SILENT SPRING

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WOMEN
We’re All Wonder Woman
By Jill Tietjen, Contributor
STEM women's champion, advocate for women, author, speaker and...
Although we may not each have Wonder Woman’s superpowers, we each possess the ability to change the world. Each of the women
SCIENCE
The Zika Virus And Politicized Science
By Peter Schwartz, Contributor
Distinguished Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute; Author, "In Defense ...
The Zika threat is causing great concern at the Rio Olympics, with some athletes having chosen to avoid the Games altogether rather than risk infection. But among the measures being taken around the world to combat this danger, one is notably absent: the use of DDT.
IMPACT
She Changes the World
By Jill S. Tietjen, Contributor
Past President, National Women's Hall of Fame
Nancy Brinker's determination to fulfill her promise to her dying sister to do something about breast cancer has changed the world. The passion, determination and persistence of women like Brinker have spawned new organizations, fought diseases, and led to the world being a better place for all.
WOMEN
Women Leading the Way
By Jill S. Tietjen, Contributor
Past President, National Women's Hall of Fame
Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, an advocate who has been called a heroine, died in August at age 101. She joins a list of activist women who have made the world a better place. Match the following women, all of whom have been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, with her accomplishment.
GREEN
On History, Sustainability, and Community
By Maria Rodale, Contributor
CEO and Chairman of Rodale, Inc. and book author
GREEN
They Are Biocides, Not Pesticides -- And They Are Creating an Ecocide
By Andrew Kimbrell, Contributor
Andrew Kimbrell is an attorney and author and a frequent contr...
Let's not refer to pesticides, whether they are insecticides, herbicides or fungicides, by anything but their real name: biocides. Words do matter. What is the word that would encompass the result of our using nearly a billion pounds of biocides each year? I would suggest it is nothing short of ecocide.
WORLDPOST
China's 'Inconvenient Truth:' Anti-Pollution Documentary Goes Viral
By Matt Sheehan
GREEN
The Chemical Ocean
By Peter Neill, Contributor
Director, World Ocean Observatory
Like ocean acidification, this is mostly an invisible problem, but it is comparable in import for the vitality of marine ecosystems and the implication for human reliance on the ocean for water, food, and health in the future.
GREEN
What Do Birds Have to Do With Anything?
By Diane Husic, Contributor
Professor of biology at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA
Birds may be just one canary in the climate change "mine." They are important signals of not only environmental disruption, but also of risks to humans.
GREEN
Godzilla and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism
By David Ropeik, Contributor
Author, 'How Risky Is It, Really?'
Are these technological solutions to some of the damage humans have done to ourselves and the natural world, or are they just versions of Castle Bravo and the Oxygen Destroyer, escalations of a self-destructive technological death spiral?
GREEN
50 Years After Rachel Carson: There's Still Hope
By Jeanne Rizzo, Contributor
President and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund
Rachel Carson died half a century ago from breast cancer, but her words about nature and humanity still ring true today.
GREEN
How Our Regulatory System Misjudges Pesticides and Risks Our Health
By Trip Van Noppen, Contributor
President, Earthjustice
It's a plague hard to fight and hard to protect ourselves against -- in part because our regulatory system treats the chemicals as if they had rights; safe until proven guilty.
GREEN
Robert Musil's Rachel Carson and Her Sisters
By Lawrence Wittner, Contributor
Professor of History emeritus, SUNY Albany
Musil shows that, although Carson herself worked well with men, her deepest influences and relationships, her love of nature and science, and her influential contacts came from women.
RELIGION
Passover, Plagues and Rachel Carson: Sustainability at the Seder
By Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, Contributor
Adat Shalom (Bethesda MD); Coalition on the Environment and Je...
The plagues are a parable. Those who build empires on oppression, who defy divine directives of righteousness, will ultimately find their own lives unlivable. Nature is the agent of this cosmic comeuppance.
GREEN
Rachel Carson's Legacy
By Bob Musil, Contributor
President and CEO, Rachel Carson Council
Today, fifty years after Rachel Carson's death from breast cancer in the spring of 1964, Carson's influence is intense, her legacy a living one. She continues to be attacked by right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh who hope to tarnish her reputation and hence her political heirs.
GREEN
Let Me Tell You 'Bout the Birds and the Bees... and a Thing Called Neonics
By Steve Zack, Contributor
Senior Conservation Fellow, Wildlife Conservation Society
The environmental movement progresses in fits and starts. We may win occasional battles, but I sometimes fear we are losing the war and our successes can feel like stopgaps until the next crisis. Are neonics that next crisis?
POLITICS
Saving the World Within: Environmentalism for the Human Gut
By Jedediah Purdy, Contributor
Professor, Duke Law School; Author, 'A Tolerable Anarchy'
Livestock producers manage to keep animals alive until slaughter in crowded, filthy conditions only by pumping them full of antibiotics until slaughter. When you buy a hamburger, you might as well be contributing your dollars to biological warfare research -- aimed at us.
RELIGION
Rachel Carson and Rudolf Steiner -- An Unknown Debt
By Michael Ruse, Contributor
Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University
GREEN
The Legacy of Rachel Carson
By Stephen Kress, Contributor
Vice President for Bird Conservation, National Audubon Society
Ocean temperatures along the Gulf of Maine are on the rise. Yet we hear the same kind of skeptical voices that confronted Carson. We should take courage from all that she confronted, and find like champions who defended her work.
POLITICS
Inspiring Each Other Forward
By Mike Lux, Contributor
President at Mike Lux Media
Yesterday, homeowners who have been royally screwed over by big Wall Street banks risked not only arrest but worse in demonstrations at the Department of Justice demanding that they start prosecuting bankers rather than the people ripped off by them.
GREEN
My Parents Are NIMBYs: Why You Should Be Too
By Kaitlin Solimine, Contributor
Writer and China specialist
My parents have never been activists nor strict environmentalists (although my mother did recommend Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring to me in high school). Now, suddenly, they are die-hard NIMBYs (an acronym for 'Not In My Backyard'), a term with a mostly pejorative air.
POLITICS
A Speech That Speaks to Our Progressive Traditions
By Mike Lux, Contributor
President at Mike Lux Media
To my friends who are cynical, who say it is just a speech, just words, I would argue that if you look at America's history, words matter.
FOOD
What Will You Do for the Revolution? Prop 37, D-Day for the Food Movement
By Dave Murphy, Contributor
Founder, Food Democracy Now!
For the food movement, for the future of our planet and our democracy, there is no more important battle than to reclaim our rights from out of control corporations and the failure of government oversight.
GREEN
Barry Commoner, Social Revolutionary Dressed in Environmentalist's Clothing
By David Ropeik, Contributor
Author, 'How Risky Is It, Really?'
Commoner's passing reminds me that now I'm old, and the simplistic right and wrong/good and bad of my earlier environmentalist innocence has yielded to the crazy plaid complications of many issues.
GREEN
'Silent Spring' Turns 50: Rachel Carson Warned Of 'Pesticide Treadmill' Powered By Big Ag
By Lynne Peeples
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