Barry Commoner

The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will 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 quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline – which prevented it from entering the environment.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.