by Jeff Gillman
Rating Policies: The Left and the Right
To quantify the differences between the liberals and the conservatives, we’ve created a rating system. For each policy alternative we put forward, we explain which side is likely to favor or disfavor the policy and why, and then we rate their position. The more stars the policy receives (up to five), the more strongly that alternative is favored by that ideological camp:
Ideal policy
Highly favorable
It’s acceptable
Dislike it
NO
In general, left-wing environmental policies favor strict government regulation of business. This preference is based on the assumption that businesses are only motivated by short-term profits, and will always seek to get out of their civic responsibility to keep the environment clean and its inhabitants (including us) safe if it costs them more money. Businesses cannot be trusted to act responsibly, so government must tell them what to do and how to do it, and must monitor them closely to make sure they comply. Left-wingers are more likely to adhere to the precautionary principle, which states that we should err on the side of protecting the environment even when incontrovertible cause-and-effect evidence that something damages the environment doesn’t exist. They are also more willing to take economically costly actions to restrict potentially harmful practices even if it hasn’t been proven that these practices cause detriment, and despite the economic effects that restricting these practices will have on our American businesses. They tend to favor regulation by the federal government based on the belief that state and local governments don’t have the power or the backbone to take on their own major employers (but they’ll make an exception when state regulations are tougher than federal regulations). While left-wingers favor active government intervention in the economy, they generally believe government should “butt out” of decisions regarding personal freedoms that don’t affect one’s neighbors. They tend to be more tolerant than right-wingers of marijuana use, for example, and less tolerant of homeowners’ associations whose rules promote conformity and property values more than public health and safety.
Right-wing environmental policies tend to favor inaction, especially when it is unclear whether a particular activity causes damage. When they do favor action they tend to trust the businesses or individuals to do the right thing, believing that the same environmental goals can be achieved at less cost if the government stays out of it and allows businesses some flexibility. They prefer cooperative arrangements in which businesses decide for themselves what the most effective and economically efficient methods would be for them to meet environmental goals. Generally, right-wingers prefer state and local government action to federal government action, but they are willing to accept national standards if they are less costly to business than trying to meet the differing requirements imposed by fifty different states. Although right-wingers want government to leave us alone when we act as consumers or business people, they are happy to have government assertively promote “community standards.” In some cases, this is literal, as when a homeowners’ association board imposes their standards on an entire neighborhood. In other cases, community standards are essentially interchangeable with so-called traditional moral values. For example, right-wingers tend to favor the government restricting people’s ability to grow or use marijuana, or have homosexual relationships.
In terms of the costs of protecting and cleaning up the environment, both left-wingers and right-wingers are willing to accept some government incentives. Right-wingers tend to favor tax breaks; left-wingers prefer direct subsidies.
With such different sets of beliefs on environmental issues, Democrats and Republicans just don’t find that much common ground on which to compromise. The sad fact is that rather than addressing our national problems, the goal is often denying the other side any political victory. And even after we get beyond these partisan problems we are still left with the obstacles that the authors of the Constitution purposely put in our way to make policy change difficult: a long legislative process requiring the passage of laws by two chambers representing different constituencies (entire states vs. small districts), the presidential veto, and the courts.
How to Use This Book
Over the next two hundred and fifty pages or so we’re going to take you on a tour of what, exactly, the government has done and could do about our environment. The first chapter lays out the landscape by explaining why and how politicians and other participants in the policy-making process use and misuse scientific information. The ten chapters that follow look at some of the most important issues facing our environment today. Each chapter focuses on a separate issue, setting out the essential scientific information, governmental policies, policy options (with the left-wing and right-wing ratings), and the bottom line (our own analysis). We don’t provide the ultimate answers—we don’t tell you to stop driving cars or to start growing marijuana—but we do evaluate and separate the data, policies, and rhetoric, giving a better, clearer basis for you to decide what the government should do about marijuana, carbon dioxide, biofuels, and everything else that affects this beautiful blue and green sphere on which we live.
CHAPTER 1
Science, Political Science, and
the Science of Politics
AL GORE PROCLAIMS it an “inconvenient truth” that the planet is warming, that humans are causing it, and that the result will cause catastrophic human and environmental suffering. What’s your immediate reaction? Did you say, “Darn right,” or did you roll your eyes and exhale loudly in exasperation?
Sarah Palin counters that global warming is due to “natural, cyclical environmental trends.” What’s your immediate reaction? Did you say, “You betcha” or “Thank God someone has some common sense,” or did you roll your eyes and start to snicker?
