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Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law in journalism, literature and art.

Barry Commoner

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Barry Commoner
Age: 95 †
Born: 1917
Born: May 28
Died: 2012
Died: September 30
Academic
Biologist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Military Officer
Non-Fiction Writer
Politician
University Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Concern
Public
Education
Embedded
Literature
Sustainability
Law
Firmly
Art
Journalism
Life
Environmental
Medicine

More quotes by Barry Commoner

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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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Technologists practice faith too 'Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.'
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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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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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Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
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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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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.
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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.
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For that reason the simple test of the slogan 'Consume Less' as a basis for social action on the environment would be to tell it to the blacks in the ghetto. The message will not be very well received for there are many people in this country who consume less than is needed to sustain a decent life.
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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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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
Barry Commoner
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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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No action is without its side effects.
Barry Commoner
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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
Barry Commoner
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The favorite statistic is that the U.S. contains 6 to 7% of the world population but consumes more than half the world's resources and is responsible for that fraction of the total environmental pollution. But this statistic hides another vital fact: that not everyone in the U.S. is so affluent.
Barry Commoner
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Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nothing can be gained or lost and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced. Payment of this price cannot be avoided it can only be delayed. The present environmental crisis is a warning that we have delayed nearly too long.
Barry Commoner
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The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
Barry Commoner