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Environmental Law

Georgetown University Law Center

Series

2007

Precautionary principle

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Climate Change, Human Health, And The Post-Cautionary Principle, Lisa Heinzerling Sep 2007

Climate Change, Human Health, And The Post-Cautionary Principle, Lisa Heinzerling

O'Neill Institute Papers

In this Article, I suggest two different but related ways of reframing the public discourse on climate change. First, I propose that we move further in the direction of characterizing climate change as a public health threat and not only as an environmental threat. Second, I argue that we should stop thinking of responses to climate change in terms of the precautionary principle, which counsels action even in the absence of scientific consensus about a threat. We should speak instead in terms of a ?post-cautionary? principle for a post-cautionary world, in which some very bad effects of climate change are …


Chumming On The Chesapeake Bay And Complexity Theory: Why The Precautionary Principle, Not Cost-Benefit Analysis, Makes More Sense As A Regulatory Approach, Hope M. Babcock Jan 2007

Chumming On The Chesapeake Bay And Complexity Theory: Why The Precautionary Principle, Not Cost-Benefit Analysis, Makes More Sense As A Regulatory Approach, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay ("Bay") and Puget Sound are in grave trouble. They each suffer from poor water quality, loss of habitat, and declining biodiversity, and efforts to restore their health are straining both public and private resources. While accomplishments are often recorded in the fight against these ills, it is clear these accomplishments "are not yet equal to the scale of the problems." The focus of this article is on the nation's largest estuary, the Bay. Despite the investment of billions of dollars to improve water quality, the Bay continues to suffer from severe environmental degradation that impairs …