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No action is without its side effects.
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
Effects
Side
Sides
Action
Without
More quotes by Barry Commoner
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
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
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.
Barry Commoner
I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.
Barry Commoner
Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law in journalism, literature and art.
Barry Commoner
The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
Barry Commoner
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
The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
Barry Commoner
Everything is connected to everything else.
Barry Commoner
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
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
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
The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
Barry Commoner
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
The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
Barry Commoner
Technologists practice faith too 'Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.'
Barry Commoner
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
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
When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
Barry Commoner
The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.
Barry Commoner
