Clashing Views on Environmental Issues, Essay Example

The communications director for the Science and Environmental Health Network, Nancy Myers, believes that the Precautionary Principles include the best approach to risk analysis. Myers argues that this approach has gained broad global recognition as being a vital to environmental policy. However, a professor of Environmental Health at the University of Pittsburgh, Bernard D. Goldstein, believes that Precautionary Principles are not the best approach to risk analysis. Goldstein argues that this approach can be potentially valuable to environmental policy, however it poses a risk to the scientific risk assessment and will be displaced as a determent to public health, social justice, and field toxicology (Easton, 2011).

I personally agree with Nancy Myers argument that using the Precautionary Principals are vital to an environmental policy. By exploring a wide range of alternatives to possibly harmful actions, we can find cleaner ways to get our energy. For example, each year 14 tons of carbons dioxide are released in to the atmosphere due to coal burning from power generation. Using the precautionary principle, Scientist have found a clean coal technology that involves using the coal to make hydrogen from water, then burying the resultant carbon dioxide by-product and burning the hydrogen (World Nuclear Association, 2015).

References

Easton, T. A. (2011). Taking sides: Clashing views on environmental issues (14th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

World Nuclear Association (2015). Clean Coal’ Technologies, Carbon Capture & Sequestration. Retrieved June 5, 2015, from http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Energy-and-Environment/-Clean-Coal–Technologies/