26 August 2010

Should fat kids ride bikes without helmets?

What do fat kids, bikes and helmets have to do with the precautionary principle you may ask?

Before the early 1990's. bike riding was a carefree wind in the hair kind of fun thing to do.  The only people who wore helmets were serious Tour de France types.  Kids grabbed a bike and headed off bare headed.  Around the world, and particularly in Australia, the regulating types put an end to this by making everyone wear helmets, because people could be killed while riding bikes, and the helmets would save them.

While admirable from a saving people from themselves point of view, the fact that bike riding went from being a generally safe method of getting over to a mate's place to a dangerous activity where protective equipment was so necessary the government fined you if you didn't obey.

This is where the precautionary principle cuts in.  The prudent thing to do was not to let kids ride bikes as it was now dangerous, and the safer thing to do was to run them everywhere in the family car.  Bike seats turned into back seats; aerobic exercise morphed into air conditioning, dérailleurs were derailed.  Everyone was much safer inside mum's taxi.  The helmet precaution not only saved kids in bike accidents; it saved kids from bike accidents because they left the bikes behind.

Everyone was safe and happy.  And getting fat.  The lack of exercise led to obesity, the danger of the bike smash was swapped for the slurpee.  And isn't everyone saying obesity is the killer.

So roughly we can see how the well intentioned application of the precautionary principle to protect the heads of bike riders has led to a possibly greater danger to their hearts in the form of obesity.

Sometimes it's nice the feel the wind in your hair.

Where did it all start

The precautionary principle is not necessarily a 20th century construct.  The medical profession's dogma "First do no harm" and the saying "a stitch in time saves nine" both invoke the elements of the precautionary principle.


The World Charter for Nature (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 37/7, of 28 October 1982) was the first international endorsement of the precautionary principle, as Principle 11: "Activities which might have an impact on nature shall be controlled, and the best available technologies that minimize significant risks to nature or other adverse effects shall be used". By the late 1980's the principle was being incorporated into European environmental statements. (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Precautionary_principle)



The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, having met at Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992 issued the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.  There were 27 Principles enunciated in the declaration, and Principle 15 was:

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.
http://www.unep.org/Documents.multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=78&ArticleID=1163

The interesting thing that the principle morphed into an "approach" and the words "cost effective" were included.

08 August 2010

The Precautionary Principle Defined

The Hon. Justice Paul L Stein AM, Judge, NSW Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of New South Wales, Sydney in his paper "Are Decision-makers Too Cautious With The Precautionary Principle?" gave this definition

The Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment (the IGAE) endorses the precautionary principle in the following terms:


Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation. In the application of the precautionary principle, public and private decisions should be guided by:
(i) careful evaluation to avoid, wherever practicable, serious or irreversible damage to the environment; and
(ii) an assessment of the risk-weighted consequences of various options