ciroccoj | The Precautionary Principle

[I]f I'm asked under oath: 'Does smoking cause lung cancer?' I have to answer truthfully ... The simple fact is - however inconvenient it might be for people to hear it - despite 50 years of research the biological mechanisms between smoking and the cause of diseases are still unknown.
— Gareth Davis, Imperial Tobacco chief executive, November 13, 2004

Smokers have a 70% greater chance of dying from Coronary Heart Disease than non-smokers.
- Surgeon General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1984.

‘There Has Been No Net Global Warming for the Past 70 Years’
- Title of Editorial, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, 2000

Frequently Asked Questions About the Science of Climate Change
FC.1: Has the world warmed?
Response: Yes. The average global temperature at the Earth's surface has warmed by about 0.6°C since the late 19th century.
- Environment Canada: Meteorological Service of Canada.

Precautionary Principle — The government's actions to protect the environment and health are guided by the precautionary principle, which states that "where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."
- Canadian Environmental Protection Agency Preamble

That's the beginning of my EnvLaw paper. And it plunges precipitously downhill from there. So far I'm done my intro and Part I, and have 6 of my 20 pages done. Intro and Part I are barely coherent gibberish; the rest of it aspires to reach the lofty height of incoherent gibberish.

::sigh::

I can't think. I'm tired, sleepy, wishing I was out having fun with the rest of my family, and so very, very screwed. And I've eaten three big spoonsful of creamy peanut butter, which we don't keep in our house precisely because I have all the self-control of a strung out crack junkie when it comes to creamy peanut butter.