Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

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

— Barry Commoner

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.

— Barry Commoner

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.

— 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

The peak of the [Presidential] campaign happened in Albuquerque, where a local reporter said to me, "Dr. Commoner, are you a serious candidate or are you just running on the issues?"

— Barry Commoner

In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.

— Barry Commoner

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.

— Barry Commoner

By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.

— Barry Commoner

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.

— Barry Commoner

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.

— Barry Commoner

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