RSS format
Updates via email
Rachel Carson: Environmental Advocate
Before Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was serialized in the magazine The New Yorker in 1962, she made sure that her book publisher, Houghton Mifflin, had good libel insurance. Carson, already a successful and much-admired writer on natural history, knew that what was contained within the pages of her polemic against indiscriminate use of pesticides was certain to set off a strong reaction in the chemical industry. Lawsuits were, indeed, threatened.
In the end, however, Carson’s best defenses were the meticulous quality of her research—she was a trained scientist and had carefully checked all her statements—and her steadfastness in the face of vociferous objections of chemical companies. Carson quietly stood behind her warnings of the consequences of pesticide use, despite accusations that she engaged in “emotionalism” and “gross distortion” and even that she was a communist. The work spoke for itself and became a best seller. Carson, who died just two years later, left a body of work that stands as some of the best environmental writing ever published. And as she wrote in 1954, “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
Following is Britannica’s article on Rachel Carson:
Rachel Carson
born May 27, 1907, Springdale, Pa., U.S.
died April 14, 1964, Silver Spring, Md.
in full Rachel Louise Carson American biologist well known for her writings on environmental pollution and the natural history of the sea.
Carson early developed a deep interest in the natural world. She entered Pennsylvania College for Women with the intention of becoming a writer but soon changed her major field of study from English to biology. After taking her bachelor’s degree in 1929, she did graduate work at Johns Hopkins University (M.A., 1932) and in 1931 joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, where she taught for five years. From 1929 to 1936 she also taught in the Johns Hopkins summer school and pursued postgraduate studies at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
In 1936 Carson took a position as aquatic biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (from 1940 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), where she remained until 1952, the last three years as editor in chief of the service’s publications. An article in The Atlantic Monthly in 1937 served as the basis for her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, published in 1941. It was widely praised, as were all her books, for its remarkable combination of scientific accuracy and thoroughness with an elegant and lyrical prose style. The Sea Around Us (1951) became a national best-seller, won a National Book Award, and was eventually translated into 30 languages. Her third book, The Edge of the Sea, was published in 1955.
Her prophetic Silent Spring (1962) was also a best-seller that is credited with creating a worldwide awareness of the dangers of environmental pollution. Carson died before she could see any substantive results from her work on this issue.
Image: Rachel Carson; © Underwood & Underwood/Corbis.
To Learn More:
- Rachel Carson.org
- Information on Rachel Carson and pesticides from the Natural Resources Defense Council
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services page on the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Maine
- “Rachel Carson,” in the NASA Earth Observatory Series “On the Shoulders of Giants”
- Environmental Working Group, a Washington-D.C. based organization that researches and publicizes threats to the environment and health
How Can I Help?
- Action Network, a gateway to online activism centres for over 170 leading environment, health and population advocacy organizations
- Greenpeace International
Books We Like
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson (40th anniversary edition, 2002)
The 1962 publication of Silent Spring, by marine biologist and nature writer Rachel Carson, was an event of enormous significance—not only for the world of publishing but, much more importantly, for the world itself. The book solidified Carson’s position as America’s top nature writer and soon became a literary classic, but its real accomplishment lay elsewhere.
Its shocking description of the dangers associated with the uncontrolled use of pesticides gave birth to the modern environmental movement and was largely responsible for the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. In addition, the book was a major force behind the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and the ban on domestic U.S. production of DDT.
According to Carson, “the most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.” But that is not all. Carson says, “We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge.”
Much of Silent Spring is devoted to a discussion of these chemicals (“elixirs of death”) and their effect on water, soil, plants, nonhuman animals, and humans. Just one of the tragic results is that birds no longer return to heavily polluted areas in spring (hence the title Silent Spring). Carson ends her book with a defense of biological, rather than chemical, solutions for pest control. Such solutions are “based on understanding of the living organisms they seek to control, and of the whole fabric of life to which these organisms belong.”
Forty-five years later, Carson’s warnings still ring all too true: much of the pre-Silent Spring world has not changed. The 40th anniversary edition, with essays by Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist E.O. Wilson and biographer Linda Lear, brings Carson’s message to us once again. That message is as powerful today as it was when first published.
Linda Lear’s introductory essay provides details of Carson’s life, valuable insights into the book, and an exhortation to read it again and again: “We are a nation still debating the questions it raised, still unresolved as to how to act for the common good, how to achieve environmental justice.” A similar theme is echoed by E.O. Wilson in his afterword: “We are still poisoning the air and water and eroding the biosphere, albeit less so than if Rachel Carson had not written.”
Clearly, Silent Spring is one book that made a difference!
Leave a Reply