Rachel Carson
If you have any interest in environmental issues, you would have read or heard about Rachel Carson (1907-1964). Her book Silent Spring helped launch the environmental movement in the US and elsewhere. She was a marine scientist, ecologist, and also an extraordinary science writer.
Researcher and writer
Growing up in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania, Carson inherited from her mother a life-long love of nature and the living world. With an M.A. in Zoology, she joined the US Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for newspapers. Ultimately, she became the Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In her free time, Carson turned her government research into popular books: Under the Sea-Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1952), which was a prize-winning study of the ocean, and The Edge of the Sea (1955). These books made Carson famous as a naturalist and popular science writer. In 1952, Carson resigned from government service to devote herself to her writing.
Speaking out
In early 1958, an old friend wrote to her that the aerial spraying of DDT had devastated a local wildlife sanctuary. The friend described the ghastly deaths of birds that had occurred. Carson had already collected enough evidence for the harmful, often deadly, effects of toxic chemicals on wildlife and human life. She felt the urge to warn the public about the long-term effects of the excessive and irresponsible use of pesticides. It is said that her courage to speak out was bolstered by the following lies of the poem Protest, written in 1914, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:
To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men.
In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world. The book described how the use of pesticides, DDT in particular, could affect people’s health and also destroy wildlife to such an extent that the spring season could arrive without the song of the birds. Perhaps no other book on the environment in the twentieth century had the impact that this book had on people’s consciousness. It appeared right at the beginning of the environmental movement and became a cult book.
Silent Spring created a big debate in the US. The chemical industry (and even the government) tried to malign Carson and discredit her data. She was, however, thorough in providing a solid scientific basis for her claims and ultimately her book led to the banning of DDT in the US and elsewhere.
Untimely death
Carson did not live long after the publication of the book. Shortly before her death from cancer in 1964, she remarked, “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.” Carson’s work and writings continue to inspire new generations to protect the living world and all its creatures.
Afterword: You can find several videos on Rachel Carson on YouTube. There is a PBS documentary here and an audiobook version of Silent Spring here.
Rachel’s comment about man’s attitude towards nature reminds me that the Navadarshnam seed thought was: “When man treats nature as a loving mother, she blesses him way beyond wildest expectations.” The Nd attitude remains the same.
Although a scientist, she was a tremendous force through her advocacy. She too had gone through financial troubles and constraints in her fight. But she believed in what she was doing and therefore went ahead with her efforts in spite of antagonists in the corridors of power. It is these little things of courage and conviction that makes all the difference to humankind on this earth.