Rachel Carson Silent Spring Review
Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”
Silent Spring is widely accepted as helping start the American environmental movement in 1972. Rachel Carson was a well-known author on natural history when Silent Spring was published. The book spearheaded environmental concern and no book since has had the same impact.
It begins with a story about a quaint and charming little farm town in pristine Anywhere, mid-America and describes wildlife and all the beautiful colors on the countryside. Many people come to the town to fish the streams and observe the beauty, even in the fall and winter, until one day, when something strange happened- like an evil spell had been put on the land, and things began to mysteriously get sick and die.
It goes in to detail about widespread use of DDT and our desire to have a “chemically sterile, insect-free world”. She notes that for the first time in history, humans were being subjected to enormous amounts of chemicals and poisonous substances and they had been recovered from most of the major river systems and even the underground river systems. She talks about Clear Lake, (which is anything but), and the three attempts to suppress the gnat population there, in turn killing grebes and the fish in the lake accumulating up to 300 ppm of the insecticide dumped there. She examines the soil and effects of insecticides and herbicides building up quickly in the soil of farms. In the later chapters, she describes how “nature fights back”, and how biological control is much more effective and critically important.
Silent Spring expedited the ban on DDT in 1972. Yet much controversy surrounds the book. Robert White-Stevens stated, "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth." However, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring never called for the banning of DDT. When people in the 1970s and 1980s stopped widespread spraying of DDT, it was
Silent Spring is widely accepted as helping start the American environmental movement in 1972. Rachel Carson was a well-known author on natural history when Silent Spring was published. The book spearheaded environmental concern and no book since has had the same impact.
It begins with a story about a quaint and charming little farm town in pristine Anywhere, mid-America and describes wildlife and all the beautiful colors on the countryside. Many people come to the town to fish the streams and observe the beauty, even in the fall and winter, until one day, when something strange happened- like an evil spell had been put on the land, and things began to mysteriously get sick and die.
It goes in to detail about widespread use of DDT and our desire to have a “chemically sterile, insect-free world”. She notes that for the first time in history, humans were being subjected to enormous amounts of chemicals and poisonous substances and they had been recovered from most of the major river systems and even the underground river systems. She talks about Clear Lake, (which is anything but), and the three attempts to suppress the gnat population there, in turn killing grebes and the fish in the lake accumulating up to 300 ppm of the insecticide dumped there. She examines the soil and effects of insecticides and herbicides building up quickly in the soil of farms. In the later chapters, she describes how “nature fights back”, and how biological control is much more effective and critically important.
Silent Spring expedited the ban on DDT in 1972. Yet much controversy surrounds the book. Robert White-Stevens stated, "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth." However, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring never called for the banning of DDT. When people in the 1970s and 1980s stopped widespread spraying of DDT, it was