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 COMMONERBy adopting the control strategy, the nation’s environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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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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In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.
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What is new is that environmentalism intensely illuminates the need to confront the corporate domain at its most powerful and guarded point – the exclusive right to govern the systems of production.
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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.
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The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
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No action is without its side effects.
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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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Science is triumphant with far-ranging success, but its triumph is somehow clouded by growing difficulties in providing for the simple necessities of human life on earth.
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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 general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.
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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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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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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 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.
BARRY COMMONER