Barry Commoner

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

“In certain ways, I'm not very different than I was when I was a teenager.”

“Nothing ever goes away.”

“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.”

“The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.”

“The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Nature knows best.”

“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.”