Latest news with #environmentalism
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Perils of 'The Precautionary Principle' in Environmental Law
Risk management prism - Getty Creative getty In a rare show of unity on May 29, 2025, The U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled 8-0 in favor of limiting the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) The court recognized that despite many noble intentions, the law has been misapplied as an ideological stalling tool against not only resource extraction projects but also renewable energy projects. All court justices appeared to acknowledge that there is a big difference between responsible environmentalism and environmental obstructionism. This case is particularly notable since it involved a fossil fuels pipeline project in Utah and the three liberal justices could have used this as a way to make a statement on the salience of climate change. Yet, all justices rightly recognized that the law has been misapplied, albeit there was a less strident concurrence submitted by the three liberal justices in the case. While at its surface this decision may be about 'process' but there is an underlying realization by the justices that modern environmentalism has become risk averse beyond a 'broad zone of reasonableness.' The court has indirectly taken a swipe at the 'precautionary principle' which emphasizes taking proactive measures to protect the environment in the face of uncertainty. The origins of this principle can be found in the German concept of Vorsorgeprinzip, which by some measures is better translated as the 'foresight principle.' Such a translation suggests a positive anticipatory action rather than a negative status quo decision, but the essential element is social risk aversion in the context of environmental harm. Yet it is important to note that the absence of evidence of harm is not the same thing as evidence of the absence of harm. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio Summit), in 1992, put forward an 'Agenda for the 21st Century' (called Agenda 21) where 'Principle 15,' enshrined this precaution as follows: '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.' Although this principle has normative value as an ethical aspiration, operationalizing it in the context of maintaining social order in a complex environment of competing goals is next to impossible. For example, if we followed this principle to its core, there would be no process of clinical trials for drug development. Nevertheless, the precautionary principle provides an alternative to reactive decision-making, which might cause irreversible harm to Earth's ecosystems and the communities who rely on those natural resources. Ecological concerns such as climate change might also fall into this category. However, communicating risks to the public in such circumstances of fear and activism can lead to 'social amplification' as was argued by geographer Roger Kasperson in his seminal work on this topic. Uncertainty and doubt become a defining excuse for inaction or a 'precautionary pause,' as has been argued in cases for moratoria for various technologies (which I have argued elsewhere need to be considered on a case-by-case basis). Lack of 'enough' data, and hence the need for more research or expertise, has often been used as a stalling tool. Such interventions span the full spectrum of views around our ecological predicament. On the one hand, uncertainty arguments on impacts are used by the fossil fuel industry to perpetuate the status quo around carbon emissions. On the other hand, many environmentalists have used uncertainty about the safety of nuclear technology to call for its phase- out. If we keep unpacking arguments for and against a particular technology, the conversation spirals into a battle of uncertainties. Precaution operates on a spectrum, as with any human endeavor, and the 'precautionary principle' cannot be used as an excuse for indefinite inertia in a world with competing challenges. Caution is in order, but indeterminate precaution is an untenable postulate that can lead to 'paralysis by analysis.' In their landmark book the 1983, Risk and Culture, Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky alerted us to the deceptive objectification of risk. Ultimately, risk in a complex world of competing and intersecting phenomena is a socially constructed phenomenon. Going back to the Bible, they note that the dietary laws of Leviticus may have stemmed from some degree of medical materialism but were ultimately about a cultural delineation of boundaries and the social construction of risk. Another curious insight from Douglas and Wildavsky's work is how 'dirt' is a form of disruption to socially constructed order and, even when it is harmless— or perhaps even helpful in the case of nutrient transfer to arable land— it is deemed impure and repugnant. The authors of this classic collaboration between an anthropologist (Douglas) and a political scientist (Wildavsky) maintained that, strategically, keeping a balance between anticipating harm and trusting resilience is the essence of managing risk. The law of diminishing returns can be applied to this process, whereby each marginal risk prevention effort does not reap concomitant rewards. Douglas and Wildavsky showed that excessive safety targeted at a particular technology like nuclear power implementation could undermine overall systems' safety because alternatives can appear more attractive than they actually are when considering the full scale and scope of return on investment. The economic marginalization of nuclear power is an intriguing case in point. Massive safety upgrade requirements to existing nuclear power plants have rendered them uneconomical, thereby making the climate mitigation targets more challenging to reach in the short- term as other low carbon sources are up- scaled. For functional purposes, a systems science approach is needed to consider the way forward for evaluating risks. For a certain narrow class of outcomes that could lead to system-wide 'ruin,' even in low probabilities, risk analyst Nassem Taleb (author of the bestselling Incerto series of books including The Black Swan) has argued that the precautionary principle can be applied for decisions. However, defining 'ruin' remains subjective as apocalyptic narratives can too easily be used in environmental activism for this purpose in areas like GMOs or nuclear energy. Instead of such subjectivity which would again take us down the paralysis path, what is more appropriate is to have an incrementalist approach to adaptive decision-making that can quickly act on specific contingencies emerging. The Australian researcher Jayden Hayman has suggested such an adaptive management approach to environmental regulatory decisions on controversial developments such as deep-sea mining. Coming back to the implications of the Supreme Court verdict, regulatory agencies will now be able to have more effective rulemaking without the constant shadow of cascading lawsuits that are predicated on a misapplication of the precautionary principle. One of my mentors from graduate school days, law professor Daniel Esty argued for such 'optimal environmental governance' approach to improving regulatory performance in a seminal paper many years back. Indeed, even environmental organizations recognized the challenge of operationalizing precaution, particularly around biodiversity conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognized that inevitably there would be a 'value-based balancing' of tradeoffs involved in operationalizing the precautionary principle. Paradoxically, precaution when applied with specious slippery slope arguments, itself can lead to perilous outcomes for societal innovation and sustainability.
