A Better World is Possible-- Precautionary Action to Take Back America from the Dinosaurs

A Better World is Possible--

Precautionary Action to Take Back America from

the Dinosaurs

Yes, a better world really is possible.

And the people who are making it happen are here in this room today.

What's it going to take to win?

5 Steps to success

1. Know why we're doing what we're doing

2. Understand our adversaries

and undermine theirbase of support

3. Rebuild the economy on a sustainable basis, creating millions of "green collar" jobs

4. To accomplish this, we can continue to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-ethnic, movement for change

5. But to succeed, wewill need to make decisionsin a new way:

Precautionary Action

Point #1:

Let's be clearwhy we are doing this work

We should all have a little rap explaining to our brother-in-law, our pastor, our co-worker...

** what's wrong

** why it matters

** what needs to be done about it.

So here’s my rap

Cancers are increasingin children

Among adults, one out of every 2 men and 4 out every 10 women will get cancer some time during their lives

50% of men will get cancer sometime during their lives, and 40% of women

There is an asthma epidemicamong our children

There is an epidemic of attention deficits and hyperactivity amongour children

There is an epidemicof diabetes in the U.S,especially among young people

Global warming is upon us, creating more, and more intense,hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and floods

Family farms have been destroyed, replaced by corporate agriculture

Wages have stagnatedsince 1970

The gap between the super-rich and everyone else has grown enormously in the last 30 years, and this has damaged our democracy.

Money talks and money votes.

The U.S. today is controlled by Big Money

Two percent of Americans own 50% of everything.

These are the "corporate elite."

In 2004, Congress and the President spent a total of $3.9 billion getting elected.

You don't raise that kind of money from bake sales. The corporate elite provides the bulk of those funds.

There are 535 legislators in Washington, but there are 35,000 lobbyists

That’s 65 lobbyists for every member of Congress

Lobbyists use every trick in the book, including legal bribery (campaign contributions) to buy votes.

And they succeed.

The corporate elite and their lobbyists decide the Big Questions, such as

** What kind of public education system will we have?

** What topics are suitable for public debate?

The corporate elite decide

** Will we have war or peace?

** Will we move to renewable energy?

** Who can run for office?

Point #2:

We need to undermine their base of support

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with being wealthy. Most of us would love to be wealthy.

But in a democracy, wealth is not supposed to translate directly into political power.

It’s supposed to be

one person, one vote

NOT one dollar, one vote

We need to ELIMINATEprivate money fromour elections

This would give ordinary people a fair chance of getting electedand it would ELIMINATE the money power of the lobbyists in Washington

This is the reform thatwould make all otherreforms possible

Point #3:Rebuild the economy

The world is awash in good new ideas

** green chemistry** green building** new urban designs and re-designs** new forms of transportation** renewable energy** new kinds of sustainable production

** cradle-to-cradle design

** zero waste manufacturing

Many of these advances promise to create large numbers of jobs, rebuilding the decaying infrastructure of the nation (bridges, water supply systems, air traffic control, electrical grids, power plants, production systems and so on).

Making our cities energy-efficient and developing new, green technologies could make Americaa world industrial leaderagain

But we can't get to those good new ideas without major investment by the public sector

Public investment has always been the basis of innovation and progress in the U.S.

** railroads

** airlines

** the petroleum-based economy

** the interstate highway system (and state roads)

** microprocessors

** the internet

** pharmaceutical products

** most medical advances

All results of public investment

What is standing in the way?

Dinosaur corporations, profiting handsomely from old, wasteful and destructive ways of doing business

** coal** mining** oil** nuclear power** petro-chemicals** pharmaceuticals

More dinosaurs…

** automobile companies** corporate agriculture** the garbage industry

These industries are committed to an old formula for succeeding in business, which worked for a long time:

haste + waste = profit

It is the commitment to wasteful ways that gives us long-lived radioactive residues, sewage sludge dumped onto farmland, and incinerators that, once built, must be fed waste for 50 years.

And it is these same industries that are standing in the way,preventing the world from entering the new age of sustainable production.

And this is why local work against waste is crucially important – these dinosaurs must be exposed and opposed so that the new world of sustainable production can be born

So long as cheap, dirty waste disposal is available, the new technologies will remain on the shelf

Cheap waste disposal is a taxpayer subsidy that allows dirty, harmful, dinosaur industries to survive.

Landfills, incinerators, sewage sludge put on the land, radioactive wasteput into landfills or put into the recycling stream -- these are all part of the same problem

Point #4: We need to continue to build a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-issue movement for change

Some of our friends seem to have forgotten the basic truth about social change:

Social change always requires a FIGHT for JUSTICE.

As Frederick Douglass told us...

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

And he told us

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess tofavor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning."

Recall how progress has occurred in the past:

** The movement to abolish slavery

** The movement to gain the right to vote for women

** The movement to gain equal pay for equal work

** The movement for the eight-hour work day, the 5-day work week, the right to form and join a union

** The movement to end child labor

** The movement to eliminate Jim Crow laws

** The movement to end the war in Vietnam

All required a fight for justice

The Modern Phase of the Fight

** The movement to protect people against chemical trespass

** …is a movement to understand and eliminate white privilege, and class privilege, to assure environmental justice for all

** … is a movement to control excessive corporate power

** … is a movement to rebuild the U.S. economy on the basis ofsustainable production, green jobs, independent family farms, using renewable sources of energy

** … is a movement to achieve zero waste

** … is a movement to make sure people have a say in the decisions that affect their lives, restoring democracy

... is a movement to takeprecautionary action

Point #5:

None of this will work if we don’t begin to make decisions in a new way:

Precautionary Action

How does Precautionary Actiondiffer from the present system?

