Book: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is a book which serves both the layman and the scholar. The book opens with a grim scenario; the widespread devastation of beautiful natural things, caused by a mysterious “evil spell” (p.2, paragraph 2) that has fallen “like snow” upon the area. Before the end of this short first chapter, we learn that the people have “done it themselves” (p.3, middle). It is an intriguing opener. To solve the mystery, she painstakingly walks the reader through several chapters, describing in detail the cardinal aspects of the natural world, building a structure of explicit interdependence. Embroidered within this structure is the story of humankind’s precipitous technological advancement, and the (then as now) dependence on complex chemicals (pps. 6-8). Here, the irreversible nature of the biological damage wrought by radiomimetic compounds is thrown into the systemic mix, permeating and contaminating until the end of the book.
Aside from a dry discussion of molecular engineering (pps.19-20) and a biography of insecticides, Carson emphasises nature’s fluidity and boundlessness, with descriptions of symbiosis (the sage and the grouse, p.65) and economics (reservoir sportsmen vs. consumers, p.50). By referring numerous times to hunting and angling throughout the book, she brought all people together as victims of the chemicals, without alienating any part of human society. It is made abundantly clear that all of life depends upon certain fundamental foundations (Realms of the Soil, p.54, and Earth’s Green Mantle, p.64) and that to chemically alter these foundations is to undermine natures fragile but resilient (p.297) house of cards. The examples of the earthworm-robin and earthworm-shrew/mole-owl links in the contaminated food-web (pps.106-110) clearly illustrate how these chemicals, once introduced, travel through ecological matrices like death-tendrils, being accumulated and amplified through each trophic level. Carson explains that, although nature is able to subtly control populations, thereby accomplishing “far-reaching aims” (p.57, bottom), insecticides are not part of the evolved cycle of ancient chemicals responsible for these populations’ control. This means that the usual processes by which materials are decomposed do not apply, and so the chemicals are highly persistent (p.58, top). As a result, once soils are affected, there will be a poisonous harvest for years to come (p.59-60).
The population/evolution issue is most prominent when anthropogenic distortions in nonhuman demographics are investigated. Carson argues that humans’ attempts to mold nature have not just largely failed, but left the planet with a legacy of disproportionate predator-prey configurations, with formerly non-problem species experiencing population explosions and becoming the latest “pest” in the sudden absence of their consumers (p.248). She cites the case of the spider mite (p.253) as an example of how insecticides can play a part in this situation, actually contributing to greater numbers of pests as a consequence of spraying. Nature is a complex, flowing network of interrelated energetic pressures. Removing a component, a “partial pressure”, from this self-cycling, living jigsaw will create a vacuum. This will be rapidly filled by whichever species presently occupies the appropriate energy location in the multilayered ecological fabric. Chapter 15, entitled “Nature Fights Back”, contains numerous examples of how various insecticides have failed in this regard.
Insect adaptation and consequent resistance to chemicals is also a topic examined (p.263-6). Insects are capable of generational reproduction rates far beyond almost all other forms of life. This means that they are able to change genetically as a species in a very short time. Carson says, “Sometimes resistance develops so rapidly that the ink is scarcely dry on a report hailing successful control of a species with some specified chemical when an amended report has to be issued.” This leads to the notorious pesticide “treadmill”, where ever greater and more powerful amounts are required to achieve the same kill-rates.
Carson paints a picture of almost total saturation by pesticides. Anywhere that is considered remotely civilised appears to have been subject to the diffusions of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (and other chemicals) that radiate from the farmlands, the suburbs and the cities of this nation and the planet. She cites food as a major exposure route (p.178) and describes an incident from the Arctic shores of Alaska, a place where food sources appeared free from insecticide contamination. When Eskimos were tested for traces of DDT, however, some were found to contain the chemical in their systems (p.179-180). This was due to their spending time in an Anchorage hospital. The food in this hospital was found to contain as much DDT as food in the heart of so-called civilisation, and, as Carson says, “For their brief stay in civilisation the Eskimos were rewarded with a taint of poison.”
Nature is unable to adequately protect itself in the face of this chemical avalanche, and so relies on the charity of visionary spirits from the human world. The human world is as much subject to damage and distortion as the nonhuman world, and for the same reasons. When Rachel Carson decided to write a book about the dark side of chemicals, she had more than just the inefficiency, ineffectiveness and toxicity to consider. She was up against the force of capitalism, the rolling kernel of global greed, that, when fused with the self-destructiveness of homo-sapiens, constituted a seemingly immovable object. She recognised that there was an insidious aspect to the production of these chemicals, one which was intimately related to capitalism. She knew that her case would have to be air-tight. It was. Persuasiveness was tantamount to all. She knew that the public was already well-aware of the dangers of radiation, and was sure to emphasise the similarities between this type of carcinogenesis and chemical poisoning. There was no doubt that humans had a choice in whether they continued down this dangerous road or chose “the other road” instead (p.242). She was well-aware of the power of profit for its own sake, the unspoken motto of Corporate America. The war waged against the fire ant is a prime example, with a telling quote from a 1958 trade journal: “United States pesticide makers appear to have tapped a sales bonanza in the increasing numbers of broad-scale pest elimination programs conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture” (p.162). Carson informs us that this “pest” was relatively benign, despite the Department of Agriculture launching “one of the most remarkable publicity campaigns in its history”, whereupon the insect was portrayed as a menace to all that was good and wholesome in America. Carson’s air-tight book blasted its way through such incongruousness and struck at the heart of the powers-that-be, even as opposing voices in the chemical corporations railed against her.
The Kennedy administration was candid and humble in response to the poetic and thorough Silent Spring. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall also wrote an environmental classic, The Quiet Crisis, around the same time, and he made a reference to Carson’s expression “an age of poisons” in his book. The country was still basking in the deluded glow of the aftermath of World War in 1962 (and the prosperity that went with it). They were made ready for Rachel Carson by Rachel Carson herself. Her ability to address serious and technical subjects such as ecology, chemistry and medicine was matched perfectly by the broad strokes of colourful prose and her accepting of all peoples’ attitudes toward nature, be they hunters or naturalists. Peoples’ general awareness levels were somewhat compromised during this era, and this enabled her critics to construct something of a “scientific” argument against the book’s message. Only the sheer weight of hard data and expertise prevented them from succeeding, but the brilliant ways in which that data was sweetened and brought down to earth secured victory at the grass-roots level. The first chapter set the stage for a book, which may not quite have been an original subject, but was certainly the first of its kind. The nation was cleaved as by a mythic axe. The mood for the rest of the decade was strongly set, and the environmental movements and Earth Day (1970) owe much of their impetus to Rachel Carson’s meteoric delivery. Many believe that her book directly influenced political acts of environmental regulation, and footage from the time attests to this. She married emotion with hard data and produced a jewel of a milestone in American thought.
Sources:
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson; 1962
Major Problems in American Environmental History, Carolyn Merchant; 1993
The Quiet Crisis, Stewart Udall; 1963
Tags: ddt, environmental science, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, Stewart Udall, The Quiet Crisis