Barry Commoner

"Clearly, we have compiled a record of serious failures in recent technological encounters with the environment. In each case, the new technology was brought into use before the ultimate hazards were known. We have been quick to reap the benefits and slow to comprehend the costs."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

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

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"Sooner or later,

wittingly or unwittingly,

we must pay

for every intrusion

on the natural environment."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"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 (1917-2012)

"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."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"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."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"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 (1917-2012)

"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."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"Nothing ever dies, nothing ever goes away."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

"It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions."

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

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

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

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

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)

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

—Barry Commoner (1917-2012)