The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.

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.

Perhaps the simplest example is a synthetic plastic, which unlike natural materials, is not degraded by biological decay. It therefore persists as rubbish or is burned-in both cases causing pollution. In the same way, a substance such as DDT or lead, which plays no role in the chemistry of life and interferes with the actions of substances that do, is bound to cause ecological damage if sufficiently concentrated.

After all, despite the economic advantage to firms that employed child labor, it was in the social interest, as a national policy, to abolish it - removing that advantage for all firms.

All of the clean technologies are known, it's a question of simply applying them.

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

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.