A New Year's Ode to Rachel Carson
Future historians may well be amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? Yet this is precisely what we have done. We have done it, moreover, for reasons that collapse the moment we examine them.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (19)
Rachel Carson's story has been featured in several books I've picked up recently, including Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber and Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest. When I discovered that several friends hadn't heard of her, I felt moved to feature her here. Though I'm not one to feel starstruck by a film actor or rock star, imagining what I might have said to Rachel Carson (if I'd had the opportunity before she passed) makes me feel a bit weak in the knees. Really, "Thank you!" is all there is to say for her brave and groundbreaking work for environmental sustainability and justice.
Rachel Carson
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Rachel_Carson
Background
Throughout her career, Rachel Carson combined writing and science to promote wonder and responsibility in relationship with the natural world. After studying at Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) in 1929 and Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, she earned a master's degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932 (Lear).
During the Great Depression, Carson wrote radio scripts for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, as well as natural history articles for the Baltimore Sun. She became the Editor-in-Chief for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service publications in 1936. When Carson wasn't editing scientific articles or creating conservation pamphlets, she wrote award-winning science-based prose including The Sea Around Us. She left government work in the early 1950s to spend more time writing (Lear).
Silent Spring
The vast majority of agricultural pesticides entered the US scene following World War II. Prior to this era, farmers had successfully grown food without synthetic chemicals for thousands of years. Good farming practices, such as crop rotation and letting land lie fallow or "rest," used an understanding of the ecosystem to maintain soil health and deter pests.
After World War II, companies that produced chemicals for warfare sought new markets for their products. The military mentality was translated into the marketing of pesticides like DDT, creating a "war on insects" that had not previously existed for farmers or homeowners (Steingraber). Though DDT and other nonselective pesticides were not been found to be effective--they kill beneficial insects that eat the pests, and breed resistant strains of the pests themselves--DDT and other persistent, endocrine-disrupting, bioaccumulating toxins were portrayed as being highly safe and continued to be used (Carson, 218).
Image: courtesy of Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream
Rachel Carson's work in natural science and ecology put her in touch with signs of disturbance caused by DDT, such as songbird deaths after pesticide applications, the disappearance of native plants in New England, and many more (Carson, 70, 87). Reluctantly, Carson's writing shifted towards educating the public about problems known by the scientific community to be caused by pesticide overuse (Steingraber, 18).
In 1962, Carson's seminal work Silent Spring was published. This was the first major publication to challenge the misuse of synthetic pesticides, the lack of environmental protection laws, and the prioritization of financial interests over the ecosystem and human health. "Silent Spring can be read as an exploration of how one kind of silence breeds another," writes Sandra Steingraber in Living Downstream, "how the secrecies of government beget a weirdly quiet and lifeless world" (19).
Carson skillfully explains the science behind the dangers of DDT and related chemicals, offering extensive data and case reports illustrating their detrimental effects on the ecosystem and human health. The connection Rachel drew between environmental degradation and human wellbeing helped to promote environmental justice, rather than environmentalism for "nature" alone. In Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken writes,
[Silent Spring] marked, almost inadvertently, a turning point in the unspoken elitism and racism of the early environmental movement...The environment now included people's bodies, mother's milk, African Americans, farmworkers, and the poor, some of whom were just as polluted as the Cuyahoga River (51).
Perhaps what most impresses me about Carson's work is the courage and integrity it took to make her knowledge public. Steingraber writes of the "hushed complicity" of many scientists who were involved in or aware of research pointing to the detrimental effects of pesticides and other synthetic chemicals. "Most were reluctant about speaking out publicly, and some refused Carson's requests for more information. Writing in Silent Spring, Carson acknowledged the constant threat of defunding that hushed many government scientists. But... she had little respect for those who knew but did not speak" (20).
After Silent Spring's publication, Carson began publicly questioning the reasons for scientists' silence, such as the close relationship between chemical companies and scientific organizations (Steingraber). Her reputation was attacked not only by the chemical industry, but by agribusiness, food corporations like Gerber's and General Mills, and government agencies (Lear; Hawken 53). Monsanto created a satirical pamphlet entitled "Desolate Spring," where communities were destroyed by devilish insects (Hawken, 53).
Sexism flavored many critiques of Carson's work--which makes sense. If you don't have an argument of substance to counter Carson's extensive data and articulate points, what can you do but suggest that her gender makes her less credible?
Image source: www.rachelcarson.org/Default.aspx
I am even more grateful for Silent Spring knowing what a struggle it was for Carson to finish. As she completed the book, Carson was struggling with the debilitating effects of breast cancer, radiation treatment, and secondary conditions. She kept her diagnosis a secret, claiming that arthritis was the reason for giving speeches and press conferences from a wheelchair (Hawken, 56). She died in 1964.
Throughout Silent Spring, Carson encourages a more humble and interconnected worldview than a war on pests allows. She ends the book by writing:
The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth (262).
To learn more about Rachel Carson, including a few organizations whose work honors her legacy, visit www.rachelcarson.org.
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Sources:
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. 1962. Reprinted by Crest Books, 1964.
Hawken, Paul. Blessed Unrest. 2007.
Lear, Linda. "Rachel Carson's Biography." 2015. https://www.rachelcarson.org/Bio.aspx.
Steingraber, Sandra. Living Downstream. 2010.
