Everything about Silent Spring totally explained
Silent Spring is a book written by
Rachel Carson and published by
Houghton Mifflin in September 1962. The book is widely credited with helping launch the
environmental movement.
When
Silent Spring was published, Rachel Carson was already a well-known writer on natural history, but hadn't previously been a social critic. The book was widely read (especially after its selection by the
Book-of-the-Month Club and an endorsement by Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas), spending several weeks on the
New York Times best-seller list, and inspired widespread public concerns with
pesticides and
pollution of the
environment.
Silent Spring facilitated the ban of the pesticide
DDT in 1972 in the United States.
The book documented detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment, particularly on
birds. Carson said that DDT had been found to cause thinner egg shells and result in reproductive problems and death. She also accused the
chemical industry of spreading
disinformation, and public officials of accepting industry claims uncritically.
Silent Spring has made many lists of the best nonfiction books of the twentieth century. In the
Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Nonfiction it was at #5, and it was at #78 in the conservative
National Review. Most recently, Silent Spring was named one of the 25 greatest science books of all time by the editors of
Discover Magazine.
A follow-up book,
Beyond Silent Spring, co-authored by H.F. van Emden and
David Peakall, was published in 1986.
Thesis
The book stated that uncontrolled
pesticide use led to the deaths of animals and especially
birds, but also humans. Its title was meant to evoke a spring season in which no bird songs could be heard, because they'd all died from pesticides. Its title was inspired by a poem by
John Keats, "", which contained the lines "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing."
Support
History professor Gary Kroll commented, "Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring played a large role in articulating ecology as a 'subversive subject'— as a perspective that cut against the grain of
materialism,
scientism, and the technologically engineered control of
nature."
According to
Time magazine in 1999, within a year or so of its publication, "all but the most self-serving of Carson's attackers were backing rapidly toward safer ground. In their ugly campaign to reduce a brave scientist's protest to a matter of public relations, the chemical interests had only increased public awareness."
Carson had made it clear she wasn't advocating the banning or complete withdrawal of helpful pesticides, but was instead encouraging responsible and carefully managed use, with an awareness of the chemicals' impact on the entire ecosystem. However, some critics asserted that she was calling for the elimination of all pesticides.
In response to the publication of
Silent Spring and the uproar that ensued,
President Kennedy directed his Science Advisory Committee to investigate the Carson's claims. Their investigation "vindicated" Carson's work, and lead to an immediate strengthening of the regulation of chemical pesticides.
Criticism
Even before Silent Spring was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, there was strong opposition to it. According to
Time in 1999:
Carson was violently assailed by threats of lawsuits and derision, including suggestions that this meticulous scientist was a "hysterical woman" unqualified to write such a book. A huge counterattack was organized and led by Monsanto, Velsicol, American Cyanamid — indeed, the whole chemical industry — duly supported by the Agriculture Department as well as the more cautious in the media.
In the 1960s, biochemist and former chemical industry spokesman Robert White-Stevens stated, "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we'd return to the
Dark Ages, and the
insects and
diseases and
vermin would once again inherit the earth."
Industry and
agribusiness advocates continue to criticize
Silent Spring. In a 2005 essay, "The Harm That Pressure Groups Can Do", British politician
Dick Taverne was damning in his criticism of Carson:
Carson didn't seem to take into account the vital role (DDT) played in controlling the transmission of malaria by killing the mosquitoes that carry the parasite (...) It is the single most effective agent ever developed for saving human life (...) Rachel Carson is a warning to us all of the dangers of neglecting the evidence-based approach and the need to weight potential risk against benefit: it can be argued that the anti-DDT campaign she inspired was responsible for almost as many deaths as some of the worst dictators of the last century.
However,
DDT has never been banned for anti-malaria use, and Carson argued in
Silent Spring that:
No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it's either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story—the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting. ...
What is the measure of this setback? The list of resistant species now includes practically all of the insect groups of medical importance. ... Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes. ...
Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity' ..., Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible.
In the 2000s, Carson and
Silent Spring have come under increasing attack from authors who argue that restrictions placed on DDT have caused needless death, and more generally that environmental regulation unnecessarily restricts
economic freedom. For example, the conservative magazine
Human Events gave
Silent Spring an "honorable mention" in its list of the "Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries," and in 2002, to mark its 40 anniversary,
Reason Magazine published an essay by economist
Ronald Bailey, a former fellow with the
libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. Bailey argued that the book had a mixed legacy:
The book did point to problems that hadn't been adequately addressed, such as the effects of DDT on some wildlife. And given the state of the science at the time she wrote, one might even make the case that Carson's concerns about the effects of synthetic chemicals on human health were not completely unwarranted. Along with other researchers, she was simply ignorant of the facts. But after four decades in which tens of billions of dollars have been wasted chasing imaginary risks without measurably improving American health, her intellectual descendants don't have the same excuse.
Some environmentalists consider this latter day criticism of
Silent Spring and Rachel Carson and concomitant push for DDT to be an industry sponsored strategy to discredit the environmental movement. For example, Monica Moore of Pesticide Action Network has argued that "Renewed promotion of DDT and attacks on those who would limit its use isn’t about malaria, or even DDT. It is a cynical 'better living through chemistry' campaign intended to discredit the environmental health movement, with support from the Bush administration and others who seek nothing less than the dismantling of health and environmental protections.".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Silent Spring'.
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