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> I’m personally in the camp that thinks we should just be doing everything we can to minimise all types of pollution because we just cannot really predict what the effects will be. Even if we think something is benign.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

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Yes, the chemical industry has not stuck to the precautionary principle.

Besides, lots of excellent drugs are used in a trigger-happy way. Take for instance antibiotics, which are one of the greatest achievements of modern science. Lots of children are prescribed antibiotics for mild infections, i.e. when they don't need them, ignoring side-effects. Thankfully, doctors are starting to be a bit more cautious.

This is one of the reasons autoimmunity has skyrocketed during the last 50 years, and quite a few friendly commensal bacteria are nearly extinct. Persistent gut inflammation, below what is considered autoimmunity, is responsible for lots of colon cancer cases in adults. It is all tied.

Blind trust in doctors is such a societal problem.

It doesn't help that the systems we have in place to keep them in check are failing us. In the US doctors can tell their patients that their illnesses are caused by demon sperm and that alien DNA is used to make medical treatments and they will still keep their medical license.

To me, doctors are not as big of a problem as hospitals. In my area, nearly all doctors are now hospital employees. Doctors don't have the independence they used to have with their own practice: as employees, they have to do what the hospital tells them to do. Doctors can't afford to run an independent practice because of the cost of paperwork, computer systems, and liability, so now they work for hospitals, ie, a corporate machine designed (even obligated) to maximize profits over care.

It's not "unscientific." We have something like a century and a half worth of evidence that the hazards to environment and human health from man-made substances is very often missed, understated, or outright suppressed by the industry that is profiting off it.

How many more decades do we need?

Given we are seeing plunging birth rates and species unprecedented rate (a dozen to hundreds of species a day), I'd say shifting to a "you have to prove it's not harmful" is a good policy.

Thanks for sharing.

What worries me is this is always going to be about a quick buck vs long term risk. We do not have the collective wisdom to stop.

Even if we have the collective wisdom, that doesn't mean it will outweigh the incentives, especially if that decision-making power is unchecked.

Yup. The shitty thing about the prisoner's dilemma is that we nearly always lose it.

I think the wisdom is there more than you think (look around, every other person is concerned about environment especially younger ones). The problem is collective power to do anything about it. The few on top have disproportionate power and don’t care at all (because it wont affect them).

I know it’s true, you even see it here all the time, but it is really disappointing to see people see this approach as unscientific. Progress at all costs should not be the goal! We should be working towards the betterment of humanity and if new innovations have a significant chance of working against that via side effects, we should absolutely be cautious.

I think it's more relaxing and enjoyable for us as a species to slow down a bit. There is no need to keep rushing into problems. We had / still have a pretty good environment, even if all technological progress stopped tomorrow, thousands of generations would still have beautiful lives. Everything from here is a bonus IMO.

One might describe it as conservatism, had conservatism chosen to anchor itself to preventing change rather than social/human regression and the advancement of capitalism and laissez-faire regulatory/economic policy.

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