Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements-the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern city itself-are, in the environment, failures.

— Barry Commoner

Barry Commoner Quotes

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

— 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

In certain ways, I’m not very different than I was when I was a teenager.

— 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

The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.

— Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.

— Barry Commoner

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.

— 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

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

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.

— Barry Commoner

By adopting the control strategy, the nation’s environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.

— 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

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.

— Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it.

— Barry Commoner

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.

— Barry Commoner

Science is triumphant with far-ranging success, but its triumph is somehow clouded by growing difficulties in providing for the simple necessities of human life on earth.

— 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
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