 2.3 ppm in three of the last four years. From now on, I won’t claim we’re shooting up at 3 ppm per year, but shooting up at 2.5 ppm per year.

But that is still terrifyingly fast given the cliff somewhere up ahead:

That would be so if climatologists were not telling us that, far from there being some mysterious mechanism which somehow absorbs more CO2 the more we pump it into the atmoshpere, the bioshpere actually gets gradually worse at absorbing CO2 the higher we go in concentraion, ie. that if we keep burning fossil fuels at the same rate, the actual atmospheric concentration will increase by more than the current 2-ish ppm per year, every year. The next few years’ data might give a strong indication of this, and we’re due another El Nino very soon. An annual increase over 3 ppm will be very serious cause for concern indeed, agreed?

Rapid climate change, in which the Ocean Conveyor is severly disprupted causing enormous local changes, has happened regularly in the Earth’s history. This article on Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference is a good start.