Barry Commoner

“The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over.”

“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.”

“The weapons were conceived and created by a small band of physicists and chemists they remain a cataclysmic threat to the whole of human society and the natural environment.”

“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.”

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

“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.”