Environmental scientists are so obsessed with the righteousness of their cause that they are damning those who wish to use science as an objective tool in public policy decisions.
Environmental policy has too often evolved largely in reaction to popular panics, not in response to sound scientific analyses of which environmental hazards present the greatest risks. Some of the laws written in reaction to public concerns about, say, toxic waste dumps or asbestos in schools, were based on little, if any, sound research about the true nature of the threat. Thousands of regulations have been written to restrict compounds that had caused cancer in rats or mice, even though these animal studies often fail to predict how the compounds might affect humans. As a result, billions of dollars are wasted each year in battling problems that are no longer considered especially dangerous, leaving little money for others that cause far more harm.
Science is founded on an objective search for truth. Without objective truth, science and scientists have little value to society. Scientists who argue for alarmism, on the whole, are not very bad men but the course of action they propose is very bad indeed – for science, for scientists and for society as a whole.
The benefits of environmental alarmism outweigh the costs.
For decades, the environmental policy has been that when there is uncertainty about a threat, it is better to be safe than sorry. When you are operating at the limits of what science knows, the big mistake would be to underestimate the real danger and leave people unprotected.