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 COMMONERNothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
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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If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way.
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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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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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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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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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In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.
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Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need.
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By adopting the control strategy, the nation’s environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.
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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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Technologists practice faith too; ‘Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.’
BARRY COMMONER