The weapons were conceived and created by a small band of physicists and chemists; they remain a cataclysmic threat to the whole of human society and the natural environment.
The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.
The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II.
The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.
It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.
By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing ever goes away.
When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.
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.
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.
I don't 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.
The major source of photochemical smog - petroleum-fueled vehicles - can be replaced by emission-free electric vehicles.
In certain ways, I'm not very different than I was when I was a teenager.
The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.
All of the clean technologies are known, it's a question of simply applying them.