For better or worse, this contrast between Al Gore and Sarah Palin illustrates the kind of exposure many Americans have to the science of climate change. All too often, our view of science is obtained through the opinions of partisan politicians or political commentators in the media. Our evaluation of the science and the related policies has little to do, therefore, with the actual science or the actual content of the policies, but a lot to do with whether we like the politics of the person who makes the statement. If we don’t like Democrats generally or Al Gore specifically, global warming must be a big hoax intended to allow big government to gain control over our lives. And the scientists who say it’s real are obviously liberal ivory-tower elitists who have no common sense or clue about how the real world works. If tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, latte-sipping, Volvo-driving yuppies are for it, real Americans must oppose it. And fortunately other real Americans are just like us.
On the flip side, if we don’t like Republicans generally or Sarah Palin specifically, we conclude that global warming skeptics are ignorant or too ideologically rigid to face the facts. And the scientists who are skeptical of global warming have been bought off by the oil companies or other corporations that fund their research. If gun-totin’, Bible thumpin’, pickup drivin’ rednecks are for it, real Americans must oppose it. And fortunately other real Americans are just like us.
As we saw in the introduction, the politics of the environment has become increasingly polarized. It’s not surprising that we rely on our parties and our ideologies to evaluate the merits of public policy. It’s a bit more disturbing that, increasingly, we seem to be incapable of agreeing on the underlying facts and we come to see any science-based assertions made by the other side as a distortion or downright abuse of the scientific process.
These concerns raise the question of how science is used and misused in politics. Throughout this book, we’ll confront some issues (such as global warming) in which discussion of the science has been swept up in the larger, ideological tug-of-war between the parties and their supporters. In other areas (such as alternative energy and biotechnology), however, we’ll see that ideological lines are less clear—or perhaps t
he electoral stakes are lower—so that the science gets greater consideration on its own merits.
Our government implements policies that are, on the surface, based on protecting you, the environment, and your garden. Sometimes these policies are based on good science, and sometimes they aren’t. When you take the time to really look at the various issues, it is easy to find yourself stunned at how casually science is accepted or rejected depending upon the whims of policymakers. Politicians frequently use scientific results out of context or give the results meaning out of proportion to what was intended by the scientists who conducted the research. The media reports any research that it thinks will draw the public eye regardless of its merits, and often scientists themselves are guilty of overinterpreting their own data. All of these factors sway public opinion, which, in turn, alters the actions of those who govern our country.
How Do Policymakers Use Scientific Information?
Political scientist William Browne described politics as “a combination of intellectual argument and emotional hell-raising.” And to most of us, emotional hell-raising does seem to be the dominant method of operation on Capitol Hill, with most decisions apparently resulting from party stances rather than reliable evidence. Politicians tend to cast their votes based on what their constituents care about. Making people happy is what gets them elected, not following good science. Since most politicians generally follow the party line on the most important issues, voters usually know what they are getting when they elect a representative. But for less prominent issues, it’s a bit of a different story.
Most of us are so wrapped up in our pet projects that we don’t know very much about the many issues that our policymakers deal with. What’s more, we probably don’t even care that much about many of them. (Regional dairy compacts, anyone?) It’s probable that the politicians who represent us won’t have a strong ideological or personal preference to guide their decisions regarding these obscure issues, either. This is where members of interest groups who do care and who can effectively communicate their beliefs can have a profound effect. The politician calculates: “If these people can act on this issue now, they might also act based on this issue in the next election and vote for or against me based on what I do. If helping them doesn’t offend any other important group of constituents, it is easier to give them what they want.”
But we don’t want our politicians to just accept what an interest group says. We also want what we think of as intellectual argument to be a substantial part of the decision. We want policies that science has shown to be effective, not just those that are popular with the public or pleasing to a politician’s political allies. We expect public officials to incorporate the results of scientific analyses into their policies. And they do, though there are circumstances under which scientific information is more likely to be incorporated into policy. Unfortunately, there are also incentives for misusing or abusing science in the political process.
MEMBERS of Congress and their staffs operate in a largely oral culture where people are more important than documents. They may not formally use research but they talk to experts and hear about the results of research through testimony at congressional hearings. Politicians like narratives or stories that connect problems, solutions, and real people’s lives. Fitting research into a nice story is important in helping the politician make sense of it and be persuaded by it. It also helps them explain to constituents how and why they voted or took other actions to support or oppose the policy. A marginally talented scientist who can tell a good story about his or her research is much more useful than a brilliant scientist who cannot.
