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Would the “precautionary principle” have averted this disaster?

It’s now the largest and most devastating oil spill in U.S. history, even bigger than the infamous Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill, caused by an explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig 40 miles south of the Louisiana coastline on April 20, is coating the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the marshlands that are home to hundreds of species of birds and marine life.

Professor Stephen Scharper, associate professor of anthropology at U of T Mississauga and at U of T’s Centre for Environment, provides perspective on the spill and how it might have been averted.

This is a disaster that is having a double negative impact, isn’t it? The fish and wildlife that live in and on the water and wetlands in the Gulf are being devastated and, so are the people who make their living in the Gulf of Mexico fishing industry.

I was just reading about “Ring of Fire”, a radio program hosted by Robert Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio. They are environmental lawyers who are preparing a class action suit now against BP and they said this is the prime harvesting season in Louisiana — 80% of fishing happens between now and September. So, with this oil spill, the Louisiana fishing industry is stalled. The fishermen are going out of business. This is a multibillion dollar industry that goes back generations in that region.

In a column you wrote in the Toronto Star recently, you explored the need for greater adherence to what you call the “precautionary principle” in the case of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and others like it. What is the “precautionary principle”?

Precaution is defined as ‘caution in advance,’ or ‘informed prudence’ or a term that I used in that article, ‘preemptive prudence.’ By using the precautionary principle, you anticipate the harm that may come, based on scientific and other evidence, to the environment and human communities from any kind of activity.

The precautionary principle embodies an expression of the need for decision makers to anticipate harm before it occurs. As I understand it, this notion of precaution was first introduced in environmental activity in Germany in the 1970s. What it says is you don’t need absolute scientific evidence that an activity is going to bring harm, you can have suggestive scientific evidence. Therefore, you enact mitigation prevention and put in safeguards to deal with any possible effects that could occur.

For example, we use the precautionary principle with automobiles. We know that driving a car or truck can be dangerous, so we mitigate through safety features such as seatbelts and airbags.

Finally, the precautionary principle builds a fundamentally different notion of nature and the place of the human in it. The principle realizes that the human, first of all, is not lord and master over nature, that we can’t technologically fix all of our messes, that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the Gulf of Mexico back together again and that we can actually destroy ecosystems and our technology can’t bring them back. So this precautionary principle is building on the dependency the human has on nature, rather than the mastery the human has over nature.

Can you provide an example of how not using the precautionary principle has resulted in environmental damage?

There was the case of rivers that were flooded by Hydro Quebec in the 1970s when dams were being constructed near James Bay.

Hydro Quebec didn’t anticipate that when they flooded that much area and had that much organic material decomposing, in the process the microorganisms that decompose the organic matter would produce mercury as waste matter. This led to incredible rates of mercury poisoning among the Cree people who were eating the fish from these rivers. This had not been foreseen when Hydro Quebec undertook the project.

If Hydro Quebec had have invoked the precautionary principle, various experts could have predicted that this might happen and, thus, precautionary measures would have been taken.

Actually, this principle has been in place in international declarations, including the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Principal 15 of the Rio Declaration states, “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by states according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

It also was adopted by the European Union and in the UN Charter for Nature. Parks Canada has also included the precautionary principle in some of its planning. So it’s becoming more codified in environmental policy making and decision makers at all levels of government are using it increasingly.

And what’s interesting is that it does not demand conclusive scientific evidence. The precaution can be suggestive and not conclusive. In a sense, this reverses a way of thinking that is popular in North America, particularly the United States, where we say, “If it can be done, it should be done. If we can do it technologically, let’s go for it.”

By using the precautionary principle, you are putting the brakes on that kind of thinking.

How does this precautionary principle relate specifically to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?

There is a lot about this oil spill that is disturbing.

It has been revealed that the Mineral Management Service, the group responsible for oversight of drilling in the United States, is also the group responsible for encouraging offshore oil drilling and, indeed, getting the royalties from it. So this group has a conflicting purpose. Thankfully, the Obama administration has just moved that these powers be separated. And the MMS director just resigned. (editor’s note – please see http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/05/28/28greenwire-mms-directors-game-of-telephone-ends-in-firing-61751.html)

The New York Times and other news organizations have written that this group has been compromised. Members of the group who were supposed to do inspections have received various gifts from the oil companies. In some cases, according to the Sacramento Bee, the companies were allowed to write their own inspection certificates and reports.

