Over 2500 years ago, Chinese Taoist Lao Tzu included precaution among his attributes of wisdom in the Tao Te Ching: “Those who rush ahead don’t go far,” he warned.

“Better safe than sorry,” my mother warned me many times. Most mothers have said something similar: “Safety first” or “look before you leap.” Yorkshire writer Charlotte Brontë, went one-step farther: “Look twice before you leap.” Japanese mothers may say, “Yudan taiteki”: “Rashness is your enemy.” 

Precaution is common sense and would have prevented virtually all of Earth’s current ecological crises. Instead, in the stampede to plunder Earth’s bounty and accrue wealth, humanity has actually made itself poorer by degrading the real wealth, Earth’s rivers, oceans, soil, atmosphere, and biological diversity.