Barry Commoner was born on May 28, 1917, and died on September 30, 2012. He was an American biologist who studied cells, a college teacher, and a politician. He was an important scientist who studied the environment and helped start the modern environmental movement. He served as the director of the Center for Biology of Natural Systems and its Critical Genetics Project. In the 1980 U.S. presidential election, he ran for president as a candidate from the Citizens Party. His research on radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing contributed to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

Early life

Commoner was born on May 28, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. He earned his undergraduate degree in the study of animals from Columbia University in 1937. Later, he received his graduate degrees from Harvard University in 1938 and 1941.

Career in academia

After working as a lieutenant in the US Navy during World War II, Commoner moved to St. Louis, Missouri. From 1946 to 1947, he was an assistant editor for Science Illustrated. In 1947, he became a professor of plant physiology at Washington University in St. Louis and taught there for 34 years. In 1966, he started the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems to study "the science of the total environment." He was also on the founding editorial board of the Journal of Theoretical Biology in 1961.

In the late 1950s, Commoner became known for his work against nuclear weapons testing. He joined a team that conducted the Baby Tooth Survey, which showed that Strontium 90, a radioactive substance, was found in children’s teeth because of nuclear fallout. In 1958, he helped create the Greater St. Louis Committee on Nuclear Information. Soon after, he started Nuclear Information, a printed newsletter from his office, which later became Environment magazine. Commoner wrote several books about the harmful effects of above-ground nuclear testing on the environment. In 1970, he received the International Humanist Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

Environmental books

In 1971, Commoner wrote a popular book called The Closing Circle. He suggested that the United States should change its economy to follow the rules of nature. For example, he believed that products that harm the environment, such as certain detergents or synthetic fabrics, should be replaced with natural materials like soap, cotton, and wool. This book was one of the first to share the idea of sustainability with many people. Commoner supported a political system that combines environmental care with social equality. He argued that environmental harm was mainly caused by technologies used in capitalist systems, not by population growth. He debated with Paul R. Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb, and others. He believed they focused too much on overpopulation as the cause of environmental problems and that their solutions were not fair because they would harm poor people. Commoner thought that progress in technology and society would naturally reduce both population growth and environmental harm.

One of Commoner’s lasting contributions was his four laws of ecology, which he wrote about in The Closing Circle. These laws are:

• Everything in nature is connected. All living things share one environment, and what affects one part of it affects the whole.
• Nothing disappears. In nature, there is no such thing as waste, and nothing can be thrown away.
• Nature is the best guide. Humans have created technology to improve on natural systems, but these changes often harm the environment.
• Nothing comes without a cost. Using natural resources always changes them into forms that are no longer useful.

In 1976, Commoner wrote another popular book, The Poverty of Power. He discussed three major problems in the United States during the 1970s: the environment, energy, and the economy. He said the environment was under threat, energy supplies seemed limited, and the economy was weakening. He argued these issues were linked because industries that used the most energy had the greatest negative impact on the environment. Using non-renewable energy sources made those resources scarce, increased energy costs, and hurt the economy. At the end of the book, he claimed the problems were caused by the capitalist system and could only be fixed by replacing it with a socialist system.

In 1990, Commoner published Making Peace With the Planet. In this book, he analyzed the ongoing environmental crisis and argued that the way goods are made needs to be changed.

Poverty and population

Commoner studied how poverty and population growth are connected, disagreeing with how this relationship is usually explained. He argued that the fast population growth in developing countries happens because these nations lack enough living standards. He explained that poverty causes population increases, which eventually slow down, not the other way around. Developing countries saw the living standards of developed nations but could not fully reach them, which stopped these countries from improving and slowed their population growth.

Commoner said that developing countries are still affected by the effects of colonialism. These countries were and still are economically controlled by more developed nations. Western nations built roads, communication systems, engineering projects, and provided agricultural and medical services in developing countries. These actions were part of using the labor and natural resources of these nations. This helped start the first stage of a "demographic transition," but later stages were not reached because the wealth created in developing countries was sent to the colonizing nations. This allowed the more developed countries to reach advanced stages of population change, while the developing countries remained stuck at an early stage, where population growth was not balanced.

