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How Steve Jobs Got Green Overnight
Francois writes "At Apple's last special event, Steve Jobs insisted on how environment friendly Apple's new iPod packagings are supposed to be. I don't think he's ever gone that route before. 'We've got some new packagings for the new Nano as well. And it's 52% less volume. This turns out to be an environmentally great thing. Because it dramatically reduces the amount of fossil fuels we have to spend to move these things around the planet.'
Not only is it obvious they shrank the packaging to reduce the cost of shipping around the planet and sell lower than the Zune, but furthermore: there's a reason why he insisted that much, and it's not so very nice."
Why bogus?
Let's say you release mercury into a river. By the time the effects become painfully obvious it'll be already too late: you'll have poisoned fish, and lots of poisoned people who ate that fish, it'll have had a great effect on the ecology of the area...
So I understand Greenpeace's idea as "Even if we're not sure right now, let's be careful with unknown chemicals now, lest we have to figure it out the hard way".
There are actual examples of why being paranoid is a good thing. For instance, Thalidomide
Conversely..
Let's say you release Gatorade into a river. By the time the effects become painfully obvious it'll be already too late: you'll have put innocent workers through hell, bankrupt business and damaged the economy. it'll have had a great effect on the economy of the area...
So I understand the idea of let's know what we are talking about before we jump to conclusions either way.
Seems to me we should have some analysis done before dumping anything into a river. After that, we can make an intelligent decision.
"It recognises that such proof of harm may never be possible, at least until it is too late to avoid or reverse the damage done"
emphasis mine.
They simply say that when evidence says some chemicals are risky, we should eliminate its use, even if proof of the harmful extent is impossible before it does the damage at risk.
You know, the way you avoid getting killed, even though no one can prove that you're going to hell.
The entire prudence of this Precautionary Principle rests on how to evaluate the evidence of risk. Once that's established, of course you stop before you might break something. Every 5 year old learns that. It's time we stopped letting our corporations work like bulls in our china shop.
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make install -not war
Conversely, you'll never know the benefits you've forsaken on the off chance that all the standard tests for safety are wrong. The Precautionary Principle is the environmental equivalent of the legal principle that advises a company who sells baseballs to never come out with a baseball that will harm fewer people because they might get sued for their previous, less-safe balls. In other words, to prevent one type of possible and unlikely harm, you're forgoing probable benefits.
The Precautionary Principle is also logically fallacious, because it is impossible to prove a negative. Prove you aren't an alien life form. Go on, prove it. I can create objections to each and every argument you give based on untested (and untestable) possibilities.
Furthermore, it is a blind alley for environmental activism. There are many known hazardous substances with less-harmful alternatives in wide use today. Preemptively banning new AIDS drugs to prevent another Thalidomide will only distract from real health and ecological improvements.
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