(Boldface mine.)

...it is much easier to see how technological innovation has reduced our impact on the landscape and
the environment. That is what is so painfully wrong with the precautionary principle. Now, you say, he has
surely gone too far. What can be wrong with taking a precautionary approach to the future? Better safe than
sorry. What is wrong with it is simply this: it ignores the risk of doing nothing. Had we not improved
agriculture we would have faced a stark choice between famine and the cultivation of all wild land. Had we not
drilled for oil in the 1860s, we would have wiped out the whales. Standing still is not a risk-free option. It is
precisely because today’s technology is too dirty and dangerous that we must encourage inventors to improve
on it. And that has been true ever since technology consisted of a stone-tipped spear capable of felling a
mammoth.