Environmental Issues - Essay Example

The third issue discussed is the ecosystem pricing of goods and services. The fourth outlines the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's position against Precautionary Principle. The last and fifth issue discussed in the paper is paraphrasing the transition to organic agriculture. This paper, therefore, gives a clear and understandable summary of all the issues as discussed in the book. Issue 1 - Precautionary Principle In the book, the argument occurs between Nancy Myers who supports the issue while Goldstein Bernard argues negatively towards the issue.

The outline of disagreement between the two principle contributors teaches more about the argument and acts as an analysis of the same. The first disagreement is the beliefs of Nancy Meyer about precautionary principle justifies that the people have a right to know the risks behind the choices intended to make and thus be cautious in exchange of benefits. This gives the people a chance to know as much as possible the dangers on any action. According to Nancy, the manufacturers increase the possibilities of choosing the options which aim at reducing the risks as a safer alternative to the consumers.

On his side, Goldstein Bernard argues that precautionary principle cannot be classified as a threat to the toxicological science. He bases the argument on the fact that, most definitions lack when considering precautionary principle. Another disagreement between Nancy Meyer and Goldstein Bernard is on the risk assessment. There had been arguments in the past that precautionary principle is not needed by the people. Nancy Meyer, on the other hand, argues in a different perspective that risk assessment has been used to derail the application of the precautionary actions appropriately.

According to Stein (2000), it is a fact that the assessments of the risks require the decision makers to gather enough information to make the decision. These norms end up in management of the risks rather than preventing them. Nancy’s words were once justified by Thompson (2001), who concluded that the standard risk assessment can only be useful in high conditions of uncertainty. This is because it can be utilized to in helping in establishment of better alternative to the technologies which are dangerous.

In contrast to the views of Nancy, Goldstein Bernard argues that there are different actions that one can take as a move to precaution. He says that it would be advantageous for one to consider some of the actions under the prevention nomenclature. Goldstein Bernard classifies the prevention actions as primary and secondary prevention. The assumption of the primary preventions is that, there is no problem when starting e.g. a person starting smoking where no cigarettes are produced. He continues to argue that there are no initial problems reported at the initial stage and the primary prevention should, thus, aim in prevention of any action which might trigger problems later.

On the other hand, Goldstein Bernard explains the secondary prevention to depend on the early discovery of the problems. For example, diagnosing the high blood pressure before the patients gets a stroke. Goldstein Bernard arguments boldly explain that the actions taken as a result of ecological risk assessment and management happens because of being secondary prevention. This is especially when the problem is related to the chemicals which are known to be toxic. There is another