The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.
BARRY COMMONEREnvironmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline – which prevented it from entering the environment.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
-
-
In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.
BARRY COMMONER -
No action is without its side effects.
BARRY COMMONER -
The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.—->I dont believe in environmentalism as the solution to anything. What I believe is that environmentalism illuminates the things that need to be done to solve all of the problems together.
BARRY COMMONER -
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.
BARRY COMMONER -
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.
BARRY COMMONER -
In certain ways, I’m not very different than I was when I was a teenager.
BARRY COMMONER -
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.
BARRY COMMONER -
It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.
BARRY COMMONER -
If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
BARRY COMMONER -
Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.
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.
BARRY COMMONER -
The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
BARRY COMMONER -
If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way.
BARRY COMMONER -
Nothing ever dies, nothing ever goes away.
BARRY COMMONER -
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.
BARRY COMMONER