The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
BARRY COMMONERAfter 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.
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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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
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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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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
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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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If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way.
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The AEC scientists were so narrowly focused on arming the United States for nuclear war that they failed to perceive facts – even widely known ones – that were outside their limited field of vision.
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The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve 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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Everything is connected to everything else.
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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 environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.
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All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them.
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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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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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We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.
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Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements-the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern city itself-are, in the environment, failures.
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Technologists practice faith too; ‘Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.’
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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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Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
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It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.
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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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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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Nothing ever dies, nothing ever goes away.
BARRY COMMONER