Writers as far back as Plato have been discussing the environmental problems associated with animal farming and its lack of sustainability but nobody really listened.
And here we have Silent Springs , an erudite, passionate and informed argument about the dangers and problems associated with the misuse of pesticides. These problems stem not only from our exposure to them, but also from the consequences of their impact on the natural world at large. This was written in , and all these arguments have since been taken very seriously by society.
However, when this was written it was a completely different story. Naturally, industry giants attempted to debunk the facts in this work, but before that they even tried to block its publication entirely.
They did not want this to be seen. And that would be bad for business. The problem is we can have all the dangers down on paper. We can have it all well documented and researched, a particular issue can even be scientifically proven, and change still does not happen. The culprits will attempt to deny the problems, people will attempt to justify their behaviour and use excuses that make no sense often because they have not been exposed to all of the facts.
Apathy is also a problem. We are reluctant to accept that our ways are harmful, and even more reluctant to actually do anything about them. As Carson noted in the s that insects were building up resistance to pesticides, today a pandemic spread across the world that originated in a wet market. And wet markets are one of the most excruciating ways we abuse nature today.
My point here is a simple one: we cannot continue with such destructive behaviour because worse things will happen when nature strikes back. Carson understood this. We need an entire shift in the way we think about nature and our place in it. This really is a powerful piece of writing and there are many crossovers with modern day issues because the same patterns are emerging. This book did give me some hope, hope that in time more people will understand the dangers we fact today.
View all 12 comments. Mar 22, Debbie "DJ" rated it it was amazing Shelves: nature-environment , non-fiction , favorites. How could I forget the first book I read about pesticides, and how they are destroying our planet? Rachel Carson is literally my hero. After reading Carson's book, I decided this is what I wanted to do with my life.
I spent many years in the field of environmental geology, and I have her to thank. I believe this book is as relevant today as it was when she wrote it in She has an ease of writing, that not only expresses her deep concerns for the environment, but also feels highly personal. Her love of nature shines through on every page.
Time has surely been the test of her writing, as I look around today and see what profound affects these chemicals have had on our world, our planet, and our health. It is fascinating to read of one highly intelligent woman's concerns for the future, and how we had the opportunity to act years ago.
As fascinating a read now as it was then. Highly recommended. View all 17 comments. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's poem, they are not equally fair. The road we are travelling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.
The other fork of the road - the one 'less travelled by' - offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our earth". A while back I read Elizabeth Kolbert's book The Sixth Extinction , while both cover similar ground - a testament to the lack of impact of Carson's book, Kolbert's prose style suggested that she was a journalist covering a story, and once she was done she would bugger off back to her own planet and leave us to it.
Carson I felt, was in contrast, entirely committed and in awe of the complexities of ecology, of the web of life, although at the end I felt she was probably too optimistic in her faith in supporting natural predators, and probably too in the power of changing public opinion.
While it is often enough said that the banning of DDT is attributable to Carson's book she herself is clear that already in the s DDT was of of rapidly declining value because of the development of resistant insect populations. Reading, all the stories she was telling about pesticide resistance, invasive species, unintended consequences of chemical use, the discovery of chemicals in the fatty tissues of creatures in remote from where the chemicals had been used were all very familiar to me from repeated news stories, again suggesting to me that Carson's big point was ignored.
This is not really a book about specific chemical usage in the years up to the publication of this book it is more about human attitudes towards nature.
It reminded me too of the Vietnam war - not because of the use of herbicides - but because of the technological mindset, that by deploying enough technology you could get what you wanted. The issue of whether the technology was appropriate to the task, or if the situation could be sufficiently well understood by those who controlled the technology, whether those people understood themselves sufficiently and their powerlessness in the face of the world, were all taboo.
After reading Herland I wondered too that if this book had been written instead by Rachel's fictional but no less talented brother Billy, maybe it might have been taken more seriously and maybe the USA might even have adopted the precautionary principal. View all 6 comments. Feb 25, PattyMacDotComma rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: anyone who cares about the future of the world.
Shelves: aa , science-med-env , non-fiction. Reposted in honour of her th birthday! David Attenborough said that after Charles Darwin 's The Origin of Species , Silent Spring was probably the book that changed the scientific world the most. Because marine biologist Rachel Carson explains in no uncertain terms exactly how mankind was changing the natural world for the worse in unimagined ways through pesticide use.
