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

When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.

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.

The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.

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.

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

Earth Day 1970 was irrefutable evidence that the American people understood the environmental threat and wanted action to resolve it.