Recycling is a good thing to do. It makes people feel good to do it. The thing I want to emphasize is the vast difference between recycling for the purpose of feeling good and recycling for the purpose of solving the trash problem.
BARRY COMMONERFinally, 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.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.
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All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them.
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The modern technologist is less ‘sorcerer’ and more ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’.
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World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.
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The environmental crisis is a sign that the ecosphere is now so heavily strained that its continued stability is threatened. It is a warning that we must discover the source of this suicidal drive and master it before it destroys the environment-and ourselves.
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
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If you ask what you are going to do about global warming, the only rational answer is to change the way in which we do transportation, energy production, agriculture and a good deal of manufacturing. The problem originates in human activity in the form of the production of goods.
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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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No action is without its side effects.
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Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it.
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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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Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.
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Science is triumphant with far-ranging success, but its triumph is somehow clouded by growing difficulties in providing for the simple necessities of human life on earth.
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The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need.
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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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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It’s irrational.
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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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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
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Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.
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By adopting the control strategy, the nation’s environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.
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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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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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As the earth spins through space, a view from above the North Pole would encompass most of the wealth of the world – most of its food, productive machines, doctors, engineers and teachers. A view from the opposite pole would encompass most of the world’s poor.
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After all, despite the economic advantage to firms that employed child labor, it was in the social interest, as a national policy, to abolish it – removing that advantage for all firms.
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Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
BARRY COMMONER