21^st Eco-gen Ambassador Program- Theme Report, November 2018

‘The Most Impressive Movie or Book related with Environmental Issues’

Introduction

I strongly believe that books can serve as powerful catalysts for social change. While researching on the monthly topic of Pesticides for an earlier Tunza report, I had come across ‘Silent Spring’, an environmental science book by Rachel Carson, a courageous woman who took on the chemical industry through pertinent questions about human impact on nature and helped set the stage for a mass environmental movement. 

Through this report I am introducing this inspirational book, as also endorsing Carson’s personal point of view, wherein she identified commercial interests as the crux of the problem and questioned if we could conquer our greed to live as a part of the earth’s natural systems rather than establish our supremacy as the master of them.

About the Author

Carson grew up in rural Pennsylvania with a love for nature that she often expressed through writing and poetry. While serving as a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), she created educational brochures, as well as published books and magazine articles, after thorough research and with a poetic expression.

Her books ‘Under the Sea Wind’, ‘The Sea Around Us’ (on New York Times best-seller list for 86 weeks), and ‘The Edge of the Sea’, highlighted the resilience of natural systems and interconnections of nature with all living things. Her writing mostly on marine life, described the complex web of life that linked mollusks to seabirds to the fish swimming in the deepest oceans.

Background

Developed in 1939, Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) was effectively used to clear malaria-causing insects in South Pacific islands, for benefit of American troops during World War II. Its inventor, Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Muller, was awarded the Nobel Prize based on the use of DDT in the control of vector diseases such as malaria, typhus and yellow fever. Subsequently it emerged as the most powerful pesticide the world had ever known, capable of killing hundreds of different kinds of insects at once.

When DDT became available for civilian use in 1945, Carson was one of the very few people who expressed concern about this new miracle compound. She wrote to Reader's Digest to propose an article about a series of tests on DDT being conducted not far from where she lived in Maryland. However the magazine rejected the idea.

Thirteen years later, in 1958, when the use of the pesticide had substantially increased since 1945, Carson again tried, unsuccessfully, to interest a magazine in highlighting the ill effects of DDT, after learning of large bird kills on Cape Cod as the result of DDT sprayings. Undeterred and having already done significant research on the subject, Carson decided to tackle the issue in a book.

About the Book

Published in 1962, after half a decade of work, 'Silent Spring' brought Carson’s environmental concerns to the American public, as she documented the adverse environmental consequences of indiscriminate use of synthetic pesticides. She daringly accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.

The book starts with its most haunting and famous chapter, "A Fable for Tomorrow," – a true story of examples drawn from real communities, depicted through a nameless American town where use of DDT had ‘silenced’ all life- from wildlife, birds, bees and agricultural animals to domestic pets, and even humans. Carson’s fictional narrative as an introduction to a controversial scientific subject not only left an lasting impression and evoked an emotional response but also alarmed readers across America.

'Silent Spring' goes on to elaborately describe how DDT enters the food chain and accumulates in the fatty tissues of animals, including human beings, and causes cancer and genetic damage. A single application on a crop, according to Carson, can kill insects for months, not only the targeted or harmful insects but countless more, including beneficial insects, and still continue to remain toxic in the environment for years, even after it was diluted by rainwater. Carson concludes that DDT and other pesticides had irrevocably harmed animals and had contaminated the world's food supply.

Reception of the Book

'Silent Spring' and Carson herself, initially encountered fierce opposition by chemical companies. However the book became an instant best-seller and the most talked about book in decades.

Carson had quoted various federal science sources and carried out extensive private research to document her analysis about human misuse of chemical pesticides without knowing the extent of their potential harmful effects. Anticipating the reaction of the chemical industry, she had consulted a list of experts who had read and approved her manuscript before it was published. Many eminent scientists rose to her defense, and President's Science Advisory Committee supported both the book and its author after a thorough examination.

Impact/Legacy of the book and Accolades

'Silent Spring' was a landmark text that “changed the world.” The threats outlined in the book- contamination of food chains, cancer, genetic damage, extinction of species could not be ignored. This lead to wide acceptance of the need to regulate industry in order to protect the environment and inspired the modern environmental movement, which began in earnest a decade later and ultimately resulted in the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

According to me, the most important legacy of 'Silent Spring', was a new public awareness that nature was vulnerable to human intervention and it is important to ensure that technological progress is not achieved at the cost of environmental conservation.

As for pesticides, the public debate started to demand thorough assessment of the dangers of pesticides, and the onus of proof shifted from the opponents of unrestrained pesticide use to the manufacturers.

It triggered a reversal in national pesticide policy, as DDT came under much closer government supervision, finally leading to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses.

'Silent Spring' initiated a social revolution and ignited a democratic activist movement, pushing federal government to take responsibility; and suggesting that individuals and groups should not only question the direction of science and technology, but also demand answers and accountability for what their governments allow to put into the environment.

In 1996, a follow-up book, 'Beyond Silent Spring' was published, co-written by H.F. van Emden and David Peakall.

Discover Magazine named 'Silent Spring' as one of the 25 greatest science books of all time, in 2006.

Conclusion

I conclude with Carson’s own remarks on a CBS documentary about 'Silent Spring'.

"Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself. [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves."

Rachel Carson’s message through ‘Silent Spring’ still resonates loud and clear, several decades after the publication of her revolutionary book, reminding us that survival or our planet requisites that we stop this war against ourselves.

References and Sources

http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring