This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 24th, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The state of the world is generally improving, but that's a hard sell when bad news dominates.

And there are good reasons to believe that technology

and ingenuity will continue to help humans forge better longer lives for a good long

while. Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine and the Cato Institute is author of the new book The End of Doom.

We spoke yesterday.

Where has the precautionary principle led us with respect to environmental issues.

I summarize the precautionary principle the following way.

Never do anything for the first time.

Basically, it's a principle that requires that anyone who introduced a new technology or new process to prove that it will be completely safe.

There is no trial without error. We learn from failure. We do not learn from success.

So it's basically a principle that would stop all progress

if it were implemented thoroughly the way

the environmental community would like to do it.

And it's extremely dangerous for the environment because what we find is that

newer technologies use less resources over time and provide greater safety for

human beings. And how do we know that? Because people are living a lot longer with less disease, less stability than they were

when they had to rely on older less safe technologies.

How has the precautionary principle been baked into our, I guess, public policy with respect

to the environment?

It's fairly complicated, but one of the things that what you find is that when you are trying to approve a new technology

...