The Role of Experts: At the Nexus of Science and Environmental Policy

The Role of Experts: At the Nexus of Science and Environmental Policy

What the role of so-called scientific experts should be in regards to policy development has often been debated. There are several current environmental, health, safety, and social issues where this is a sub-issue.

Perhaps we should first ask, “What defines or constitutes an expert?” We might define an expert as one who has the most detailed and accurate knowledge of a subject, both practical and theoretical knowledge. An expert may be one who is most considered to be an expert by colleagues and peers. In the ‘peer review’ process there is development of consensus on what constitutes an expert on a particular subject. 

Alex Epstein, in his book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, suggests that experts should be considered advisors. I don’t think anyone reasonable would dispute that. An advisor may make suggestions and perhaps recommendations at varying levels of specificity but generally would not make policy decisions. Where the line is drawn between advisors and policy decisions may vary as well. One might make the argument that scientific experts are not policy experts.

Experts can and do make highly inaccurate predictions. Biologist Paul Erlich’s predictions of widespread famine due to population and those of resource depletion were proven to be way off. And yet he continued to preach doomsday scenarios as did his protégé and Obama’s science advisor John Holdren, who said as Erlich noted “it is possible that carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020.” Economist Julian Simon famously made a bet with Erlich in 1980 that resource depletion from 1980 to 1990 would not increase resource prices and Simon won the bet. Epstein makes some predictions that also seem far off: that an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions over several decades as recommended would lead to billions of premature deaths. Simon made a good case that experts could potentially cause more harm than good. The late Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider in 1996 went so far to suggest that scientists had an ethical duty to present doomsday scenarios so that they could influence policy. Wouldn’t that be unethical? An ethical duty to be unethical? I do not think Schneider set a good precedent there.

Science and Environmental Law

Risk assessment is the central feature of environmental law. However, there is often considerable disagreement by competing parties on both the level of risk and the degree of acceptable risk. One may utilize baselines, burdens and entitlements, and cost-benefit analysis. One may use varying formulas for determining risk. Sometimes the benefits of doing something need also to be weighed against the detriments of not doing it. An example might be regulations that increase the cost to produce natural gas relative to producing coal or regs that decrease the cost of producing coal relative to natural gas. Since energy sources have different pollution, GHG emissions, environmental, and economic impacts. Often one is compared to another in a kind of cost-benefit analysis. Of course, here we get into valuation difficulties like social costs of carbon and health costs of pollution, both hard to determine due to variables and uncertainties. The difference between Obama’s and Trump’s environmental approaches surely involves differences in these valuations as well as differences in the degree of acceptable risk.

One might also note that there can be a cultural aspect to risk assessment. For instance, different societies, countries, or regions may have differences in terms of risk aversion. Europe tends to favor the Precautionary Principle which in one version (Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle) states: “When an activity raises threat of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context, the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.” The U.S., generally and historically, has been less risk averse than Europe in terms of environmental, health, and safety issues. The Precautionary Principle can backfire and end up more detrimental than beneficial. Europe has also taken such an approach to genetic engineering which has been found to be safe and actually beneficial to food production and the environment in several ways.  

There is also the important observation that economic health tends to enhance environmental health. In affluent countries there is often more attention toward environmental issues since people have transcended basic survival needs and can focus more on societal well-being. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, in their book, Break Through, relate this to ascending Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs.’ Concern for the environment becomes a pursuit after basic needs are met. This is playing out now in places like China where urban air pollution is so potent that there is considerable public backlash against it.

Consensus: A Doubled-Edged Sword?

While consensus in the form of peer-review and in general may help define expertise, one might argue that it could also serve to squelch dissenting views. The story of former Georgia Tech climate scientist Dr. Judith Currie could be an example. She claims she was ostracized by consensus climate scientists and academics for emphasizing the uncertainties of climate science, basically for being skeptical that its effects could be definitely discerned. She entertained and communicated with other climate change skeptics of varying levels which she suggested got her in trouble with the consensus. It should be noted that there are indeed varying levels of skepticism of the conclusions of consensus climate science. Some are flat-out deniers of anthropogenic climate change. Some are so-called “lukewarmers’ who think the data suggests the effects will be significantly less catastrophic than predicted. Others simply point out that there remain many uncertainties, that all modelling is dependent on assumptions, and that the complexity of so many variables in global systems inhibits predictability. There are also those who think that the data suggests that the effects could be much worse than the consensus predicts. Jim Hansen thinks that may be the case. He is well-respected as a physicist and climate scientist. However, as a policy-influencer he has been roundly criticized. His statement that “CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature,” was inappropriate and compromises his depiction as an unbiased scientist. When scientists become activists they can lose some credibility. In the climate-change debate there seem to be the two extremes of ‘denier’ and ‘alarmist.’ In light of the uncertainties, either could be more correct. Some event or re-evaluation could occur that could show that human effects on climate are less or more than previously thought. However, as the years go on that would perhaps become less likely as more data is collected and analyzed and as models are refined. Al Gore’s and others’ depictions that climate change is a moral issue that requires immediate action is also quite debatable and dependent on the accuracy of assessing the climate response system and predicting its effects.

Several potential policy decisions regarding climate could involve some sort of income redistribution. A carbon tax is one and one that could disproportionately affect the poor if energy costs rise. Renewables requirements are another issue that could make energy costs go up, affecting the poor in greater measure of their income. Climate justice scenarios where legacy emissions are debited and credited is another example. Such threats of income redistribution are at odds with the free-market policies espoused by deregulation advocates. Regulatory compliance is seen as a kind of taxation, direct renewable energy subsidies are seen as unfair business advantages, and a carbon price is seen as a penalty to the least desirable energy source providers. Thus the incomes of businesses are redistributed through a series of incentives and disincentives. People expect these issues to be addressed but who should shoulder the bulk of the costs is also debatable. The current situation of subsidization of clean energy mainly benefits those who can afford it rather than all people or businesses. 

