Barry Commoner
Barry Commoner
Barry Commonerwas an American biologist, college professor, and politician. He was a leading ecologist and among the founders of the modern environmental movement. He ran for president of the United States in the 1980 U.S. presidential election on the Citizens Party ticket. He served as editor of Science Illustrated magazine...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth28 May 1917
CountryUnited States of America
thinking environment situation
When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
connected
Everything is connected to everything else,
nature law firsts
The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
earth-day use conquer
The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
technology land water
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.
environmental disease pollution
Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.
environmental signals crisis
The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.
running risk environmental
In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.
powerful technology men
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?
army scientist command
The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
technology environmental generations
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.
lunch environment ecology
Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you don't put something in the ecology, it's not there.
environmental half world
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.
air cities achievement
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.