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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.

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
Industry
Arise
Transportation
Dies
Fundamentals
Arises
Energy
Environmental
Agriculture
Make
Faults
Fault
People
Essential
Systems
Essentials
Production
Crisis
Productions
Sick
Fundamental

More quotes by Barry Commoner

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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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Everything is connected to everything else.
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Technologists practice faith too 'Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.'
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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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 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.
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World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.
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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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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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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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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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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
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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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No action is without its side effects.
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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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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.
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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.
Barry Commoner
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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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Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law in journalism, literature and art.
Barry Commoner