The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.
BARRY COMMONERWe are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.
More Barry Commoner Quotes
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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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The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
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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 modern technologist is less ‘sorcerer’ and more ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’.
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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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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
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Everything is connected to everything else.
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Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.
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Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements-the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern city itself-are, in the environment, failures.
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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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My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically – and destructively – demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.
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Technologists practice faith too; ‘Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.’
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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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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In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.
BARRY COMMONER