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The Precautionary Principle: A Conservative Way of Thinking
by REP President Martha Marks
Keynote speech at the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable Conference, Chicago, Illinois; February 28, 2001
In the last few years, I’ve been asked to address some very interesting groups, including a few that focus on issues with which I have little professional expertise. And sometimes when I’m scratching my head over what I should say in a given talk, I’ll begin to wonder just how it is that I happen to find myself in such a situation.
Back in the fall of 1999, for example, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the "Wild Rockies Rendezvous" in Missoula, Montana. I started that talk off by asking point-blank: What in heck could a Republican woman from an urban corner of a pancake-flat Midwestern state possibly have to say to a group of grizzled pro-wilderness activists from the inter-mountain West?
Well, it turned out that I did have a few worthwhile things to say to that particular audience, and I hope you’ll feel at the end of this talk that I also have some worthwhile things to say to you, too.
Most of you will see me as a new blip on the national pollution prevention radar screen, so let me tell you a bit about who I am and why I’m here.
I’m a third-term county commissioner in Lake County, Illinois… just north of Chicago, between Cook County and Wisconsin. I’m a Republican elected official with a strong local reputation as an environmentalist. I’ve been fighting for over a decade to rein in sprawl; reduce flooding; stop erosion and runoff from polluting of our rivers and streams; protect open space and end the destruction of wetlands, woodlands, riparian corridors, and wildlife habitat. It’s a frustrating, time-consuming and often thankless job, but I do--for the most part--find it rewarding.
However, I also have another role to play in life… as the president of what a few jokers have called the world’s funniest oxymoron: Republicans for Environmental Protection. Only it’s not an oxymoron, as I’m sure many of you already know, and as I hope the rest of you will realize by the time I’m finished.
I was one of a trio of Republican women who established REP back in 1995 to try to resurrect our party’s great conservation tradition and to restore natural resource conservation and sound environmental protection as fundamental elements of the Republican Party’s vision for America. In other words, we’re out to "green up" the GOP.
And no… we haven’t exactly won that battle yet. Sometimes it seems our party takes two steps backward on the environment for every one it takes forward. But still, those of us who keep our eyes on such matters are seeing some clear indications that things may be looking up. I’ll tell you more about some of those later.
But first, let me back up for a moment. I told you I’m a local Republican elected official. I realize that in some parts of the country, Republican elected officials aren’t always identified with energetic efforts to clean up pollution, much less with trying to find ways to prevent it. In other parts of the country, they are. Republican elected officials in some areas have the reputation of wanting to give industry a free rein to grow and make money unimpeded by pesky regulations, and in the process to emit just as much pollution as much as they think they can get away with. In other areas, they're much more diligent. For some Republicans, the most important thing is the corporate bottom line. Unfortunately, in some cases, that stereotype is true. But it ain’t necessarily so.
Republicans don’t always turn their backs on environmental protection initiatives. Some--both past and present--have been absolute champions of environmental protection. And we at REP are doing our level best to point out--to today’s Republican party leaders and elected officials and to anybody else who will listen--that the GOP has a proud environmental tradition that it should be living up to. We keep telling our party that it had better start showing its concern for environmental protection if it wants to remain the majority party in Congress and hold on to the White House beyond the next four years.
We at REP are often the first ones who point out to young people that if you’re a Republican you’re not automatically supposed to be anti-environment. Believe it or not, that’s what most of them seem to think! Even college kids--who were born during Ronald Reagan’s presidency--know virtually nothing of Richard Nixon’s environmental leadership. And to them, Teddy Roosevelt is like some figure out of Greek mythology. So we at REP are working hard to try to build a new generation of pro-conservation Republican voters at the same time that we’re working to "green up" the GOP today.
And we’re showing the world that there are still some Republican elected officials who really and truly do have the courage to fight for clean air and water, protect endangered species and public lands, and try to prevent global warming. On our web site and in our quarterly newsletter, The Green Elephant, we offer praise and cheers and "Environmental Hero Awards" to those Republicans on the national stage who stand up and do the right thing for our environment. The flip side of that is that we’re not at all shy about blowing the whistle on those who would sell their constituents down the river if it benefited some powerful polluting industry… especially if that industry happened to be a campaign contributor.
I mentioned Richard Nixon a moment ago. As you know, Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, but he vetoed the Clean Water Act because he felt it would be "too costly" for industry. Fortunately, a bipartisan majority in Congress--including many GOP senators and representatives--saw through that bogus argument and voted to override Nixon’s veto. And nobody--not even Rush Limbaugh or some other anti-enviro wacko--nobody can claim that there has been a drop in industrial growth and profit since Nixon’s day. On the contrary, despite strict government regulations and industry’s own voluntary pollution prevention efforts, the economy has been chugging along quite nicely, thank you.
