- Beware of projects that risk permanent harm in return for short-term gains. This is the reverse of mainstream economic thinking, which privileges present value over future value.
- Beware of risk assessments. An insurance actuary can accurately estimate the risk of common events, but there is no accurate way to estimate the risk of catastrophic events that rarely happen or haven’t yet happened. It is much safer to weigh what you have to gain against what you have to lose.
- Beware of projects that require waivers of laws. If an environmental law, or a health and safety law, is harmful or unnecessary, it should be repealed, but if it is needful, then there shouldn’t be any exceptions.
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Tags: Environmental Impact, The Unofficial Rules
This entry was posted on February 22, 2013 at 9:10 am and is filed under Public Policy, The Unofficial Rules. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Phil Ebersole's Blog 
February 22, 2013 at 12:06 pm |
I agree… here in Canada the Keystone XL pipeline has become a very polarizing issue – unfortunately the debate comes at a time when much of our environmental assessment framework has been dismantled and the precautionary principle ignored..
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