Editorial: Another Notable Anniversary Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ and its Influence

Rachel Carson has become Saint Rachel, canonized time and again by the environmental movement. May 27, 2007, marked the 100th anniversary of her birth. In that year, the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster, Massachusetts, hosted a major Rachel Carson centennial exhibition. The show was a partnership project of the museum and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and it featured artifacts, writings, photographs, and artwork from Carson’s life and career. In 2012, the 50th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring was commemorated by a Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens event and exhibit. From September 7 through October 23, the exhibit presented artwork, photos, and interpretive panels in the visitor center. Canonization, and the posthumous fame it bestows, comes at a price: the disappearance of the Rachel Carson whose work was driven by two forces. The first was the love of nature. A perceptive review of The Sea Around Us compares Carson with great science writers who share with her a love of nature: . . . It is not an accident of history that Gilbert White and Charles Darwin described flora and fauna with genius, nor that the great mariners and voyagers in distant lands can re-create their experiences as part of our own. They wrote as they saw and their honest, questing eye, their care for detail is raised to the power of art by a deep-felt love of nature, and respect for all things that live and move and have their being. . . . The second force was the love of a woman, Dorothy Freeman, a person who in Carson’s view made her later life endurable and her later work possible: . . . All I am certain of is this: that it is quite necessary for me to know that there is someone who is deeply devoted to me as a person, and who also has the capacity and the depth of understanding to share, vicariously, the sometimes crushing burden of creative effort, recognizing the heartache, the great weariness of mind and body, the occasional black despair it may involve—someone who cherishes me and what I am trying to create, as well. . . .

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From Silent Spring to The Frog of War

10.1093/oso/9780198808978.003.0013 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

David K. Skelly

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Laboratory Experiments ◽

Wild Populations ◽

Rachel Carson ◽

Chemical Agents ◽

Silent Spring ◽

The World ◽

History Information ◽

Wildlife Populations ◽

The Impact

This chapter presents two examples to demonstrate that natural history is the necessary basis of any reliable understanding of the world. More than a half century ago, Rachel Carson revolutionized the public’s view of pesticides. The foundation of her success was the careful use of natural history data, collated from across North America. The examples she assembled left little doubt that DDT and other pesticides were causing a widespread decline in birds. More recently, the case for the impact of atrazine on wildlife was based on laboratory experiments, without the advantage of natural history observations. For atrazine, natural history observations now suggest that other chemical agents are more likely to be responsible for feminization of wildlife populations. Developing expectations for scientists to collect natural history information can help to avoid over-extrapolating lab results to wild populations, a tendency often seen when those lab results conform to preconceptions about chemicals in the environment.

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Since Silent Spring: New Voices, New Analyses, and New Movements

NEW SOLUTIONS A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy ◽

10.2190/p3b2-vt3l-7jdf-424u ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 319-334 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

H. Patricia Hynes

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Civil Rights ◽

Community Development ◽

Environmental Policies ◽

The United States ◽

Agricultural Technologies ◽

Rachel Carson ◽

Non Profit ◽

Silent Spring ◽

Pollutant Discharge

Forty years ago, in the enormously praised and fiercely criticized book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson demonstrated the dangers of pesticides to humans and ecosystems and called for precaution in their use. Yet, the majority of environmental regulations passed since 1962 have primarily addressed pollutant discharge rather than cleaner products and technologies. The number of active ingredients in pesticides used in the United States has risen from 32 in 1939 to 860 in recent times, while the overall volume of agrochemicals applied has nearly doubled since the publication of Silent Spring. The last 40 years have brought significant changes with respect to environmental policies, agricultural technologies, urbanization, civil rights, women's rights, the roles of non-profit organizations and community development, and increased poverty, hunger, and economic inequality. In recent years, new voices, new analyses, and new movements have emerged offering fresh perspectives on how we can answer Carson's clarion call to protect our planet and ourselves.

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