Barry Commoner
Despite the dazzling successes of modern technology and the unprecedented power of modern military systems, they suffer from a common and catastrophic fault. While providing us with a bountiful supply of food, with great industrial plants, with high-speed transportation, and with military weapons of unprecedented power, they threaten our very survival.Collection: Military
Perhaps the simplest example is a synthetic plastic, which unlike natural materials, is not degraded by biological decay. It therefore persists as rubbish or is burned-in both cases causing pollution. In the same way, a substance such as DDT or lead, which plays no role in the chemistry of life and interferes with the actions of substances that do, is bound to cause ecological damage if sufficiently concentrated.Collection: Play
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.Collection: Technology
Recycling is a good thing to do. It makes people feel good to do it. The thing I want to emphasize is the vast difference between recycling for the purpose of feeling good and recycling for the purpose of solving the trash problem.Collection: Differences
In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.Collection: Degradation
The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need.Collection: Technology
The environmental crisis is a sign that the ecosphere is now so heavily strained that its continued stability is threatened. It is a warning that we must discover the source of this suicidal drive and master it before it destroys the environment-and ourselves.Collection: Suicidal
Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.Collection: Planets
For that reason the simple test of the slogan 'Consume Less' as a basis for social action on the environment would be to tell it to the blacks in the ghetto. The message will not be very well received for there are many people in this country who consume less than is needed to sustain a decent life.Collection: Country
The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.---->I dont believe in environmentalism as the solution to anything. What I believe is that environmentalism illuminates the things that need to be done to solve all of the problems together.Collection: Believe
Finally, since human beings are uniquely capable of producing materials not found in nature, environmental degradation may be due to the resultant intrusion into an ecosystem of a substance wholly foreign to it.Collection: Ecosystems
We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.Collection: Earth Day
In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.Collection: Running
Technologists practice faith too; 'Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.'Collection: Practice
The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.Collection: Environmental
Perhaps one of the most meaningful ways to sense the impact of the environmental crisis is to confront the question which is always asked about Lake Erie: how can we restore it? I believe the only valid answer is that no one knows. For it should be clear that even if overnight all of the pollutants now pouring into Lake Erie were stopped, there would still remain the problem of the accumulated mass of pollutants in the lake bottom.Collection: Meaningful
The modern technologist is less 'sorcerer' and more 'sorcerer's apprentice'.Collection: Modern
Science is triumphant with far-ranging success, but its triumph is somehow clouded by growing difficulties in providing for the simple necessities of human life on earth.Collection: Simple