In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.
BARRY COMMONERIt is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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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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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 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 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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Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.
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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It’s irrational.
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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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Everything is connected to everything else.
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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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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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In certain ways, I’m not very different than I was when I was a teenager.
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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
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The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.
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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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The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
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World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.
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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 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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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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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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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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We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.
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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.
BARRY COMMONER