Silent Spring

Written nearly 60 years ago, it is encouraging to see just how much this spurred change, and depressing to think how obvious this stuff should have been - or rather, how much big business and government thought they could get away with, in the name of profit.

Each chapter delves into a different story of attempted control gone wrong, whether for plants, animals, or humans - or all three. Our attempt to completely control nature inevitably fails - though at the end of the book, she points out some of the new techniques showing promise - sterilized males, for instance. As biologist Edward O Wilson points out in his afterward to this 50th anniversary edition, "We are still poisoning the air and water and eroding the biosphere, albeit less so than if Rachel Carson had not written."

A lot of similarities between the resistance and denial she encountered and the current reaction to global warming and radical climate change. After her book was published, a groundswell of public reaction led to biological conservation, a reduction in toxic pollution, and eventually the Environmental Protection Agency. While the current administration is undercutting all three of these, I have hope that people will soon drive legislation the proper direction before the damage gets much worse.

I remember hearing about the book "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson in my fifth grade science class. The story of a women scientist who sounded the warning about the danger of pesticides and chemicals in the environment was told almost like a legend. Indeed, the book itself has had an impact far beyond its content. It ranks as one of the most influential books of the 20th century and one of the few works in human history that can be said to have a direct impact on how we live and understand our world. The books reputation is well-deserved. It is a damning critique of modern society and our over-reliance on technology, chemicals, and poisons to attempt to dominate and control nature. Carson concludes that, like the threat of nuclear war, humanity's use of increasingly deadly forms of toxic chemicals in agriculture put into the power of our own destruction in our hands.

The book works for a variety of reasons. First, the book is lucid in the best tradition of popular science writing, making its points clearly, concisely, and with deep erudition. Second, the book is in the best tradition of ecology, which emphasizes the fundamental interconnected of all life on earth. Third, Carson is a very good writer who writes brilliantly and poetically. The fundamental strength of the book is that Carson balances strong scientific understanding with the ethical and moral component of the subject. She is genuinely angry at the damage wrought to the environment. I would argue that without this balance, the work either becomes a dry academic text or an angry polemical screed.

Finally, Carson always keeps the effect of chemical pollution on human bodies and human activities firmly in her narrative at all points. You can mention the damage done to bird populations and that will make people sad. But mention that these birds are the birds that people like to listen to in the Spring and people will begin to take notice of the direct on their own lives. "Silent Spring" lives up to the adage coined by Upton Sinclair about his novel "The Jungle," which took place among immigrants in Chicago who worked for the meat-packing industry. While his novel was supposed to be focused on the exploitation of workers in the factories, people were more disgusted with reports of rats in sausages and rotten meat. The led Sinclair to remark "I aimed for [readers'] hearts but I hit their stomach's instead." Carson was able to make people understand viscerally the effect that these chemicals have on the world around us, in the food we eat and the water we drink, and residing in our very bodies.

Many things have changed since "Silent Spring" was written. It led to the banning of DDT worldwide. In many ways it kick-started the second environmental movement. But Carson's fundamental charges against man's obsessions with technology, government inaction in the face of industries, and the hubris that we can control our environment, are still just as potent as ever.