Worth a read

Rafe Mair asks why the precautionary principle isn't given its due place in environmental management when we recognize its importance elsewhere:

Why do we insist that commercial airlines, big and small, constantly prove the airworthiness and safety of their planes?

Right wing philosophers would argue that companies will always police themselves because it's just good business. But we know that's not true. Left to their own devices, companies will fudge, take just a little bit of a chance, have that pilot fly just an hour or two more.

Airlines don't like the involvement of government, i.e. the public, because it sets standards that, to the industry, seem unreasonably high. But governments, with the public behind them, demand that the "precautionary principle" be adopted and the onus be on airlines to constantly prove their safeness and not on the public to demonstrate the opposite.

That principle must apply to government and industry that use the environment to ply their trade.

Give it a look.