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

More quotes by 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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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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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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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 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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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
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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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No action is without its side effects.
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The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.
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The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
Barry Commoner
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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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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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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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.
Barry Commoner
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World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.
Barry Commoner
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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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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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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
Barry Commoner