Those who favor immediate potent action on climate change defer to scientific consensus in that debate. However, many of the same people who also favor potent action against fracking tend not to favor the scientific consensus but instead defer to those few ‘radicalized’ scientists that support their own goals. In the case of fracking there is no strong consensus but the bulk of scientific analysis suggests that it is far less harmful overall than often depicted in the media. The radicalized and opinionated scientists and medical researchers are often academics and so not experts on the particular industries they seek to penalize. The industries have experts as well, with varying levels of bias. The industry experts know the industries in which they work and that gives them a big technical advantage in knowing exactly how things work. They are often better able to determine impacts and to find ways to reduce impacts. In fact, depending on a few outsider activist “experts” at the expense of more knowledgeable experts on the whole could give experts a bad name.

The Expert Class?

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Trump’s advisor to the EPA transition describes experts as a class, the ‘expertariat,’ and has gone so far to say that experts are not experts:

“The people of America have rejected the expertariat, and I think with good reason because I think the expertariat have been wrong about one thing after another, including climate policy…. The expert class, it seems to me, is full of arrogance or hubris.”

He also suggested that those who invested in renewable energy were gullible and quipped that the environmental movement is “the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.”

Certainly one can invoke the repeated failures of the doomsday predictions of Erlich, Holdren, Lester Brown, and other so-called experts. However, perhaps Ebell should visit places like Chinese or Indian cities choked with air pollutants and smog from coal burning and cars and breathe the air for a while to see how the freedom to pollute affects health as well as prosperity. Yes there is sometimes regulatory overreach but there is also industrial overreach.

While one might say that the more radical elements of environmentalism are indeed a threat to prosperity and the freedom to prosper, the wholesale rejection of the notion of environmental protection is ludicrous. There are plenty of moderates as well as those on the right and left who support sensible and fair environmental regulations and climate change considerations. The fact is we do not know yet if our climate policy decisions are right or wrong. Ebell refers to the “climate-industrial complex,” composed presumably of any faction that might benefit from climate change considerations, including climate scientists funded by governments and renewable energy companies directly subsidized by governments. This argument is basically an income redistribution argument which has been perpetuated on the political right. There is some truth to it for sure but it is a side effect rather than the main goal. The notion that climate change consideration and response is a leftist/socialist conspiracy to redistribute income more equitably is absurd. However, that can be seen as a side effect. Income inequality has grown not only in the U.S. but in most affluent countries so some see that side effect as desirable while others see it as an unnecessary regulation on free-market capitalism. Some economists think that the current set-up of our capitalistic system favors increasing income inequality that will eventually need to be addressed.

  

The Role of Journalism in Science and Environmental Policy Debates

Much of the information received by the general public about science and environmental policy issues comes from journalists. Journalists are not experts and in fact often cause more problems and misunderstandings. As they like to show two sides of an issue both sides tend to get equal weight. There are also cognitive biases perpetuated by journalists. Some journalists are ill-informed. Some embarrassingly so. And yet they are often the main interface with the general public about these issues. Journalists often interpret scientists, activists, and industry experts. Scientific experts may not be policy experts but journalists are often neither scientific nor policy experts, although there are some that may be. Biased journalism can be problematic and should be pointed out. The popularity of policy positions are often a result of the degree of organization and marketing of views by pundits and journalists. Journalists are often the intermediary between scientists and the public. They are also often the intermediary between policy positions and the public. So science journalists interpret science for the public and political journalists interpret policy positions for the public. Those of us less savvy in science and politics rely on the press. We rely on the press to be accurate and unbiased. The biases of most media organizations are well known or can be deduced through time. My own observation is that there is bias on both ends of the political spectrum and the bias often grades into inaccuracies, sometimes in how things are worded and sometimes in how numbers are manipulated. 

The far ends of the political spectrum seem to have perfected webpage and social media approaches where all posts are in support of their perspectives. This is perhaps to be expected as collections of arguments in favor of a position but it is often presented as balanced media coverage. Journalistic bias is playing a major role in U.S. politics now as the Trump administration claims bias against them but by banning certain media orgs from press briefings and referring to opposing press as an “enemy of the American people” they threaten a major foundation of U.S. democracy, freedom of the press. 

The role of experts has apparently also been debated in the U.K. ahead of Brexit. Former U.K. justice secretary Michael Gove made the comment: "people in this country have had enough of experts," apparently referring to economists as he later noted. He did admit that his statement could be interpreted as a license to challenge all forms of expertise. Critics such as Nobel laureate Paul Nurse have argued that Gove's statement could serve to undermine trust in science and is perhaps a symptom of the anti-intellectualism suggested in populist right movements in Europe and the U.S. 


    

References:

Green Movement ‘Greatest Threat to Freedom’ Says Trump Advisor – by Damian Carrington, in The Guardian, Jan. 30, 2017

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels – by Alex Epstein (Penguin Portfolio, 2014)

Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment – by Sandra Steingraber (2^nd edition DeCapo Press 2010)

Break Through: Why We Can’t Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists – by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger (Mariner Books, 2007, 2009)

Hoodwinking the Nation: Fact and Fiction About the Environment, Resources, and Population – by Julian Simon (Transaction Publishers, 1999)

Nobel Winner: Attack on Experts 'Undermines Science' - by Ian Katz and Warwick Harrington, in BBC Newsnight, Feb. 26, 2017