The Cato Review of Business & Government
The Cato Review of Business & Government
Science & Environmental Policy Project
Much like the weather, everyone talks about risk assessment but nobody does anything about it. Usually, when the scientific evidence is uncertain, risk-averse bureaucratic organizations prepare for the worst case, however improbable it may be. Urged on by environmental activists and encouraged by media support, they fall back on this precautionary principle: "Even if the risk of damage is minute, adopt the most drastic measures available!" The Delaney Amendment, the Superfund legislation, and the air toxics provision of the Clean Air Act are all examples of the mentality that one molecule can kill.
In their futile and ultimately counterproductive search for zero risk, those zealots abhor cost-benefit analyses and thereby waste precious resources on phantom risks while real risks go unaddressed. They ignore comparative analysis of the many risks to health, safety, and general well-being. Senator Bennett Johnston (D-La.) and Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.) have sponsored amendments that would require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conduct such quantitative assessments for all proposed regulations-much to the chagrin of the bureaucrats who hate to have to justify their actions. Aside from that, such a comparison process would be understandably difficult for governmental agencies and subagencies that are organized one-dimensionally along specialized mission lines. As a result, resources, always limited, are wasted and pressing needs are not met.
What has happened in the last decade illustrates perfectly Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's (D-NY) pronouncement that "environmental decisions have been based more on feelings than on facts…. Environmental legislation created over the last 20 years has typically forbidden any analysis of cost or has demonstrated no concern for it."
The failure of the current system of environmental risk management is exposed most clearly if the underlying science changes-as it often does when new data come forward from the laboratory or from observations in nature. Can the policy change and does the policy change to accommodate the new facts? Not surprisingly, the general answer is "no." Once established-and particularly if enshrined by international agreements-policies are set in concrete. The science may even reverse, and still nothing about the policy will change.
In a sense, this is not surprising. Legislators and bureaucrats, mostly lawyers, don't like the fact that science can change; in any case, they don't like to admit to having made a mistake. In addition, each piece of legislation and regulation creates powerful constituencies through expanded bureaucracies in federal and state governments and within the business community.
Every major company now has a department of environmental affairs, headed by a vice president hoping to become a senior vice president as his empire grows in size. Large companies benefit from excessive regulation-provided they can pass on the additional costs in the price of the product-because it keeps out competition from smaller firms. The consumer, unfortunately, loses out through higher prices due to increased costs and reduced competition.
A current example of the interaction between science and environmental policy is the relation between chemicals that allegedly deplete the ozone layer, and skin cancer. It has been suspected since 1974 that CFCs could diminish the thickness of the stratospheric ozone layer. As the theory was refined, the calculated effect grew smaller and smaller. In spite of great pressure from environmental groups, there was little or no action by government, since there were no observations to confirm the theory.
All this changed around 1985 with the discovery of the Antarctic ozone "hole"-a temporary thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer that takes place each October. The hole began to develop in the late 1970s and was not predicted by the theory. Even though many feared that the hole might grow, it was soon realized that it would stabilize and be controlled by climatic factors rather than by the amount of chlorine in the stratosphere.
By 1987, momentum had built up for controlling CFC emissions on a worldwide basis, leading to the Montreal Protocol to freeze production. It is noteworthy that in 1987 the scientific evidence presented in published, peer-reviewed research showed that natural sources, and not CFCs, dominated the amount of stratospheric chlorine. Nevertheless, the proponents of CFC control grasped at other published research, less well-founded, that showed the contrary. With the help of a good deal of hype about the ozone hole, and with an EPA "estimate" of 200,000 additional skin-cancer deaths by the year 2050, the Montreal Protocol was adopted.
The Protocol provided for periodic scientific reviews to allow for tightening CFC production limits. That gave rise to periodic pronouncements, made in press conferences, that ozone was depleting globally, and that the depletion was "worse than expected." The media were generally too uncritical to follow the obvious logic in interpreting this statement. "Expectations" can only be based on theory; therefore either the theory is wrong, or the observations are wrong, or they are both wrong.
Escalating the drum beat for CFC phaseout were stories about blind sheep and blind rabbits in Chile, plankton disappearance in the Antarctic, increases in cataracts, and damage to the immune system with the unspoken suggestion of an AIDS epidemic. All of those stories proved to be baseless. The most recent example of this genre is the claimed worldwide disappearance of some species of frogs and toads, which was blamed on an increase in ultraviolet radiation due to depletion of the ozone layer.
In February 1992, again at a press conference and before the completion of their experimental program, NASA scientists announced findings which they said could lead to an Arctic ozone hole. At that time they knew - or should have known - that such a hole would not develop in 1992. Nevertheless, the media, with some help from then-Senator Albert Gore (D-Tenn.), trumpeted the "ozone hole over Kennebunkport;" within a few days President George Bush advanced the phaseout date of CFCs from the year 2000 to the end of 1995.
The problem, again, was that the science did not support any of those fears. Two further examples should suffice:
In November 1993, Science magazine carried an account of UV increases over Toronto, quoting rates of rise as high as 35 percent per year since 1989! Those results have proven to be entirely spurious, as the authors admitted in an interview reported in the March 7 Washington Post. Science will soon publish a technical comment that points to errors in the statistical analysis of the Toronto data. In spite of obvious shortcomings, the Toronto results were endorsed by Professor Sherwood Rowland, the coauthor of the CFC-ozone theory, and were also used to support the hypothesis that ozone depletion was the cause of an observed decline in the world's frog population.
In the July 1993 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Richard Setlow and colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory published studies on the induction of melanoma skin cancer, demonstrating that the wavelength region responsible is UV-A (320 nanometers and greater), rather than UV-B (280-320 nm), the region subject to absorption by ozone. If Setlow's results are confirmed, then changes in the ozone layer are not a factor in the occurrence of melanoma, and the EPA estimates of skin cancer deaths become invalid. That would undercut the major human health argument for the phaseout of CFCs. What can we learn from the CFC experience? First of all, that science is easily distorted, even subverted, and often just ignored by those advancing a political agenda. Next, policies once established tend to become inflexible and immune to change-even if the underlying science changes and the rationale for the policy disappears. There is little chance, for example, that the present CFC phaseout policy will be modified or even delayed on the basis of the new results mentioned above. To the contrary, the EPA has just added methyl bromide and other useful chemicals to the proscribed list.
And finally, even high-cost policies survive, especially when they benefit a few, because the public does not associate the increased cost of living, of food and other necessities, with a particular policy or regulation.
In this respect, however, the CFC phaseout policy may prove an exception. As early as the summer of 1994, and certainly further down the road, motorists will be shelling out $500 to $1,000 to repair or replace their car air conditioners. The cost of this particular policy then will become quite apparent and may well lead to a popular revolt that could do much more than change the CFC policy. As Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund put it in a recent ABC News Nightline program: "If [skeptical scientists] can get the public to believe that ozone wasn't worth acting on, that they were led in the wrong direction…, then there is no reason for the public to believe anything about any environmental issue." Quite true.
Regulation is published four times a year by the Cato Institute. Editorial and business offices are located at 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20001. For subscription information, please write to Circulation Department, Cato Institute, same address, or call (202) 842-0200.
| Regulation | Home | Order Regulation | Publications | Search |