Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- As a member of the president’s
Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies,
whose report was released this week, I was struck by some close
connections between debates over national security and debates
over environmental protection. In both contexts, many people
favor the Precautionary Principle, which can lead in unfortunate
directions.
In environmental policy, the Precautionary Principle means
we should take aggressive action to avoid risks, even if we
don’t know that those risks will come to fruition. If the
problem involves genetic modification of food or nuclear power,
we should welcome precautions against potentially serious
hazards, simply because it is prudent to be precautionary, and
better to be safe than sorry.
