In other words, corporations have now succeeded in getting themselves "regulated" by a set of laws and rules that effectively paralyze government regulators. Regulation of chemicals has effectively ended. The regulatory system now regulates not industry but environmentalists, in the sense that it narrowly defines and restricts the responses that they can make to corporate harms. By channeling environmentalist responses into industry-defined activities, the regulatory system makes environmentalists entirely predictable and therefore manageable.

But all is not lost. Industry's strategy for ending government regulation has an Achilles' heel. The whole strategy rests on the assumption that, when the science is uncertain, we should proceed with "business as usual" until harm can be proven to a scientific certainty. The precautionary principle turns this assumption on its head, saying, "When the science is uncertain, but there is evidence of harm, we have a duty to take precautionary action to prevent harm." If the precautionary principle were adopted, industry's elaborate strategy for paralyzing government would crumble.

Could this be why the chemical industry and the Bush administration have mounted a coordinated campaign to discredit, demonize, and derail the precautionary principle? You think?

Writing the precautionary principle into local laws -- and perhaps more importantly into corporate charters -- would fundamentally change the balance of power between people and money. What a worthy fight this is!

More than half of Americans now say it is more important for the president to focus on domestic policy — the first time since Sept. 11, 2001 that domestic matters have been viewed as a higher priority than the war on terrorism in polling by the Pew Research Center.

Two-thirds said the president could have done more to get relief efforts going quickly, according to the survey.

The slow-moving response to the hurricane appears to have shaken American confidence in the government's ability to deal with a major disaster. Four in 10 said the response to the hurricane has made them less confident about the government's ability to handle a major terrorist attack.

Almost six in 10 in the Pew poll, 58%, say they have felt depressed because of what's happened along the Gulf Coast. Pew polling indicates that at no point during the Iraq war has that high a percentage of people said they were depressed because of the war.