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The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.

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
Signal
Approaching
Signals
Catastrophe
Environmental
Crisis

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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.
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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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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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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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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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 proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.
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World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.
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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 age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
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Everything is connected to everything else.
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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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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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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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No action is without its side effects.
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The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.
Barry Commoner