The modern technologist is less ‘sorcerer’ and more ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’.
BARRY COMMONERRecycling 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.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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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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In certain ways, I’m not very different than I was when I was a teenager.
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What is needed now is a transformation of the major systems of production more profound than even the sweeping post-World War II changes in production technology.
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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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Everything is connected to everything else.
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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It’s irrational.
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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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In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.
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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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All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them.
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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.
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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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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 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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No action is without its side effects.
BARRY COMMONER