The National
24-05-2025
- General
- The National
From mangroves to markets: 25 years of conservation by Emirates Nature-WWF
As the UAE grapples with climate risks, Emirates Nature-WWF is blending grassroots action with global ambition
Reuters
23-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Extinction Rebellion briefly occupies BNP Paribas entrance in TotalEnergies protest
PARIS, May 23 (Reuters) - About a dozen activists from the Extinction Rebellion climate group briefly occupied the entrance lobby of French bank BNP Paribas' headquarters in Paris on Friday morning in protest of what they said are BNP's links with energy group TotalEnergies, which holds its annual shareholders meeting on Friday afternoon. Environmentalist protesters, some wearing white masks, briefly shouted slogans and threw around fake money before police pushed them out of the building. Extinction Rebellion said in a statement the action was part of a campaign against TotalEnergies and its partners. It said that several NGOs are denouncing TotalEnergies' decision not to put the usual "Say on Climate" questions on its climate strategy to the vote at the shareholders meeting and said this was part of "the fossil fuel industry's unabashed backtracking on its human and environmental commitments." Earlier this year, TotalEnergies said it would not put a vote to investors on its sustainability strategy progress report and only consult shareholders in the event of a strategy change. The company instead will hold a climate debate during the shareholders meeting. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday's action. BNP Paribas said it condemned "the aggressive actions of Extinction Rebellion and all forms of physical violence". It added that BNP Paribas is committed to supporting the energy transition and that any new financing it grants to the energy production sector is almost exclusively reserved for low-carbon energy sources. TotalEnergies' shareholders meeting at its headquarters in the La Defense business district starts at 1400 CET. Extinction Rebellion said that in the afternoon activists will converge on "a symbolic Parisian site" to hold a "Counter-General Energy Assembly," without naming the site.
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
No Straight Road Takes You There by Rebecca Solnit review – an activist's antidote to despair
According to Rebecca Solnit, a lot of us are suffering from something called moral injury. She describes this as the 'deep sense of wrongness' that can infiltrate our lives when we realise we are complicit in something seriously bad. The first time I experienced this in relation to climate change, I was changing my baby's nappy soon after one of the worst Australian wildfire seasons on record in 2020. The nappy featured a smiling cartoon koala on the front. I immediately recalled the scene of a singed, parched koala being fed water from a plastic bottle by a human as it fled the inferno. A disposable nappy takes up to 500 years to decompose. I felt disgust and despair at the degree of consumption, waste and exploitation that even a modest lifestyle in a high-income country seems to entail. From smartphones to food, our daily lives leave a bitter trail of harm. Some become painfully preoccupied with these realisations; others, avoidant and numb – an even more psychologically injurious strategy. I oscillate somewhere between these two positions, which is to say, I am in dire need of some moral first aid. In No Straight Road Takes You There, a constellation of essays with interlinked themes, Solnit provides just that. From a meditation on an antique violin as a symbol of sustainability, to reminding us that radical ideas move from the fringes to the mainstream, this collection of her best work teems with vitality, forming an antidote to political paralysis and despondency. Solnit is a prolific, omnivorous and brilliant writer and this book makes apparent her intellectual wingspan. There is great variety here – one chapter is even titled 'In Praise of the Meander' – but two bright threads run through the whole: the importance of hope, and the power of storytelling. Hope is no casual platitude here. Nor is it merely a more pleasant state of mind than despair. Rather, Solnit sees it as a more accurate mindset, since nobody is an oracle, and history is full of surprises. Uncertainty is the most rational position to embrace, and unlike optimism or pessimism, it does not entrench us in complacency or inaction. Climate doomers are particularly pernicious, Solnit observes, propagating misery and incorrect narratives about how screwed we all are, 'like bringing poison to the potluck'. Above all they are guilty of failing to use their imagination. At heart, Solnit is a storyteller. 'Every crisis,' she writes, 'is in part a storytelling crisis.' The powerful are those who decide which stories are heard and which are silenced. People who tell stories well – like Donald Trump – captivate millions. Citing the non-violent resistance that led to the fall of eastern bloc regimes in the 1970s and 1980s, Solnit sees radical ideas as acorns, campaigns as saplings and the final results – changes in the law, policy, or land ownership – as mighty oaks. 'The most important territory to take is in the imagination. Once you create a new idea of what is possible and acceptable, the seeds are planted; once it becomes what the majority believes, you've created the conditions in which winning happens.' Solnit urges us to imagine a radically different future. She quotes Mary Wollstonecraft's hope in 1792 that the divine right of husbands might be as contested as the divine right of kings, and footnotes this with Ursula Le Guin's hope in 2014 that the seemingly inescapable stranglehold of capitalism will one day yield, just as did the divine right of kings. Solnit herself is strikingly unafraid to wish for more. One of her specific visions is for a world in which people do not rape, not because they fear punishment, but because the very desire to commit rape has withered away. The book's signoff, a 'credo', has something of the sermon to it. In a world where tyranny is on the ascent and shareholder profits are worshipped like the golden calf, this is a comfort. Solnit is like a seasoned boxing coach tending to the spiritually and politically exhausted citizen flopped in the corner. She mops our brows and offers us motivation. 'They want you to feel powerless and to surrender,' she writes. 'You are not giving up, and neither am I … The pain you feel is because of what you love.' Grieve, yes. Scream with fury, sure. But also, keep going. 'There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep on walking whether it's sunny or raining.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain by Rebecca Solnit is published by Granta (£16.99). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Washington Post
21-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Rubio, Van Hollen clash over Trump's foreign policy
RFK Jr. has big plans for your food. Here are the facts. 2 weeks ago
