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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.

Barry Commoner

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 COMMONER

Entering Environmental Quality Simple
The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.
BARRY COMMONER

Air Epa Method Progress
Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
BARRY COMMONER

Cooperatives Global Larger Planets
It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.
BARRY COMMONER

Approach Impossible Zero
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.
BARRY COMMONER

Achievement Air Cities
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.
BARRY COMMONER

Doctors Teacher Views
If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
BARRY COMMONER

Environment Fads Lasts
Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.
BARRY COMMONER

Environment Natural Pay
The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.
BARRY COMMONER

Crisis Environmental Signal
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 COMMONER

Child Children Economic Labor
I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It’s irrational.
BARRY COMMONER

Irrational Reason Shirts
By adopting the control strategy, the nation’s environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.
BARRY COMMONER

Environmental Quality Growth Strategy
The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
BARRY COMMONER

Action Environmental Problem
The modern technologist is less ‘sorcerer’ and more ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’.
BARRY COMMONER

Apprentice Modern Technology
The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need.
BARRY COMMONER

Gaps Needs Technology
All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them.
BARRY COMMONER

Clean Known Technology

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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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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