If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
BARRY COMMONERMy entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically – and destructively – demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It’s irrational.
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Finally, since human beings are uniquely capable of producing materials not found in nature, environmental degradation may be due to the resultant intrusion into an ecosystem of a substance wholly foreign to it.
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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.
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No action is without its side effects.
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.
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What is new is that environmentalism intensely illuminates the need to confront the corporate domain at its most powerful and guarded point – the exclusive right to govern the systems of production.
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What is needed now is a transformation of the major systems of production more profound than even the sweeping post-World War II changes in production technology.
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In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.
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Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline – which prevented it from entering the environment.
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The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.
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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.—->I dont believe in environmentalism as the solution to anything. What I believe is that environmentalism illuminates the things that need to be done to solve all of the problems together.
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Nothing ever dies, nothing ever goes away.
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Technologists practice faith too; ‘Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.’
BARRY COMMONER