Rachel Carson 1907-1964
Posted on Thu, Mar 19, 2009
Rachel Carson made environmentalism respectable. Before Silent Spring, nearly all Americans believed that science was only a force for good. Carson’s work exposed the dark side of science. It showed that DDT and other chemicals we were using to enhance agricultural productivity were poisoning our lakes, rivers, oceans, and ourselves. Thanks to her, the wanton destruction of nature is no longer called progress.
In 1992, a panel of distinguished Americans declared Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring the most influential book of the past 50 years. This was one of the latest in a long line of tributes to a woman who almost single-handedly alerted Americans to the dark side of science in alliance with industrial society. She, herself, was a scientist.
It is important to remember how much controversy Silent Spring aroused when it was published in 1962. The pesticide industry tried to have the book suppressed and challenged its findings. The book remained on the bestseller list for months and remains in print now, 34 years later. Vice President Al Gore credits Carson’s work with prompting the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency though he points out that, for political reasons, the Agency has failed to live up to its promise. As Gore has said, Silent Spring helped him and millions of others to develop an environmental consciousness. Among other noteworthy elements of the book, it introduced the term ecosystem to the public.
Ironically and sadly, while this controversy was swirling around the book, the author was dying of cancer – a cancer that may have been caused by exposure to environmental carcinogens such as those she studied. She died in 1964. One measure of her influence may be seen in the fact that chemical industry sources are still passionately trying to convince people that she was wrong, that “man” can “control” nature through chemistry.
Click here to read about the Rachel Carson Centre that is being developed at Emerson College.
Rachel Carson was born on a farm in Springdale, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College), earned a Masters in Marine Biology at Johns Hopkins, taught Zoology at the University of Maryland, and took a job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. While there, she wrote three books about the sea, which gave her the financial independence to quit her government job and begin the book that made her famous — and infamous.