Nevertheless, every single time new clean air regs are proposed, some regulated industries trot out their hired-gun PR fear-mongers to try to beat them off. And then, what a friend of mine calls their "pro-polluter puppets" in Congress (of both parties) inevitably jump on the bandwagon and try to stop the new proposals in their tracks. However, I’m proud to say that in the past it has usually been a bipartisan coalition of pro-environment Democrats and Republicans in Congress who stood up and at least tried to stop those anti-environmental juggernauts.
For example, legislation was introduced in the U. S. House of Representatives last year that would have made it illegal for the EPA to inform residents of a community when their air quality dropped below the level required for healthy breathing. The reason given by the two Georgia Republicans who proposed that bill was that such disclosure puts a "black mark" on communities that fail to protect their residents’ health.
The good news is that other Republican representatives rose up and stopped the proposal in its tracks. New York Congressman Sherwood Boehlert called a spade a spade by saying the proposal was nothing but an attempt to "undermine and delay efforts to clean our nation’s air." REP America blew the whistle on the two Georgia Republicans and said, very publicly… Bravo for Congressman Boehlert!
A similar effort last year by the Army Corps of Engineers would have changed the definition of "fill" to include wastes from mountaintop-removal mining, which you probably know is the process of shearing off the top of a hill or mountain so miners can get to the coal underneath. Were that proposal to be implemented, the redefined "fill" could then be dumped, legally I’m told, into our nation’s waterways.
That effort was opposed in the House by a stone wall of "Green Republicans," led by REP member Congressman Christopher Shays of Connecticut. Shays said, "We are not going to stand by and let this happen. If we allow it to happen, we are negating our environmental laws." REP cheered… Bravo for Congressman Shays!
And increasingly, around the country, other REP members are raising their voices on behalf of sound environmental protection legislation, in opposition to bad bills and in support of the Precautionary Principle of trying to prevent future environmental degradation before it starts. And it’s that topic that I would like to spend the rest of my time on today.
I’m no expert on this subject, as I’ve already said. But I’ve done my share of reading about it for some time now, and I’ve come to believe that the Precautionary Principle is one of the soundest and most truly conservative concepts being put forward today. I believe it’s one that our elected officials--of both parties--ought to take to heart. And I’m not alone among Republicans who advocate it, as I’ll show in a few minutes.
The Precautionary Principle is being promoted to address-- and try to ward off in advance --a variety of looming health and environmental problems, including cancers caused by persistent bioaccumulative toxins, harm to both humans and wildlife from the genetic modification of crops, and global climate change… to name just three issues. And in dealing with all of these problems, it seems to me that precaution would be the most truly conservative position for this country to adopt.
If America’s political, civic and corporate leaders could ever get past the "yes-but" mentality and adopt the Precautionary Principle in both our legislative and private-sector endeavors, we could immediately stop wrangling over whether Global Climate Change is or is not an empty theory. We could stop quarrelling about how many scientists agree that it’s happening versus those who say it’s a myth. And we could probably lay to rest all the other red herrings that skeptics offer up as excuses for inaction.
If we were to accept the Precautionary Principle, we might finally begin taking seriously the very real likelihood that human action is, in fact, causing our planet to heat up. And we’d acknowledge that coastal flooding, catastrophic weather changes, tropical disease outbreaks in temperate regions, extinction of species, and other environmental disasters are very real threats. And at that point, we might finally begin to acknowledge that boundless material wealth and creature comforts today simply aren't worth the risk to future generations. The European community is already moving in that direction. I think it’s time that the United States of America did so, too.
Okay, those are just my personal feelings. You and the rest of the world can take them or leave them, as you choose. But remember… I mentioned a few minutes ago that other Republicans --not only the rank-and-file like me, but noted political and philosophical leaders as well--are beginning to express similar thoughts.
I’m going to refer to a few back issues of REP's newsletter--The Green Elephant--to show why I believe that the Precautionary Principle is the basis for a truly conservative philosophy.
In the Fall of 1997, we published an article called "Conservative Principles and the Environment." It was written specifically for The Green Elephant by a REP member, Dr. John Bliese. Dr. Bliese is an associate professor at Texas Tech University, which is not, I dare say, a bastion of wild-eyed liberalism. This is a wonderful article by a thoughtful conservative scholar, and I highly recommend the whole piece to you.
