Barry Commoner Environmental Quotes & Sayings

The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe. — Barry Commoner

Perhaps one of the most meaningful ways to sense the impact of the environmental crisis is to confront the question which is always asked about Lake Erie: how can we restore it? I believe the only valid answer is that no one knows. For it should be clear that even if overnight all of the pollutants now pouring into Lake Erie were stopped, there would still remain the problem of the accumulated mass of pollutants in the lake bottom. — Barry Commoner

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. — Barry Commoner

Perhaps the simplest example is a synthetic plastic, which unlike natural materials, is not degraded by biological decay. It therefore persists as rubbish or is burned-in both cases causing pollution. In the same way, a substance such as DDT or lead, which plays no role in the chemistry of life and interferes with the actions of substances that do, is bound to cause ecological damage if sufficiently concentrated. — 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

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art. — 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

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. — Barry Commoner

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. — Barry Commoner

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

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

The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it. — Barry Commoner

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. — Barry Commoner

The environmental crisis is somber evidence of an insidious fraud hidden in the vaunted productivity and wealth of modern, technology-based society. This wealth has been gained by rapid short-term exploitation of the environmental system, but it has blindly accumulated a debt to nature-a debt so large and so pervasive that in the next generation it may, if unpaid, wipe out most of the wealth it has gained us. — Barry Commoner

Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented. — Barry Commoner

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. — Barry Commoner

The environmental crisis arises from a fundamental fault: our systems of production - in industry, agriculture, energy and transportation - essential as they are, make people sick and die. — Barry Commoner

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. — 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

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. — 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

What the new fertilizer technology has accomplished for the farmer is clear: more crop can be produced on less acreage than before. Since the cost of fertilizer, relative to the resultant gain in crop sales, is lower than that of any other economic input, and since the Land Bank pays the farmer for acreage not in crops, the new technology pays him well. The cost-in environmental degradation-is borne by his neighbors in town who find their water polluted. The new technology is an economic success-but only because it is an ecological failure. — Barry Commoner