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.
BARRY COMMONERThe age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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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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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It’s irrational.
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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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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Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.
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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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Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.
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The modern technologist is less ‘sorcerer’ and more ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’.
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Technologists practice faith too; ‘Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.’
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All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them.
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The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.
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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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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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No action is without its side effects.
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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.
BARRY COMMONER