Barry Commoner Quotes

Quotes about:

• The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.

  Barry Commoner

  Earth Day, Environmental, Use

  36 Copy quote
• 

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

  Barry Commoner

  Environmental, Disease, Pollution

  "At 90, an Environmentalist From the '70s Still Has Hope". Interview With Thomas Vinciguerra, www.nytimes.com. June 19, 2007.

  89 Copy quote

• Everything is connected to everything else.

  Barry Commoner

  Connected

  The Closing Circle ch. 2 (1971)

  55 Copy quote

• The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.

  Barry Commoner

  Nature, Animal, Law

  36 Copy quote

• 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

  Air, Cities, Achievement

  26 Copy quote

• Sooner or later,
  wittingly or unwittingly,
  we must pay
  for every intrusion
  on the natural environment.

  Barry Commoner

  Pay, Environment, Natural

  barry commoner (1966). “science and survival”

  54 Copy quote

• Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

  Barry Commoner

  Nature, Lunch, Environment

  "Barry Commoner, scientist and influential environmentalist, dies at 95" by Matt Schudel, www.washingtonpost.com. October 2, 2012.

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Technology, Environmental, Generations

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Agriculture, People, Sick

  Interview with Alan Hall, www.scientificamerican.com. June 23, 1997.

  17 Copy quote

• If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way.

  Barry Commoner

  Tunnels, Light, Way

  23 Copy quote

• The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.

  Barry Commoner

  Environmental, Action, Problem

  Interview With Alan Hall, www.scientificamerican.com. June 23, 1997.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Agriculture, Energy, Answers

  "At 90, an Environmentalist From the '70s Still Has Hope". Interview With Thomas Vinciguerra, www.nytimes.com. June 19, 2007.

  11 Copy quote

• Our assaults on the ecosystem are so powerful, so numerous, so finely interconnected, that although the damage they do is clear, it is very difficult to discover how it was done. By which weapon? In whose hand? Are we driving the ecosphere to destruction simply by our growing numbers? By our greedy accumulation of wealth? Or are the machines which we have built to gain this wealth-the magnificent technology that now feeds us out of neat packages, that clothes us in man-made fibers, that surrounds us with new chemical creations-at fault?

  Barry Commoner

  Powerful, Technology, Men

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  Technology, Needs, Gaps

  1972 'The Closing Circle', in Technology.

  4 Copy quote

• If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.

  Barry Commoner

  Fads, Lasts, Ifs

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Environmental, Facts, Affluence

  14 Copy quote

• Nothing ever dies, nothing ever goes away.

  Barry Commoner

  Advice, Information

  "'Awards Chatter' Podcast — Tom Hanks ('The Post')" by Scott Feinberg, www.hollywoodreporter.com. January 9, 2018.

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Independent, Environmental, Hazards

  Interview With Alan Hall, www.scientificamerican.com. June 23, 1997.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Ecosystems, Long, Effort

  6 Copy quote

• All of the clean technologies are known, it's a question of simply applying them.

  Barry Commoner

  Technology, Clean, Known

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Barry Commoner

  Believe, Law, Together

  4 Copy quote

• Despite the dazzling successes of modern technology and the unprecedented power of modern military systems, they suffer from a common and catastrophic fault. While providing us with a bountiful supply of food, with great industrial plants, with high-speed transportation, and with military weapons of unprecedented power, they threaten our very survival.

  Barry Commoner

  Military, Technology, Survival

  barry commoner (1966). “science and survival”

  4 Copy quote

• When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.

  Barry Commoner

  Thinking, Understanding, Environmental

  11 Copy quote

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

  Barry Commoner

  Art, Law, Medicine

  "Interview with Barry Commoner" by Alan Hall, www.scientificamerican.com. June 23, 1997.

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Play, Ddt, Environmental

  8 Copy quote

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