Barry Commoner was born on May 28, 1917, and died on September 30, 2012. He was an American scientist, teacher, and politician. He played an important role in the study of the environment and helped start the modern environmental movement. He worked as the director of the Center for Biology of Natural Systems and led its Critical Genetics Project. In 1980, he ran for president as a candidate for the Citizens Party. His research on the effects of radioactive material from nuclear weapons testing contributed to the creation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.

Early life

Commoner was born on May 28, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. In 1937, he earned his bachelor's degree in zoology from Columbia University. Later, he received his master's degree from Harvard University in 1938 and his doctoral degree in 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 associate editor for Science Illustrated. In 1947, he became a professor of plant physiology at Washington University in St. Louis. He 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." In 1961, he was on the founding editorial board of the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

In the late 1950s, Commoner became known for his opposition to nuclear weapons testing. He joined a team that conducted the Baby Tooth Survey, which showed Strontium 90 in children's teeth because of nuclear fallout. In 1958, he helped start the Greater St. Louis Committee on Nuclear Information. Soon after, he created Nuclear Information, a mimeographed newsletter published in his office. This newsletter later became Environment magazine. Commoner wrote several books about the negative effects of atmospheric (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 his 1971 bestselling book The Closing Circle, Commoner proposed that the United States should change its economy to follow the rules of nature. He believed that harmful products, such as certain cleaning supplies or man-made fabrics, should be replaced with natural alternatives, like soap or materials made from cotton and wool. This book was one of the first to share the idea of sustainability with many people. Commoner supported a system that combined environmental care with social equality, arguing that capitalist methods were the main cause of environmental harm, not population growth. He disagreed with Paul R. Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb, and others who focused too much on overpopulation as the cause of environmental problems. Commoner said their solutions were not fair because they would hurt poor people and involved forcing changes that were not acceptable. He believed that improvements in technology and society would naturally reduce population growth and environmental harm over time.

One of Commoner’s lasting contributions was his four laws of ecology, written in The Closing Circle in 1971. These laws are:

• Everything is connected to everything else. All living things share one environment, and actions that affect one part of it affect the whole.
• Everything must go somewhere. In nature, there is no such thing as waste, and nothing can simply be thrown away.
• Nature knows best. Humans have created technology to improve on natural systems, but changing these systems often harms them.
• There is no such thing as a free lunch. Using natural resources always leads to waste, as resources are changed from useful to useless forms.

In 1976, Commoner wrote another bestseller, The Poverty of Power. In this book, he discussed three major problems facing the United States in the 1970s: the environment, energy, and the economy. He said the country faced environmental harm, energy shortages, and economic decline. He argued these issues were linked: industries that used the most energy caused the most damage to the environment. Relying on non-renewable energy sources made these resources scarce, increasing energy costs and harming the economy. At the end of the book, Commoner claimed the problems were caused by the capitalist system and could only be solved by replacing it with a form of socialism.

In 1990, Commoner published Making Peace With the Planet, a book that examined the ongoing environmental crisis. He argued that the way goods are made must be changed to address these challenges.

Poverty and population

Commoner studied how poverty and population growth are connected, disagreeing with how this connection is usually explained. He believed that fast population growth in developing countries happens because these countries lack good living conditions. He explained that poverty causes population growth to rise first, then slow down later, not the other way around. Developing countries saw the living standards of developed nations but could not fully reach them. This prevented these countries from improving and slowed their population growth.

Commoner said that developing countries are still affected by the past of colonialism. These countries were, and still are, "colonies" of more developed nations. Western countries built roads, communication systems, and services like farming and healthcare in developing nations as part of using their labor and natural resources. This helped start the first step of a "demographic transition," but other steps were not completed. Wealth created in developing countries was sent to the colonizing nations, allowing them to reach more advanced stages of demographic transition. Meanwhile, the colonies did not reach the second stage, which is balancing population numbers.

Commoner described colonialism as a type of "demographic parasitism," where the advanced country benefits from the colony’s lack of progress in balancing population numbers. As wealth from poor countries was taken by rich ones, the power of rich nations grew, increasing the gap between wealthy and poor countries. This exploitation led to a problem: rapid population growth. Demographer Nathan Keyfitz said that the growth of industrial capitalism in Western nations between 1800 and 1950 caused an extra one billion people in the world, mostly in tropical regions.

This idea is shown in studies of India and birth control. In India, family planning efforts did not lower birth rates because people believed children were needed to improve their economic situation. Studies show that population control in a country like India depends on people wanting to limit children for economic reasons.

Commoner suggested that wealthier nations must help developing countries grow and reach the same level of well-being as developed nations. This is the only way to achieve balanced population numbers in these countries. He argued that the solution to the global population crisis, which results from rich nations exploiting poor ones, is to return wealth taken from poor countries so they can voluntarily reduce their 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, the only way to solve this 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. Out of 44,000 sources of dioxin pollution in the United States, 19 were responsible for more than one-third of the dioxin pollution in Nunavut. Among these 19 sources, the incinerator in Harrisburg was identified as the largest contributor of dioxin pollution. He 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. The section included articles discussing the "environmental crisis" and a quote from President Richard Nixon’s State of the Union address, where he called the environmental issue "The great question of the '70s." Nixon asked, "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 Commoner as the "Paul Revere of ecology" because of his work on environmental threats. He studied the dangers to life caused by fallout from nuclear tests and other pollutants in water, soil, and air. The magazine’s cover was described as a "call to arms," aiming to encourage public support for environmental protection by appealing to people’s sense of responsibility.

In April 1970, the first Earth Day took place, with 20 million Americans participating in peaceful demonstrations for environmental reform. Events were also held at universities across the United States. Commoner’s writings are considered to have 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 of citizens working to protect the environment. His early leadership for this group led to several lawsuits that helped protect the environment.

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

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

Personal life

After World War II, Commoner married Gloria Gordon, a psychologist from St. Louis. They had two children, Frederic and Lucy Commoner, and one granddaughter. After a divorce, in 1980 he married Lisa Feiner. He met her while she was working 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 was honored with 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 how science and technology can help 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.