But the section I want to quote comes from the middle of the article. Dr. Bliese writes:
For conservatives, the most important political virtue of all is prudence. And right now we face several environmental problems that call for prudence above all else. In several ways we are performing uncontrolled and irreversible experiments with the entire planet, and the results could be catastrophic. Three problems are particularly daunting: global warming, the rapid extinction of species, and the contamination of the entire globe with persistent chemicals that can disrupt our hormone system. Here I can only deal with one, global warming, as an example, but it is necessary for conservatives to exercise prudence and design appropriate policies to solve all of them.
Dr. Bliese goes on to describe the potentially catastrophic effects of global climate change, and then he adds…
With risks like these, what would the prudent policy be? Surely not to continue on our merry way, waiting to see what happens. By then it will be too late to do anything. The prudent policy would be to reduce our emissions of these greenhouse gases now, so that the rate of climate change will be slowed down close to its natural rate. And that would not be terribly difficult to do. We use fossil fuels so very inefficiently that we could cut our greenhouse gases drastically without affecting our standard of living. Adopting energy efficiency measures would not only reduce global warming, it would save money to spend on better things than wasted fuel.
To me, that is as good a statement of a truly conservative position on global warming as one could ever hope to find. Unless maybe it’s one from Dr. Bliese’s fine new book, The Greening of Conservative America (Westview Press, Boulder, CO; 2001).
OK, so that’s the thinking of one conservative scholar and REP member in Texas. Is he the only one? No, of course not!
Back in the Winter and Spring of 1998, we printed in The Green Elephant a two-part composite of several speeches that had been given by another REP member, Gordon Durnil. Mr. Durnil is a former 8-year chairman of the Indiana Republican Party and a long-time friend of former Vice President Dan Quayle. Again, I’m not talking about some wild-eyed liberal! Mr. Durnil served with distinction in the administration of George Bush Senior. He was chairman of the International Joint Commission, which regulates the waterways that flow between the United States and Canada. He’s also the author of a book entitled The Making of a Conservative Environmentalist (Indiana University Press, Bloomington; 1995), which I highly recommend to you.
One of the paragraphs that Mr. Durnil wrote in a speech that we quoted seems to agree with the Precautionary Principle, although, like John Bliese, he doesn’t call it that. After discussing the problem of toxic chemicals in our air and water, Gordon Durnil asks a couple of questions:
Among several proposals that he offers is the following:
We could deal with the problems of toxins at the front end of their use, instead of all the permitting, regulating and harassing we do now at the tail end of the process. Prevention is a conservative answer to conservative problems.
A reasonable person must ask: why spend huge amounts of money to remediate what we’re still discharging? When it comes to adverse health effects, regulation has been the old-line prescription for achieving environmental protection for our nation, but the patient is still ill. The prescription hasn’t worked. Prevention should be the answer.
And there you have yet another clearly conservative expression of the need to adopt the Precautionary Principle on basic matters of human health.
Well, I could give you quotations on the subject from contemporary conservative thinkers for another hour or so-- including some outstanding things written by my good friend and fellow REP director, Jim DiPeso, who wears two hats as both deputy director and communications director at the Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center in Seattle.
But I suspect that our conference leader would have the hook out for me long before I could read many more quotes to you. So I’ll exercise the Precautionary Principle for myself and end this promptly on an upbeat note.
I said earlier that I’m optimistic for the future of our Republican leadership… and by extension for the overall environmental health of our country.
To show you why, I’ll ask your indulgence for just one more quotation… from somebody who is going to play a major role in pollution prevention efforts for the next four to eight years, and maybe much longer than that, depending on what direction her political career takes her.
I’m talking, of course, about the new EPA Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman. Last fall, while she was "merely" the Governor of New Jersey, Ms. Whitman made the following statement in a speech to the National Academy of Sciences:
Policymakers need to take a precautionary approach to environmental problems… We must acknowledge that uncertainty is inherent in managing natural resources, recognize it is usually easier to prevent environmental damage than to repair it later, and shift the burden of proof away from those advocating protection toward those proposing an action that may be harmful.
To which we at REP -- and probably you folks too -- can only say… Bravo for Christine Todd Whitman!
So, as you head home from this conference, I hope you leave cheered by the knowledge that even within this country’s "conservative party" there seems to be a growing acknowledgement of the need for precaution to stave off even greater environmental problems in the future.
As you grapple with the problems involved in preventing pollution in your own communities, maybe some of the things I’ve said will help you make your case to your own state and local elected officials, to business people and other citizens, and to conservatives and liberals alike.
And if you happen to be dealing with Republicans, I hope you’ll remember to quote Gordon Durnil, that 8-year chairman of the rock-ribbed-conservative Indiana GOP, who wrote: "Prevention is a conservative answer to conservative problems."
Click below to read the articles referred to in this speech:
