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.
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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Technologists practice faith too; ‘Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.’
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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 modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.
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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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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.
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The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
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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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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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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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Everything is connected to everything else.
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The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.
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The environmental crisis arises from a fundamental fault: our systems of production – in industry, agriculture, energy and transportation – essential as they are, make people sick and die.
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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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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
BARRY COMMONER