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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.

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
Feel
Difference
Feels
Environment
Thing
Differences
Reuse
Good
Feeling
Emphasize
People
Purpose
Recycling
Feelings
Solving
Makes
Trash
Problem
Vast

More quotes by 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
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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.
Barry Commoner
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No action is without its side effects.
Barry Commoner
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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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The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need.
Barry Commoner
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
Barry Commoner
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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.
Barry Commoner
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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
Barry Commoner
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The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
Barry Commoner
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Everything is connected to everything else.
Barry Commoner
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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.
Barry Commoner
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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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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Technologists practice faith too 'Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.'
Barry Commoner
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
Barry Commoner
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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.
Barry Commoner
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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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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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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.
Barry Commoner