If this book wasn’t assigned to read, I don’t think I would have ever known of its existence. That is a shame, since the contents of this book were instrumental in changing the nation’s environmental policy. Rachel Carson is a master at explaining the science behind pesticides and the effects of using chemicals to control nature. She is persuasive and insightful, offering visions of the future after both continuing the indiscriminate use of pesticides and also eliminating chemical warfare on nature. I was both enlightened and horrified by Carson’s message, I would highly recommend Silent Spring to anyone who is interested in the environment.
Carson begins by painting a picture of a world without the sound of birds, the splendor of wildflowers, or the buzzing of bees. She warns that, with continued use of chemicals on the environment, this picture could become a reality. This is a wonderful introduction that both sets the perfect tone for the presentation of her findings and invokes in the reader a sense of urgency concerning the deterioration of the environment.
Rachel Carson’s book and observations resulted in the beginnings of environmental awareness, and in particular with the “anti-chemical” movement prevalent today. Typically she has been credited with the support for the creation of Government regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency in the US, but her influence extends beyond this oversight role. Her views and opinions changed the perception of pest control from one of blanket treatment with toxic chemicals to a policy of integrated pest management (IPM) using very small quantities of products which are highly specific in their modes of action and targeted to control specific pests without harming beneficial plants or insects.
The earth is a carefully balanced system that has inherent checks and balances, and pesticides both disrupt and destroy this balance. The overuse of pesticides overrides nature’s selection, eradicating the insects chosen naturally to be an integral part of the earth’s biosphere. Man, by his indiscriminate use of pesticides, can change in an instant what nature spent millions of years creating. Furthermore, scientific research has proven that insects, possessing short lives and fast reproduction rates, can quickly mutate to become resistant to the pesticides used.
Although more pesticides are created, insects continue to mutate in order to survive. Carson’s book shows that creating more lethal and ecologically harmful pesticides is simply not the answer to pest control. Carson provides an informative and concise description of the chemical nature of many widely used pesticides which were then thought to be the first line of defense for crop production and the protection of human health. Many of these chemicals, like DDT, are highly persistent in the environment, and the dangers of this persistence were not recognized at that time.
DDT was cheap, effective and lasted for a long time – the very qualities that led to its overuse. Around the world, DDT became the insecticide of choice for the control of malaria, yellow fever and other mosquito borne diseases, saving hundreds of thousands of lives in tropical countries. For many years, it was regarded as a “miracle drug” – working where nothing had worked before and at a price that even poor countries could afford to use in their health programs.
