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 COMMONERIf 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.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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After all, despite the economic advantage to firms that employed child labor, it was in the social interest, as a national policy, to abolish it – removing that advantage for all firms.
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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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All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them.
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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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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.
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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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Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.
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The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
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Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.
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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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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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Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it.
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Everything is connected to everything else.
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No action is without its side effects.
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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.
BARRY COMMONER






