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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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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
Human
Brute
Humans
Brutes
Need
Continues
Needs
Gaps
Grow
Technology
Grows
Intensifies
Power
Faulty

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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 AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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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 age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
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The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
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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 environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.
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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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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 modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.
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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.
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Everything is connected to everything else.
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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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No action is without its side effects.
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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.
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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.
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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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