Barry Commoner Quotes - Page 2

The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.

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.

My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically - and destructively - demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.

World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.

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.

In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.

The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need.

The environmental crisis is a sign that the ecosphere is now so heavily strained that its continued stability is threatened. It is a warning that we must discover the source of this suicidal drive and master it before it destroys the environment-and ourselves.

Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.

The AEC scientists were so narrowly focused on arming the United States for nuclear war that they failed to perceive facts - even widely known ones - that were outside their limited field of vision.

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.

No action is without its side effects.

I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.

Finally, since human beings are uniquely capable of producing materials not found in nature, environmental degradation may be due to the resultant intrusion into an ecosystem of a substance wholly foreign to it.

It reflects a prevailing myth that production technology is no more amenable to human judgment or social interests than the laws of thermodynamics, atomic structure or biological inheritance.

What is new is that environmentalism intensely illuminates the need to confront the corporate domain at its most powerful and guarded point - the exclusive right to govern the systems of production.

In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.

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.

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.

Technologists practice faith too; 'Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.'

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.

The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.

The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.

The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.