I remember as a child hearing that DDT was so safe you could sprinkle it on your cornflakes. A couple of decades later we were told pretty much the same thing about Roundup, a herbicide, not a pesticide, which has also fallen into serious disrepute recently. I understand it was the editors who recommended that Carson add an opening chapter. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields.
Even in winter, the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow.
Mysteriously, things began sickening: streams, plants, animals, people. The songbirds are gone, the fish are gone. Well, back in , anyway. This book is an attempt to explain. There have always been conservationists and environmentalists, but this book gave them a voice and opened the eyes of the rest of us. And explain she does, clearly, factually, fascinatingly, and she includes the anecdotal stories we still seem to need to grab our attention.
Much of what she describes is now part of the regular school curriculum, and there are lots of mainstream articles about soil health, microbes, worms and the interrelationship between even the smallest parts of nature.
Some of her examples have a horrible fascination where they describe the unintended consequences of wiping out one pest intentionally which either kills other things or facilitates the spread of another, worse pest. By the third season they sprayed, they were losing birds and discovered the build-up in fatty tissues.
Well, grebes eat fish, which eat other fish which eat plankton. It was a house-that-jack-built sequence, in which the large carnivores had eaten the smaller carnivores, that had eaten the herbivores, that had eaten the plankton, that had absorbed the poison from the water. Carson explains that our two roads are not equal. The choice, after all, is ours to make. She quotes professor Carl P.
Swanson, a Johns Hopkins biologist: " 'Any science may be likened to a river. It has its obscure and unpretentious beginning; its quiet stretches as well as its rapids; its periods of drought as well as of fullness. It gathers momentum with the work of many investigators and as it is fed by other streams of thought; it is deepened and broadened by the concepts and generalizations that are gradually evolved. What will be left of the world on its th anniversary, I wonder?
This is an everybody-should-read-this book! Oct 09, Ken-ichi rated it liked it Shelves: learning , environmentalism. I picked this up because it's a a classic of American nature and environmental writing, and ostensibly marks the beginning of American environmental activism in the modern sense i.
I found the rhetorical style interesting. She breaks the book up into chapters on where toxins come from, how they accumulate and spread, and what effects they have on wildlife, food, and human health. In each, she offloads tale after tale I picked this up because it's a a classic of American nature and environmental writing, and ostensibly marks the beginning of American environmental activism in the modern sense i. In each, she offloads tale after tale of dead birds, poisoned farm workers, and nearly inhuman acts of government negligence and the corporations that facilitate them.
I found this droning repetition of evidence boring, a dull and depressing tirade, but I suppose that kind of argumentative overload has power, if not appeal. I felt some of her language and opinions were surprisingly dated.
She often referred to insects using words like "horde" and militaristic symbols of weaponry and defense. Each time we breach these defenses a horde of insects pours through. Of course, further down the page she writes, "The balance of nature is not a status quo ; it is fluid, ever shifting, in a constant state of adjustment. I pick nits, of course, but perhaps it demonstrates that this book lies at a transition between American attitudes toward nature.
I was also intrigued by her almost unconditional support of biological control techniques over pesticides generally, the use of cultivated predators to control a pest population , readily advocating the importation of effective predators with I think no examples of the kinds of ecological disaster that can ensue when such tactics are pursued without very careful consideration cane toads , anyone?
Again, perhaps a sign of the times. All in all, certainly worth my time. I'd like to read some more analysis on the book and on Carson herself the preface to this editions is great , and I'm very keen to read her natural history writing, esp. View all 4 comments. Sep 10, Valliya Rennell rated it it was ok Shelves: x-reviewed-books , c-stand-alone , did-not-finish , astars.
The opening 'story' about a town where suddenly everything dies and peoples' lives become miserable paints a wonderful and devastating picture while sucking the reader in. What follows is not as great. Every chapter reads exactly the same. Yes, there variations in the topic pesticide affecting fish vs birds vs soil vs plants , but when you keep going over and over in circles, I am going to get bored.
I decided to DNF because after reading the first pages, I came to understand I would get the same point reiterated over and over and over.
This can be done in an engaging way ex. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond , but it wasn't so in this book. For the relatively uneducated public, this method did wonders to bring awareness and outcry and start the environmental movement, on the other hand, I see why critics thought Carson was obsessed with this topic and over exaggerating for the record, I disagree, but I see where they're coming from. Most importantly though, this book did scare the hell out of me, so please guys care for the planet.
