Today marks the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. For many, her book also marks the dawn of American environmentalism. Yet 50 years later, a new cloud of misinformation, misdirection and misanthropic attempts to stop any action on climate change renews Carson's clarion call for action to stop careless polluters.
The product of four years worth of labor, Carson's Silent Spring carefully and coherently detailed the threats pesticides pose to public health and the environment. She translated the work of scientists and made the impacts of pesticides personal. The prospect of chemicals like DDT leading us to a spring without songbirds was a chilling warning of the dangers we faced. As Time magazine put it in 1999: "Before there was an environmental movement there was one brave woman and her very brave book."
The polluter industry was not as kind. Soaked with sexism, efforts to discredit Carson's work painted her as "hysterical" and "over empathetic." One major pesticide manufacturer threatened her publisher with a lawsuit and openly suggested that Carson was subject to "sinister" (read: Soviet) influences.
But like a daffodil piercing thawing ground, Carson's work broke through. With 50 years of hindsight, only the industry sounds hysterical. An independent review board commissioned by President Kennedy substantiated the findings illustrated in Silent Spring. In truth, Carson never called for an outright ban on pesticides. She always insisted that chemicals have a place in society. Instead, she argued that citizens had a right to know about the dangers posed by pesticides -- it was up to them to decide what to do after that. As Carson wrote in Silent Spring, "If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones -- we had better know something about their nature and their power."
Rachel Carson was attacked by the chemical industry using a playbook that the tobacco industry first developed: discredit the messenger, foster doubt and denial about the science and call for additional research.
Half a century later, polluters still spend millions on the 3-D strategy -- Discredit, Deny and Delay. And its climate scientists who have felt the brunt of these blows in recent years. When private emails from climate scientists were stolen in the fall of 2009, opponents of actions to address climate change pounced. They smeared scientists, turning honest emails about tree rings into a tree ring circus.
But the scientists were exonerated and right. Our planet is warming and the consequences are deadly. The very next year after the email theft -- 2010 -- tied for the warmest on record. Natural disasters in 2011 resulted in the most costly toll in history -- $154 billion worth of worldwide losses from floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires and other extreme weather events. 2012 gave the continental United States the hottest July ever, and a drought on par with the worst months of the 1930's dust bowl.
These extreme weather events, documented in a new report by Henry Waxman and myself, are having a profound impact on public opinion. According to a poll from the Civic Society Institute, 81 percent of Americans are concerned about increased drought, safe drinking water and extreme weather events.
While powerful, the polluter playbook is no match for the truth and those brave enough to shout it from the rooftops. That is the lesson of Rachel Carson. Her courage inspired citizens to demand change, even as polluters tried to silence the author of Silent Spring.
Now we must find ways to translate the implications of the massive collection of climate science in ways that empower people to demand action to reduce carbon pollution.
Silent Spring opened people's eyes to the dangers of pesticides. This past scorched summer should do the same for climate change. Let's hope 50 years from now people will mark this year as a turning point.
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Chemistry is amazing and our use and understanding of it are crucial to our civilization and our understanding of the processes all around us from cooking to medicine. However, rampant overuse and misuse of chemicals can have serious repercussions. Carson was right, and it is easy to just say hey, we have modern civilization and we don't need to sweat the small stuff, but the harsh reality is that despite civilization, we are part of an ecosystem, and what we do has a major impact on it, positive or negative, and everything in that ecosystem as well. To just blow it off is to trigger our ultimate demise.
Drastic and sudden climate change, and the resultant crash of ecosystems wiped out the dinosaurs, many creatures during the ice age, and our closest and long-lived human cousins, the Neanderthals. We may be the smartest of all creatures, but we need a healthy, living Earth. Period.
Criticism of restrictions on DDT use
Critics claim that restricting DDT in vector control have caused unnecessary deaths due to malaria. Estimates range from hundreds of thousands,[117] to millions. Robert Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health said in 2007, "The ban on DDT may have killed 20 million children."[118] These arguments have been dismissed as "outrageous" by former WHO scientist Socrates Litsios. May Berenbaum, University of Illinois entomologist, says, "to blame environmentalists who oppose DDT for more deaths than Hitler is worse than irresponsible."[85] Investigative journalist Adam Sarvana and others characterize this notion as a "myth" promoted principally by Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM).[119][120]………..
…………Vietnam has enjoyed declining malaria cases and a 97% mortaility reduction after switching in 1991 from a poorly funded DDT-based campaign to a program based on prompt treatment, bednets, and pyrethroid group insecticides.[131]
In Mexico, effective and affordable chemical and non-chemical strategies against malaria have been so successful that the Mexican DDT manufacturing plant ceased production due to lack of demand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt
I'm not saying she got everything wrong. But she was wrong on some important things & people who accept all her conclusions without looking at the current state of the science are more akin to environmental evangelists than scientists.
You negelected to meniton the MILLIONS of deaths from malaria because eco zealots refused to allow DDT to be used. Let me know where I can read the apology
http://junkscience.com/1999/07/26/100-things-you-should-know-about-ddt/
Repeating the lie repeatedly doens't make it true.
In addition to pesticides, we now have climate change, which Senator Markey rightly stresses, plus fracking, the Keystone Pipeline, Arctic and deepwater drilling, massive mining operations (read Pebble Mine), and GMOs.
In appreciation of Rachel Carson's hard work and courage, we should each be working to raise consciousness about and demanding action on all these horrific new threats to our immediate well-being and ultimately to life on earth.
But without a National Carbon Tithe-Tax on every American from Cradle to (Early) Grave.
We don't need more public welfare tax dole scientists (sic). We need more OWS'rs.
Having said that, what purpose is served by a Carbon Tithe Tax for more *climaticians*?
Once they get Carbon TIthe-Tax, the float goes to CBOT-ICE for commodities speculation!
Who benefits directly from unregulated out of control commodities speculation?
Corporate EndGame is GMO corn fields from sea to shining sea, without a chirp or croak.