The Precautionary Principle:
A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment
(Cato Institute, 2001)
BOOK FORUMThursday, October 18, 2001
12:00 p.m.
Featuring Indur Goklany, author of Clearing the Air: The Real Story of the War on Air Pollution.
The Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
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The precautionary principle - the environmental version of the admonition "first, do no harm" - has been invoked by many people to justify policies to control, if not ban, any technology that cannot be proven to cause no harm. In his new book, The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment, Indur Goklany argues that the application of this principle to justify such policies is flawed and counterproductive because it ignores the possible calamities that those very policies might simultaneously create or prolong. Rather than challenge the merit of the precautionary principle, Goklany clarifies and reconstructs it so that it might reasonably inform the environmental debate.