Top Barry Commoner Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Barry Commoner Biography

Barry Commoner (May 28, 1917 – September 30, 2012) was an American cellular biologist, college professor, and politician. He was a leading ecologist and among the founders of the modern environmental movement. He was the director of the Critical Genetics Project and the Center for Biology of Natural Systems. He ran as the Citizens Party candidate in the 1980 U.S. presidential election. His work studying the radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing lead to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

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Barry Commoner Quotes

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.

Agriculture, Environmental, Industry, People, Sick

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.

Acreage, Land, Lower, Polluted, Technology, Water

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?

Built, Ecosystem, Men, Numbers, Powerful, Technology

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

Environmental Quality, Growth, Strategy, Program, Created

The modern technologist is less 'sorcerer' and more 'sorcerer's apprentice'.

Apprentice, Modern, Sorcerer, Technologist

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.

Doctors, Earth, North, Teacher, View, Views

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.

Case, Environmental, Hazards, Independent, Opposed

Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.

Creates, Development, Pollution, Prevention, Technology, Transformation

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.

Achievement, Air, Cities, Health, Industry

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

Degradation, Organic, Provision, Recycling, Substance, Unless

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.

Issues, Environmental, Nuclear, Science, Destructively, Dramatically

Nothing ever goes away.

Advice, Away, Information, Nothing

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.

Activity, Agriculture, Energy, Global, Rational, Way

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.

Children, Economic, Child Labor, Policy, Interest, Child

Everything is connected to everything else.

Connected, Everything

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

American, Earth, Earth Day, Evidence, Firefighter, People

The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.

Environmental, Signals, Crisis, Approaching, Signal

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

Earth Day, Environmental, Human, Nation, Survival, Threatens

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.

Military, Plants, Providing, Suffering, Technology, Transportation

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.

Blindly, Crisis, Environmental, Evidence, May, Technology

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