afterword

 

 

 

 

In January 1998, I was invited to join an international group of scientists, lawyers, farmers, government officials, physicians, urban planners, environmental thinkers, and others for a conference on the Precautionary Principle, the subject of Living Downstream’s final chapter. Snow-bound in the elegant confines of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wingspread house in Racine, Wisconsin, we discussed what the principle really means and how its ideals might be realized.

The text of our consensus statement has gone on to have a life of its own—reprinted and referenced as an authoritative description of a promising new standard of ethical decision making.

As a witness to history in the making, I’d like to say I played a role in the crafting of this now-famous statement. In truth, I was newly pregnant with my daughter, Faith, and spent most of that weekend in the bathroom. And yet, however scant my contribution to the various drafts of our collective credo, I was, nevertheless, living its purpose. My body was busy creating new life out of molecules of air, food, and water streaming in from my environment. It was equally preoccupied with the task of turning itself into a habitable environment for a burrowing ball of cells who shared half my chromosomes, whose epigenetic programming was under way, whose developmental journey was already headed down hormone-blazed trails. (And who now sits on the couch in the next room, reading long and complicated novels while twirling her hair into coily knots.) If anyone needed the protection of environmental precaution that weekend, it was the both of us.

Now that I’m the mother of two school-aged children, the Precautionary Principle is the precept that guides my decision making on a daily—sometimes hourly—basis. As it does almost every parent I know. Earlier this evening, I denied my seven-year-old’s request for permission to ride his bike around the neighborhood. I almost said yes, but then I remembered that the church at the end of our block holds its weekly youth meeting on Mondays. I don’t require proof that my son will suffer bodily harm if he shares the roadway with cars piloted by teenagers late to Bible study. I just require knowledge of an inherently dangerous situation. Inherently dangerous is my trigger for action. It was precaution that made me say, “Wait for an hour. Then you can go.”

 

There are, in fact, two churches with active youth groups, one at each end of my street. There is also an art conservatory around the corner where my children take piano lessons. There is a weekly farmers’ market by the post office, a public bus service, a library with a marvelous summer reading program, walkable sidewalks to get there, and, just beyond the village limits, a swimmable lake with a waterfall and a seriously fast sledding hill. A lot of people love this community.

There is also talk of an incinerator siting north of town. There is a gas station going in near the grade school. There is a coal-burning power plant on the lake’s opposite shore that is one of the state’s dirtiest. There are lawn chemicals and bad air days. There are fields of corn planted year after year on the erodable hills above the public drinking water wells.

Because there are skill sets I don’t want my children to have to learn—how to schedule cancer check-ups in between college exams is one—I am determined to see the Precautionary Principle implemented in the public sphere as a tool of environmental decision making, and not just within my own household. With an emphasis on better safe than sorry, the Precautionary Principle does not tell us what we should do, but it does serve as a starting point for imagining a future where nontoxic alternatives to inherently dangerous practices are embraced as the commonsense solution. For this reason, I include the entire text of our 1998 statement here. The list of resources that follow may offer further inspiration.

And inspiration is what’s required. Now that my children are old enough to ask me what it is I do exactly in my professional life and why, and what they should do with their lives and why, I tell them this: I believe we are musicians in human orchestra. It is time now to play the Save the World Symphony. It is a vast orchestral piece, and you are but one musician. You are not required to play a solo. But you are required to figure out what instrument you hold and play it as well as you can.

In the end, the environment is not just something else to worry about. It is connected to all the things we already worry about—our children, our health, our homeland—and love with all our hearts.

Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle

The release and use of toxic substances, the exploitation of resources, and physical alterations of the environment have had substantial unintended consequences affecting human health and the environment. Some of these concerns are high rates of learning deficiencies, asthma, cancer, birth defects and species extinctions, along with global climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion and global worldwide contamination with toxic substances and nuclear material.

We believe existing environmental regulations and other decisions, particularly those based on risk assessment, have failed to adequately protect human health and the environment—the larger system of which humans are but a part.

We believe there is compelling evidence that damage to humans and the worldwide environment is of such magnitude and seriousness that new principles for conducting human activities are necessary.

While we realize that human activities may involve hazards, people must proceed more carefully than has been the case in recent history. Corporations, government entities, organizations, communities, scientists, and other individuals must adopt a precautionary approach to all human endeavors.

Therefore, it is necessary to implement the Precautionary Principle: When an activity raises threat of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context, the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.

The process of applying the Precautionary Principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action.