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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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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
May
Development
Confront
Enough
Growth
Engine
Much
Economic
Associated
Effort
Engines
Quality
Improve
Powerful
Corporate
Change
Meaningful
Power
Environmental

More quotes by 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.
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The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.
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The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
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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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Technologists practice faith too 'Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.'
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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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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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If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.
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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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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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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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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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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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The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
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The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.
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No action is without its side effects.
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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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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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Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.
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