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 COMMONERIn general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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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.
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Technologists practice faith too; ‘Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.’
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Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.
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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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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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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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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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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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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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Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.
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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
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Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
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The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
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Everything is connected to everything else.
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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.
BARRY COMMONER