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.
BARRY COMMONERAfter 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.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
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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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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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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
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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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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It’s irrational.
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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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It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.
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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.
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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
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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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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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No action is without its side effects.
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Nothing ever dies, nothing ever goes away.
BARRY COMMONER