The first hurdle to using scientific research as an aid to policymaking will be immediately obvious if you’ve ever read an article in an academic or professional scientific journal. Scientific publications are nearly (or entirely!) unreadable to nonspecialists because they include so much jargon and so many specialized terms. The incentive for promotion and acclaim in academia—publishing cutting-edge research in specialized professional journals—works against producing research that is accessible to the public and, more importantly, to policymakers. Furthermore, science prizes results that apply across space, time, and conditions. Politicians represent small areas, like states or districts, for a few years. They are more concerned with knowing how policies will affect their constituents now than with understanding the grand, unifying laws of the universe.
Getting to the Truth
The tallest hurdle, however, is that scientific evidence can be contested or modified with future study, and so does not offer the truth. In other words, science doesn’t banish uncertainty. Rather, it often makes us more uncertain and raises more questions. For example, if a study shows us that people who eat organic food are healthier than those who do not, is it because organic food is healthier than conventionally produced food or because health-conscious consumers, who make other healthy lifestyle choices, are more likely to buy it? And even if we can “control” our experiment for the lifestyles of those who are eating organic versus nonorganic food, are the benefits we see the result of reduced pesticide use, organic farmers using different fertilizers than other farmers, or some other factor that we haven’t even thought of? We might also ask whether the researchers measured the health of the people in the study with a reasonable parameter. Should health be measured by visits to the hospital? Cancer rate? Blood pressure?
Despite what people who support one or the other side of a policy usually believe, that policy will, almost invariably, be made without the benefit of indisputable science.
Additionally, studies using different techniques, or carried out under different conditions, produce different results. If dogs treated with a pesticide develop cancer, and mice treated with the same pesticide don’t, then will that pesticide cause cancer in humans? Sometimes the best science we have available just can’t give us the clear picture that we need. Despite what people who support one or the other side of a policy usually believe, that policy will, almost invariably, be made without the benefit of indisputable science.
Environmental science is also one of the most difficult sciences to interpret because it is not a single discipline but rather a conglomeration of many fields, including biology, chemistry, epidemiology, engineering, planning, and economics. Each specialty has its own preferred methods, its own approaches to evaluating evidence and policies, and in many respects, its own worldview. For example, experimental biologists and epidemiologists have approaches that often create very different perspectives on environmental policy. For experimental biologists to conclude that a chemical is toxic to humans they would want to produce evidence from controlled experiments on animals and perhaps human tissues that showed not only that the chemical was toxic, but also what it specifically does to the animal. By contrast, an epidemiologist would examine the amount of chemical in neighborhood water supplies (for example) and correlate it with the number of people in those neighborhoods who were ill. Showing a relationship between the amount of chemical and the amount of illness would be sufficient for them to conclude that the chemical was dangerous. They wouldn’t undertake controlled experiments to discover the mechanism causing the illness before concluding that a public health risk existed. When faced with the choice of how to regulate potentially toxic chemicals, policymakers would be hearing from both the experimental biologists and the epidemiologists, and would have to sort through their potentially different research results, standards of risk, and policy recommendations.
ENVIRONMENTAL policies do not have a jurisdictional home in Congress any more than they have a disciplinary home in academia. Fourteen of twenty-two House committees have some environmental responsibility, along with eleven Senate committees. In addition, there are seventy committees and subcommittees in the House and Senate that deal with some aspect of water policy alone! It is only fair to mention that these committees tend to represent the perspectives (dare we say biases) of the major constituencies they represent. The Agriculture commi
ttees tend to support the interests of farmers and agribusiness and their perspective on tobacco, for instance, while the Health subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee opposes this perspective. The consequence is that many hands are involved in deciding most environmental policy questions; building coalitions across committees with so many conflicting perspectives is often a long and arduous process. Furthermore, representatives who are looking to their colleagues for expert advice, for better or worse, may not get a consistent scientific perspective.
Even when scientists agree on methodology and interpretation of the evidence, they can still disagree on how strong the evidence of harm needs to be to require government action. Should the standard be a “reasonable anticipation of harm” or a “conclusive proof of harm”? For which population should the standard apply—the average member of the public, those most sensitive to potential harm (children, the elderly), or those most likely to be exposed to the chemical (usually those who work with it)? Choosing the lower threshold might mean that the government takes costly action that doesn’t protect human health, because the chemical really wasn’t dangerous at the levels humans are exposed to it. Choosing the higher threshold might mean that people die or are seriously injured because we weren’t sufficiently cautious. Similarly, policymakers need to decide which side bears the burden of proof. Does the government (or the critics of a chemical) have to prove that a specific chemical is unsafe before it bans it, or does the manufacturer have to prove it is safe to keep it from being banned? Science can complicate policymaking by showing the need for additional information, rather than producing quick, straightforward answers to the problem.
