Justice & Law Quote by Barry Commoner

Commoner’s line lands like a slap at the fantasy of clean separation: the comforting idea that you can extract, dump, burn, or pave “over there” and keep “over here” intact. Coming from a scientist who doubled as a public intellectual in the age of atomic fallout, pesticide alarms, and postwar industrial boom, it’s not a misty celebration of interconnectedness. It’s a warning label.

The specific intent is corrective and political. Commoner is arguing against siloed thinking - not just in ecology, but in governance and economics. When he calls it a “law,” he borrows the authority of physics to shame the complacency of policy-by-compartment: the factory’s effluent is not merely a factory problem; it becomes a river problem, a food-chain problem, a public health problem, a labor problem, a democracy problem. The sentence is engineered for memorability, almost nursery-rhyme simple, because its target isn’t other scientists. It’s decision-makers and consumers trained to believe in externalities.

The subtext is moral without sounding moralistic. If everything is related, then accountability can’t be outsourced. “Related” also implies time: today’s convenience is tomorrow’s cleanup, often paid by people who didn’t get the benefit. That’s why the quote still scans in 2026 as an indictment of our favorite modern trick - turning complex systems into spreadsheets, then acting surprised when the numbers don’t stay put. Commoner’s ecology is a portrait of consequence, not harmony.