Background
Barry Commoner was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, on May 28, 1917. As a boy he lived the rugged life of the city streets, but on weekends he prowled Brooklyn's Prospect Park looking for microscope specimens.
( In his monumental bestsellers, The Closing Circle and S...)
In his monumental bestsellers, The Closing Circle and Science and Survival, Barry Commoner was one of the first scientists to alert us to the hideous environmental costs of our technological development. Now, twenty years later, Commoner reviews the vast efforts made in the public and private spheres to address and control the damage done and shows us why, despite billions of dollars spent to save the environment, we now find ourselves in an even deeper crisis. It is a book of hard facts and figures whose conclusionthat environmental pollution can be prevented only through fundamental redesign of the way we produce goodsdemands basic changes all across America, from the highest offices in Washington, D.C., to your own kitchen garbage can. If, in the sixties and seventies, an eco-revolution seemed afoot, Commoner now documents how short we have fallen. Attempts to reshape consumer patterns have been halfhearted, there have been terrible miscalculations in government policy (and in environmental organization strategies), and we still face the deliberate resistance of private industry to change. Despite these problems, Commoner argues convincingly for the key role still to be played by community organizations in scrutinizing and directing environmental action. Translating technical information into digestible form, Commoner takes us step by step through an EPA environmental impact review, breaks down the arguments for and against incineration, explains dioxin, Bhopal, auto emission controls, mercury poisoning, the greenhouse effect, and the Byzantine calculation of acceptable riskin ways that show how each of these factors affects all of us. With a new introduction by the author, Making Peace with the Planet makes a clear and impassioned plea for us to stop wasting money and precious nonrenewable resources, including time.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565840127/?tag=2022091-20
(In Science and Survival, Barry Commoner announces that "t...)
In Science and Survival, Barry Commoner announces that "the age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over." A massive electric power failure all over the Northeast, the admission of children to a St. Louis hospital 15 years after they had been exposed to radio-iodine from Nevada nuclear bomb tests, the disturbing news about DDT, and the potential menace of recombinant DNA - not to mention the threat of "nuclear winter" in the event of thermonuclear war, a prospect Commoner discussed years before most Americans even heard of it - led him to the conclusion that science, like the magic practiced by the legendary Sorcerer's Apprentice, was getting out of control. Therefore, scientists could no longer simply remain at their work; they had to go out and alert the nonscientists to the problems that their work was creating. "Science can reveal the depth of this crisis," the book concluded, "but only social action can resolve it."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670002127/?tag=2022091-20
(Discusses the technological, political, and social elemen...)
Discusses the technological, political, and social elements contributing to environmental destruction and cites case histories which illuminate the ecology crisis
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039442350X/?tag=2022091-20
Barry Commoner was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, on May 28, 1917. As a boy he lived the rugged life of the city streets, but on weekends he prowled Brooklyn's Prospect Park looking for microscope specimens.
Educated at James Madison High School, which fostered his interest in biology, he put himself through Columbia University by doing odd jobs and got his bachelor's degree with honors in 1937.
He earned master's and doctoral degrees at Harvard (1938, 1941).
He began his teaching career as a biology instructor at Queens College (1940 - 1942). Serving in the Navy in World War II, he took part in spraying Pacific islands against insect-borne diseases with the new wonder chemical DDT, unaware as yet that indiscriminate use of such toxins was an invitation to environmental disaster. Later Commoner served as associate editor of Science Illustrated before joining the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, first as associate professor of plant physiology, later as chairman of the Botany Department, and finally as university professor of environmental science (1976 - 1981). It was here that he began the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems (CBNS).
Although he published numerous professional research papers, he rejected the conventional view that what non-scientists do with scientific knowledge is none of the scientists' business. He became a social activist and vocal public educator. What brought him out of the laboratory in 1953, Commoner declared afterward, was strontium-90, one of the radioisotopes contained in the fallout from nuclear tests in the atmosphere. His Committee for Nuclear Information set parents all over St. Louis to collecting their offspring's baby teeth for testing, and found out that in addition to the normal element calcium, those teeth contained also ominous proportions of strontium-90, which behaves physically and chemically much like calcium and can combine in building bones and teeth in much the same way, except that strontium-90 is highly radioactive.
A massive electric power failure all over the Northeast, the admission of children to a St. Louis hospital 15 years after they had been exposed to radio-iodine from Nevada nuclear bomb tests, the disturbing news about DDT, and the potential menace of recombinant DNA-not to mention the threat of "nuclear winter" in the event of thermonuclear war, a prospect Commoner discussed years before most Americans even heard of it-led him to the conclusion that science, like the magic practiced by the legendary Sorcerer's Apprentice, was getting out of control. Therefore, scientists could no longer simply remain at their work; they had to go out and alert the nonscientists to the problems that their work was creating.
