No action is without its side effects.
BARRY COMMONERMy entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically – and destructively – demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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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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The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
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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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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 AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.
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All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them.
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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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Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it.
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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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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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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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The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.
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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.
BARRY COMMONER