[toss1]

>>We need to flip the approval process on its head -- from "safe until proven otherwise" to "unsafe until (independently) proven safe".

Totally agree in principle.

There is one fly in the ointment - it is impossible to prove a negative, such as "X does not exist" or "there is no possible harm from this to any person ever" (water would not meet that standard).

So, this needs to be implemented in such a way as to not completely halt progress.

Should be straightforward to require testing to reasonable standards levels of biological harm to humans and ecology, persistence/degradability, etc. the levels need to be set by NEITHER the industry NOR the perfectionist eco-activists. Finding such a panel will be tricky.

[meristohm]

What is progress?

[toss1]

I consider progress to be getting closer to technology that gets us out of the unsustainable ecological/biosystems hole which we have dug for ourselves.

We are not going to put the technological genie back in the bottle, short of eliminating 98+% of all humans and reverting back to hunter-gatherer tribes.

The only solution is to go through this dirty technology cycle and build and implement clean sustainable technologies that allow us to live with something resembling current populations without destroying the climate system, breaking the food web, or poisoning ourselves (& everything else).

So, yes, the only thing worse than halting all progress now would be to do it a decade age before solar, wind, etc. became viable, but we need a lot more progress, i.e., better performance for lower costs - both ecological & economical - for most of our technologies, and eliminating those destructive technologies. That would be progress.

What's your definition?