So great job, Ms. Carson, you have made me an environmentalist even though I didn't get through your book. Thank you all for joining in for episode 1 of Quickie Review with Valliya! View 2 comments. Sep 05, Roy Lotz rated it really liked it Shelves: ignorance-of-experts , nature-writing , americana. Advocacy is tricky. Rachel Carson seems to have found the right formula: an urgent and multifaceted appeal to self-interest. The comparison is apt, for both books were written by academic outsiders, by women working independently in male-dominated fields, and both books created a sensation.
In subject matter, too, the books are surprisingly close. Carson describes how indiscriminate use of pesticides destroys ecosystems and fails even to permanently kill the pests. Both books, in other words, criticize a practice taken for granted, a practice that attempted to mold the world using brute force while remaining ignorant of the systems it attempted to shape. Not only is Carson a knowledgeable scientist, but she is quite a gifted author.
She knows how to drive home her point using vivid—and often frightening—examples, detailing case after case of poisonings, in animals and humans. And she supplements her examples with scientific explanations, showing us how poisons spread through the environment, are absorbed into the body, and disrupt natural processes. She knew that the chemical industry was going to fight her tooth and nail, so she did not leave any stones unturned in her research.
She systematically goes through the effects of pesticides on soil, water, birds, and plants, offering case after case in support of her thesis. When advocacy is effective, it renders itself obsolete. But Carson does not make the mistake of focusing only on the environment. She emphasizes again and again how pesticides can enter foods, can combine in the body, can kill livestock and desolate fish, can enter the skin through commercial lawn products—in other words, she emphasizes that this problem is not abstract and distant, but is one that closely affects the reader.
View all 3 comments. Sep 25, Donna rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction. This is nonfiction concerning the harmful effects that chemicals, which were created to make life easier for man pesticides, weed killers, etc.
This was first published in and the author is credited for opening the door on his topic. However, even now, 55 years later, it is still considered a hot topic. Great strides have been made in this arena, but vigilance must me constant.
While reading this, I kept thinking that ignorance is bliss ONLY for those who don't ha This is nonfiction concerning the harmful effects that chemicals, which were created to make life easier for man pesticides, weed killers, etc. Historical Context. Critical Overview. Critical Essay 1. Critical Essay 2. Critical Essay 3. Critical Essay 4. Critical Essay 5. Topics for Further Study. Compare and Contrast. What Do I Read Next? Further Study. Copyright Information.
This Study Guide consists of approximately 73 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Silent Spring. Print Word PDF. This section contains words approx. In modern times, one of the most used pesticides was DDT, a substance considered as being safe when in powder form. The human body however stores the DDT in its fat cells and then over time it releases it, poisoning the body.
The substance is easy transmitted and it can pass from plants to animals and to humans in a short period of time. It was also proved that mothers can pass on DDT to their children while in womb or through breast milk.
The pesticides that are spread aerially are even more dangerous and many people who were involved in spraying the chemicals ended up dying after being exposed to the harmful substances.
Endrin is another substance used and many children and household pets died after they came into contact with surfaces treated with Enderin by the adults in the house. This can cause serious side effects impossible to control and that often result in tragic accident. But pesticides are not the only substances that are dangerous and herbicides are mentioned as well.
In some countries, they are banned completely but in the U. Another problem is that rivers and other bodies of water became infected as well and chemicals have been found in the water even after a period of eight years after the area stopped being treated chemically. Species of birds disappeared completely from certain areas because they ate infected fish and then over time they died.
What is even worst, the substances then were passed on to humans who also became infected by the chemicals in the water. The soil and other organisms in the soil that have the purpose of breaking down biological and vegetal matter into nutrients have also been affected.
The chemicals used can have the opposite effect from what the farmers expected and in some cases the species affected were not the ones considered as being pests but the species that preyed on the pests and helped control them. Farmers use a limited number of domesticated plants and those they see as being useless they try to eliminate. The author mentions the sagebrush from the West and how farmers tried to eradicate it.
In the use of herbicides, other plants are destroyed in the process and it can even affect livestock that consume those plants. Carson argues that a better alternative would be importing from other countries natural predators to control the invasive species. This would mean less pollution and less harmful chemicals to affect the plants and animals used by humans. Sign Up. Already have an account? Sign in. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better.
Literature Poetry Lit Terms Shakescleare. Download this LitChart! Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning?
0コメント