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The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.

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
World
Assault
Immediately
Environmental
Began
Environment
Modern
War
Years

More quotes by 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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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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The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
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Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law in journalism, literature and art.
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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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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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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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In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.
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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 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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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
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The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
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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 environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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.
Barry Commoner
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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.
Barry Commoner
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No action is without its side effects.
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.
Barry Commoner
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The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.
Barry Commoner