The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
BARRY COMMONER
The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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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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Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.
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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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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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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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It reflects a prevailing myth that production technology is no more amenable to human judgment or social interests than the laws of thermodynamics, atomic structure or biological inheritance.
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In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.
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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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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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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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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
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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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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 ever dies, nothing ever goes away.
BARRY COMMONER