Barry Commoner Quotes

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

~ Barry Commoner

The AEC scientists were so narrowly focused on arming the United States for nuclear war that they failed to perceive facts - even widely known ones - that were outside their limited field of vision.

~ Barry Commoner

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.

~ 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

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

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

~ 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

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

~ 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

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

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

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

~ 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

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

~ 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