American - Scientist | May 28, 1917 - September 30, 2012
It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.
Barry Commoner
ImpossibleZeroEvenApproachSimply
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.
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What is needed now is a transformation of the major systems of production more profound than even the sweeping post-World War II changes in production technology.
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What is new is that environmentalism intensely illuminates the need to confront the corporate domain at its most powerful and guarded point - the exclusive right to govern the systems of production.
PowerfulNewNeedRightProduction
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing ever goes away.
NothingAwayGoesEver
No action is without its side effects.
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When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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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.
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