The 'Paralyzing Principle' - WSJ.com

 

Review & Outlook: The 'Paralyzing Principle' - WSJ.com

 

The Gulf oil spill is having all sorts of nasty consequences well beyond damage to the regional environment and economy. Not least, the resulting political panic seems to be rehabilitating the thoroughly discredited theory of regulation known as the precautionary principle.

This principle holds that government should attempt to prevent any risk—regardless of the costs involved, however minor the benefits and even without understanding what those risks really are.

[Obama White House regulatory czar] Cass Sunstein's insight is that there are risks on all sides of a question—doing nothing can be dangerous, but acting might be more dangerous—so the only rational way to judge regulation is to quantify the costs and benefits. If the Food and Drug Administration took a harder line in approving new medicines, it might protect the public from a future thalidomide disaster. But it could also deprive the public of cures for disease or expose it to serious peril, like having no recourse in a pandemic.

In a 2002 book, Mr. Sunstein pointed out that the best way to prevent automobile pollution would be to eliminate the internal combustion engine. Should the EPA ban that too? "If these would be ridiculous conclusions—as I think they would be—it is because the costs of the bans would dwarf the benefits. Pollution prevention is not worthwhile as such; it is worthwhile when it is better, all things considered, than the alternatives."