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The modern technologist is less ‘sorcerer’ and more ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’.

Barry Commoner

The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
BARRY COMMONER

Day Earth Environmental Use
Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
BARRY COMMONER

Cooperatives Global Larger Planets
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

Environmental Suicidal Warning
World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.
BARRY COMMONER

Impact Technology War
Technologists practice faith too; ‘Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.’
BARRY COMMONER

Practice Problem Solve
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.
BARRY COMMONER

Agriculture People Sick
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.
BARRY COMMONER

Inheritance Law Technology
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.
BARRY COMMONER

Doctors Teacher Views
Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.
BARRY COMMONER

Environment Natural Pay
Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
BARRY COMMONER

Environment Lunch Nature
In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.
BARRY COMMONER

Environmental Risk Running
Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.
BARRY COMMONER

Art Law Medicine
The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
BARRY COMMONER

Action Environmental Problem
The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.
BARRY COMMONER

Environmental War Years
Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it.
BARRY COMMONER

Day Earth Firefighter People
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.
BARRY COMMONER

Environmental Meaningful Powerful Quality

The modern technologist is less ‘sorcerer’ and more ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’.

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The modern technologist is less ‘sorcerer’ and more ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’.

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