Commoner described this situation as "demographic parasitism." He explained that the advanced countries benefit from the lack of population balance in the colonies. As wealth from poor nations was taken by powerful nations, the power of the rich nations grew, increasing their ability to exploit others. The gap between rich and poor nations widened because the wealthy nations were supported by the poor ones. This exploitation of resources from developing countries caused an unexpected problem: rapid population growth. A demographer named Nathan Keyfitz found that the growth of industrial capitalism in Western nations from 1800 to 1950 led to an extra one billion people in the world, mostly in tropical regions.

This is shown in studies of India and the use of contraceptives. In India, family planning efforts failed to lower birth rates because people believed children were needed to improve their economic situation. Studies showed that controlling population growth in a country like India depends on people wanting to limit family size for economic reasons.

Commoner’s solution is that wealthier nations must help developing countries grow and reach the same level of well-being as developed nations. He said this is the only way to achieve balanced population growth in these countries. He argued that the only way to fix the global population crisis, which results from rich nations exploiting poor ones, is to return enough wealth to poor countries so they can choose to limit their own population growth.

Commoner concluded that poverty is the main cause of the population crisis. If overpopulation in poor nations is caused by rich nations becoming wealthy through exploitation, then the only solution is to "redistribute [the wealth], among nations and within them."

2000 Dioxin Arctic study

In September 2000, a study published by the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation, led by Commoner, discovered that Inuit women in Nunavut, Canada, had high levels of dioxins in their breast milk. The study used computer models to trace the source of the dioxins and found that the pollution in the Arctic came from the United States. Of 44,000 dioxin sources in the United States, only 19 were responsible for more than a third of the dioxin pollution in Nunavut. Among these 19, Harrisburg's incinerator was identified as the largest source of dioxin pollution. Commoner received the 2002 Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage.

Influence

In February 1970, Time magazine added a section about the environment in its issue. This section included articles discussing the "environmental crisis" and a quote from President Richard Nixon’s State of the Union address. Nixon said, "Shall we surrender to our surroundings or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land and to our water?"

Time magazine referred to Barry Commoner as the "Paul Revere of ecology" because of his work explaining how nuclear test waste and other pollutants harm air, water, and soil. The magazine’s cover was described as a "call to arms," meaning it aimed to encourage people to take action by appealing to their sense of right and wrong.

In April 1970, the first Earth Day occurred. About 20 million Americans participated in peaceful demonstrations supporting environmental reform, with related events taking place on university campuses across the United States. Barry Commoner’s writings also influenced the Nixon administration’s decision in June 1970 to create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and pass the Clean Air Act of 1970.

Environmental activism

In 1969, Commoner helped start the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, a group that works to protect the environment. His early leadership for this nonprofit group led to several successful lawsuits that helped protect natural resources.

In 1980, Commoner created the Citizens Party to share his ideas about protecting the environment. He ran for president of the United States in the 1980 election. His running mate for vice president was La Donna Harris, the Native-American wife of Fred Harris, a former Democratic senator from Oklahoma. However, in Ohio, she was replaced on the ballot by Wretha Hanson. His campaign on the Citizens Party ticket received 233,052 votes, which was 0.27 percent of the total votes cast.

After his presidential campaign, Commoner returned to New York City and moved his research center, the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, to Queens College. He left that position in 2000. At the time of his death, Commoner was a senior scientist at Queens College.

Personal life

After serving in World War II, Commoner married the former Gloria Gordon, a psychologist from St. Louis. They had two children, Frederic and Lucy Commoner, and one granddaughter. After their divorce, in 1980 he married Lisa Feiner, whom he met through her work as a public television producer.

Death and legacy

Barry Commoner passed away on September 30, 2012, in Manhattan, New York.

He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

In 2014, the Center for Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College was renamed The Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment.

Works

• Science and Survival (1966), New York: Viking. OCLC 225105 – about the use of science and technology to deal with environmental dangers.
• The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology (1971), New York: Knopf. ISBN 039442350X.
• The Poverty of Power: Energy and the Economic Crisis (1976), New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-394-40371-7.
• The Politics of Energy (1979), New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-50800-9.
• Making Peace With the Planet (1990), New York: Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-394-56598-9.

• "Long-range Air Transport of Dioxin from North American Sources to Ecologically Vulnerable Receptors in Nunavut, Arctic Canada" (2000), Commoner, Barry; Bartlett, Paul Woods; Eisl, Holger; Couchot, Kim; Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Queens College, City University of New York, published by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, Montréal, Québec, Canada.