Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses who have come to speak with us today. You have certainly provoked some thought on my part about some of the fundamental issues before us. I regret that I have only five minutes, so there isn't much time to have a conversation of any subtlety with you.
But I will, if I may, address some remarks to Dr. Mooers, because I was intrigued by the very clear comments you made, Dr. Mooers, about the necessity of distinguishing science from policy. In fact, I agree with you in theory that we shouldn't use confusing language and tell people that we're doing one thing when we're not, or when we're doing another thing. That separation between science and what I would call democratic decision-making, rather than “policy“, is sound in theory, but you may have heard the old saw about the fact that in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.
I'm coming at this from the point of view that pure science, if we could ever achieve it, has nothing to do with democracy. It's observational, it is descriptive and predictive, but it is not prescriptive; that is to say, science doesn't tell people what to do.
The difficulty I'm having is with matching that point with what needs to happen with species at risk. I'll give you two examples, the first regarding the listing process.
In theory, it is quite true to say that listing should be observational only, in the sense that if we're going to say that a species is threatened or endangered, that statement has a strictly observational quality to it. But in practice, under the act, listing carries with it prescriptive demands that are inevitably going to involve democratic decision-making, or what you might refer to as policy.
So, Dr. Mooers, can you give me your take on that dilemma? Because I'm having trouble understanding how we can tell people that they can't do this or they can't do that without democratic decision-making being involved at that stage.