The present way of doing business

1. Requires definite proof of harm for each hazard before taking preventive action

2. Places the burden on the public (or government agencies) to showthat each chemical, material, or technology is harmful

3. Does not consider potential health and environmental impacts whendesigning new materials and technologies

4. Discourages public participation in decision-making about controlof hazards and introduction of new technologies

Let's run through that again, so we know what we're up against:

Under the present way of doing business:

1. Anyone is free to introduce a new hazard into the environment

2. Governments must wait until an overwhelming body of evidence isaccumulated before they can or will intervene

3. Each new regulatory action is challenged by the dinosaur polluters, for the purpose of slowing down or stopping public oversight of production anddistribution of technologies and chemicals and wastes

4. We have witnessed delays in regulating a long list of hazards whose risks were clear long before effective action was taken to control them: many pesticides, toxic lead, asbestos, benzene, dioxins, PCBs, the chemicals that make plastic soft (phthalates), many flame retarding chemicals, the list goes on...

The four main ideas in the Precautionary Principle:

1. Taking preventive action in the face of uncertainty

2. Shifting the burden of proof to the proponents of an activity

3. Exploring a wide range of alternatives to possibly harmful actions

4. Increasing public participation in decision-making.

You may hear that the precautionary principle is vague, that there are many ways to define it. This not true.

In EVERY definition of the precautionary principle, there are three common elements:

1. When we have reasonable suspicion that harm is occurring or may occur

2. and we have scientific uncertainty

3. then we all have a duty to act to prevent harm.

The precautionary principledoes not tell us what actionto take

But advocates for the principle have suggested the following...

Eight kinds of precautionary action we can take

1. Set goals (dream, then plan)

2. Monitor (pay attention -- no sleep-walking)

3. Heed early warnings (be prepared to act on results of monitoring)

4. Consider all the evidence (no cherry-picking data, no ignoringinconvenient facts)

5. Engage the affected people in decisions; really engage them

6. Evaluate all reasonable alternatives and choose the best alternative for achieving the goal

7. Give the benefit of the doubt to nature and to public health (reverse the burden of proof). It is not up to the public to prove harm.

8. Monitor (pay attention – no sleep-walking).

Put simply, the precautionary principle seeks to avoid unintended consequences of particular actions.

Precaution is not anti-science.

Rather than "overriding" science and data, this principle explicitlyacknowledges the central role of scientific data in decision-making.

We all use this principle every day in our own lives.

For instance, we may grow our own food, or buy organically grown food, because of the risk from pesticides.

Even though we don't know everything there is to know about pesticides and our health, we take precautionary action (grow or buy organically grown food) to avoid unintended consequences (getting cancer or other diseases).

Where did the precautionary principle come from?

Precaution grew out of grass-roots activists identifying problems --chemical dumps and Superfund sites, polluted wells, polluted rivers,fish too toxic to eat, leaking landfills, radioactive waste, pesticide poisonings, sludge dumped on land, toxic dumps placed in poor communities and communities of color

Precaution came from activists opposing risk-based decisions.

Risk assessment asks, How much harm is acceptable?

Precautionary action asks, How much harm is avoidable?

Precaution developed in response to big mistakes of the past -- lead in gasoline and in paint; pesticides; destruction of the ozone layer, global warming...

We are wrecking the planet as a plane suitable for humans and we must make decisions in a new way

Precaution comes directly from the central principle of public health: primary prevention

Precaution derives from the guiding principle of clinical medicine: first do no harm

Precaution comes from the German vorsorgeprinzip: the principle offoresight or forecaring

The European Union adopted the precautionary principle in its founding document (The Maastricht Treaty of 1990)

Precaution comes directly from your grandmother:

** look before you leap

** better safe than sorry

** a stitch in time saves nine

How is theprecautionary principlebeing used?

Many cities and a few states now take a precautionary approach to pest management in schools, playgrounds, parks, and public buildings. They have passed laws and regulations specifying that chemicals will be used only as a last resort, after all other alternatives have been tried.

Many cities in Canada have passed ordinances prohibitingthe use of pesticides on lawns for cosmetic purposes.

The Supreme Court of Hawaii has ruled that the state must manageHawaii's water resources using the precautionary principle, aiming toavoid harm to the resource, which the state holds in trust for presentand future generations of Hawaiians.

Many nations (and a few states in the U.S.) have adopted aprecautionary approach to the management of fisheries, to avoid harm from overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution.

The City and County of San Francisco have adopted precaution as overarching governmental policy, guiding all their decisions

Several towns in rural Pennsylvania have taken a precautionaryapproach to local public health and corporate power: they have passed local laws prohibiting corporationsfrom farming, mining, and putting sewage sludge on land, among other things.

So there you have it:

The precautionary principle is a new way of making decisions for a new time

The old way of doing business has reached a dead end –

People are sick, especially children, and dinosaur technologies are wrecking the planet as a place suitable for humans

Precaution tells us to take action to prevent environmental injustices before they develop, because fixing these problems after they develop is painful and can take several lifetimes

These days, when it sometimes seems as if the future itself is endangered, precaution offers us a way forward.

Precaution offers us hope.