Commoner was not trained professionally as an ecologist. He came to it in reaction against the dismemberment of modern science by over-specialization, such that its practitioners could not see the forest for their own narrow trees. Scientists as well as laypeople, he believed, had to be educated to the fact that in nature "everything is connected to everything else, " which is the primary message of ecology. From the 1950 Commoner played a leading role in every aspect and important phase of the environmental movement.
The political lesson to be learned from Los Angeles smog, from fertilizer-poisoned water supplies in Illinois, from algal bloom in Lake Erie, and from detergent foam everywhere was that the older forms of both capitalism and socialism, with their emphases respectively on profit and productivity, were quite inadequate to cope with a deteriorating planet. At the same time Commoner did not want to sit back and contemplate nature fatalistically, or, as he called it, "inactivism. " In the 1970, as Congress passed laws for clean air, pure water, and the protection of the environment, Barry Commoner's warnings seemed to be generating serious political and legal action because, as Time warned in its cover story on Commoner (February 2, 1970), "the price of pollution could be the death of man. "
In The Politics of Energy (1979) Commoner called for "a national policy for the transition from the present, nonrenewable energy system to a renewable one" - a transition which he believed a traditional free market economy would be unable to accomplish. He wanted Americans to use solar rather than conventional power, trains rather than automobiles, and methane or gasohol rather than gasoline-proposals which ran not only up against powerful vested interests but also against come basic American habits and preferences. This theme of the evils of an increased dependence on technology remained a theme for the rest of Commoner's career appearing again in 1995 in his book Making Peace with the Planet.
Commoner returned to Queens College in 1981 as professor of earth and environmental sciences, serving also as visiting professor of community health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He also moved his Center for the Biology of Natural Sciences to Queens as well. The research conducted at Queens continued to make major advances in environmental science.
The 1980 saw a slight diminution of Commoner's influence as capitalist sway was on the rise and environmental concerns fell by the wayside. With the advent of the 1990, however, increased interests in the environment returned Commoner and his theories to the forefront. In 1995, he was one of the featured speakers at the Dartmouth College Earth Day Conference, commemorating the 25th anniversary of Earth Day. There he called for the government to include in its "industrial policy" a promotion of organic farming and the improvement of electric motors as a clean energy source. He encouraged the development of a preventive strategy that encourages production without polluting in the first place.
In May 1997, on the occasion of his 80th birthday and to commemorate his 50 year career in environmental research and activism, a symposium was sponsored by CBNS, entitled "Science and Social Action: Barry Commoner's Contribution to the Environmental Movement. " The purpose of this event was to both honor Commoner's career of outspoken activism, even before it was fashionable, and to create a momentum for a strong future environmental movement. In a directory of scientists published in 1984 Barry Commoner listed among his special concerns "alterations in the environment in relation to modern technology" and "the origins and significance of the environmental and energy crises"-realities which would not go away just because people for the moment chose to ignore them.
( In his monumental bestsellers, The Closing Circle and S...)
(Discusses the technological, political, and social elemen...)
(In Science and Survival, Barry Commoner announces that "t...)
Gradually, however, Commoner came to believe that much of the politicians' concern with the environment and with energy conservation was sham. He was particularly disappointed in President Jimmy Carter's national energy policy, which Commoner said was "not designed to solve the energy crisis . .. but merely to delay it. "
Since none of the presidential candidates of 1980 seemed to be dealing with environmental issues in the most superficial way, Barry Commoner ran for president on a ticket of his own, the Citizens Party. It polled only a quarter of one percent of the vote.
Quotations:
In the first sentence of a book published in 1966, Science and Survival, Barry Commoner announced that "the age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over. " "Science can reveal the depth of this crisis, " the book concluded, "but only social action can resolve it. "
"Human beings have broken out of the circle of life, driven not by biological need, but by the social organization which they have devised to 'conquer' nature. .. . We must learn how to restore to nature the wealth that we borrow from it. "
He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
It said that Commoner was "endowed with a rare combination of political savvy, scientific soundness and the ability or excite people with his ideas.
After serving in World War II, Commoner married the former Gloria Gordon, a St. Louis psychologist. They had two children, Frederic and Lucy Commoner, and one granddaughter. Following a divorce, in 1980 he married Lisa Feiner, whom he had met in the course of her work as a public-TV producer.