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 COMMONEREarth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.
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Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.
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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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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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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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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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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them.
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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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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
BARRY COMMONER