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

Finally, since human beings are uniquely capable of producing materials not found in nature, environmental degradation may be due to the resultant intrusion into an ecosystem of a substance wholly foreign to it.

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.

In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.

The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.

Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.