As for the precautionary principle, it’s becoming clear in this case is that the precautionary principle was not part of the negotiations and this emerged even before the Obama administration, particularly with former Vice President Dick Cheney’s role in the Bush administration. The three groups involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are BP, Trans Ocean, which did the construction and Halliburton, and, of course, Cheney was a major player in Halliburton in the 1990s.

According to Mike Papantonio and Ed Schultz of MSNBC, permits were not even required in building and installing this oil rig and the government oversight was removed. According to Papantonio and Schultz, this kind of rig could not have been built off of European waters because there they require this blowout device to be regulated. Europe also requires an emergency failsafe capping system where if anything goes wrong at the deep level, the oil well is shut down. It’s required in Europe but was waived in the United States. So government regulation and the precautionary principle were both steamrolled in this case.

The second thing here is the chemical being used to disperse the oil that is now in the water and which has moved into the wetlands of Louisiana. The Environmental Protection Agency has finally intervened and said this is a harmful chemical, it’s never been used at that deep water level, it’s not known what the effects are, so stop using it. I read in the New York Times that BP has said no, they still want to use it. So now they’re in a negotiation.

So who has the right to protect the common good? This is a question that this particular spill is raising.

The outrage from the public and the media attention over this spill both seem to be greater than I remember with the Exxon Valdez disaster off the coast of Alaska in 1989. What do you think?

Part of the reaction is that this spill is affecting a huge swath of the American population and potentially other countries, such as Cuba and other countries in the Caribbean and it could go up the U.S. east coast. The Exxon Valdez was a huge spill that caused massive damage to the ecology and environment, but it was spilling onto an area that was largely not inhabited by people.

But the Gulf spill is hitting a traditional mainland area that affects millions of people and billions of dollars worth of business in the fishing industry and in related industries, such as tourism. So it brings into the mix what we call “social ecology.” “Deep ecology” celebrates wilderness and the intrinsic value of nature. “Social ecology,” on the other hand, looks at how environmental spills affect people and social communities. What’s interesting with this spill is that it blends concerns from social ecology with deep ecology. And that’s probably another reason that it is getting so much media attention.

There are about 3,000 oil rigs in the Gulf right now. You have oil rigs in Europe with more restrictions than exists in the U.S. But they are still making money. I’ve read that BP made $4 billion last year. So they’re not hurting. But what this says is just as we need a permit to change our driveways, oil companies need to go through a more stringent permit process to punch a hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Actually, Shell called for a universal standard that all companies have to adhere to a few years ago. And that’s what we need. You make it a universal regulation that all have to have this blowout device, all have to have the failsafe choke mechanism, as certain parts of Europe require. According to Mike Papantonio, this blowout device costs only $500,000. Not a big expense for BP and not a big expense when you think of the billions of dollars of damage that is being done.

Will this be a watershed? Will this disaster actually, in time, change things for the better?

It’s too early to tell. Some people will continue to see these spills as necessary evils in the quest to not have to depend on foreign oil in North America. It’s going to be a big power play that way and the media will play an important role on both sides.

What might turn people around however is the fragility of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.

The Globe and Mail’s Alanna Mitchell has written that through the increased carbon we create, the oceans are becoming acidic and making it more difficult for coral reefs and major microorganisms and plankton to breed.

She says that in the Gulf, there is a huge dead zone caused by the fertilizer run-off that comes through the Mississippi Delta. It’s huge and the fish have been avoiding it. With this oil spill, she says, the fish are trapped between a fertilizer cesspool and a murky oil deathbed. So the fish are trying to navigate between these two colossal deathtraps.

This kind of data and realization might result in a watershed moment where people realize that these are compromised oceans already. Still, Obama has authorized it all the way up the coast to Delaware and off the Alaskan shore. Even after the Gulf spill the government has granted permits to drillers. That is wrong. It’s ludicrous. I am heartened to hear that President Obama has admitted his error in part and has now called for a six-month moratorium on coastal drilling.

This is where we have to put pressure on decision makers. In Canada, it’s potentially the same situation with the offshore oil rigs near Newfoundland and proposals for drilling in the Beaufort Sea. This could happen here very easily if we do not demand stringent precautionary measures.

Stephen Scharper, who is also cross-appointed to U of T’s Centre for the Study of Religion, focuses his research and teaching in the areas of environmental ethics, religious ethics and ecology, ecological values and world views, and the ethics of violence and nonviolence. He is the author of Redeeming the Time: A Political Theology of the Environment and co-author with his wife, Hilary Cunningham, a social-cultural anthropologist, of The Green Bible. He is also columnist for the Toronto Star.

Tags: Behind the Headlines, Stephen Scharper