Barry Commoner Quotes
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If you ask what you are going to do about global warming, the only rational answer is to change the way in which we do transportation, energy production, agriculture and a good deal of manufacturing. The problem originates in human activity in the form of the production of goods.
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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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It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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In certain ways, I'm not very different than I was when I was a teenager.
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Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.
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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 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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The wave of new productive enterprises would provide opportunities to remedy the unjust distribution of environmental hazards among economic classes and racial and ethnic communities.
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Nothing ever goes away.
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The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.
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The major source of photochemical smog - petroleum-fueled vehicles - can be replaced by emission-free electric vehicles.
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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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There is no such thing as a free lunch.
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The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
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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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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.
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I don't 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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I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.
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What I have experienced over time is that environmental problems are easier to deal with in ways that don't go into their interconnections to the rest of what we are.
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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 age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.
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Nature knows best.
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The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.