I visited my Libertarian cousin this summer and the talk turned to the Precautionary Principle--the idea that we ought to err on the side of caution in our dealings with the planet. We shouldn't, for instance, let a species go extinct if we don't know what the consequences of that extinction will be. And we shouldn't let new, never-before-seen-on-the-planet chemicals into our food and water and lives until and unless we have good evidence that they won't cause significant harm.
We can never achieve omniscience, so there are plenty of things we ought to be cautious about.
The Precautionary Principle is a good, conservative principle. It says we should tend to stick with what works and not implement radical changes. If Marxist socialism is a pig in a poke that any good conservative resists implementing, so too is putting new plastics into the market (and eventually into ecosystems) with no thought of consequences. A good Conservative should be against both, right?
I thought my conservative cousin would embrace the Precautionary Principle, especially since he worked his whole life in the environmental field. But no....
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