In tribute of Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964)
Hans-Jørgen Wallin Weihe
The Inland University of Applied Sciences Lillehammer Norway
H-J.Wallin.Weihe@inn.no
Rachel Carson, 1940
We all indvidually might experience economical benefit from certain environmental
damaging practices. The examples are numerous. Cleaning paintbrushes after painting a house
produce harmful wastematerial that should be disposed in certain ways. Batteries should be
treated as dangerous wastematerial. Still, in both cases we will be able to avoid the extra work
without anyone noticing our harmful practices. We save time and sometimes even money
polluting the environment. At times we make beautiful gardens without weeding wikt ba little
chemistry helping us
All examples are from ordinary life situations many of us will be faced with. The result of
such actions will be harmful to the environment and in the end to ourselves and other living
beings. The short-term profit is of course not a lasting profit. Some harmful practices will
damage future generations and some will in the space of time damage ourselves. Still, it is a
difference between the collective and individual perspective. Thus the moral obligation to
pursue sound environmental practices is of crucial importance to make people make the right
choices.
The false sense of order of manicured and cultivated nature is seducive. We think of such
nature as organized and orderly. Yet, a jungle or wilderness is obviously more orderly. In
thhe hungle or wilderness ivisible laws of ecology dicate „the relative abundance of of plants
and animals, and were they occur. The very shape and position of every leaf abides by those
eternal rules“ (Flannery, 2012: 23). Still, we experience the tortured disciplined natured lawns
and fields of humans as more orderly. Even more we devastate nature in order to increase the
output of the various monocultures of modern agriculture.
On April 14. 1964 a tiny, modest and yet very vocal and very influencial lady died. She died
from cancer. She had suffered from duodenal ulcer and pneumonia, followed by acute
sinusitis and discovered two lumps in her breast in 1960. She underwent surgery and it was
found that one of the tumors had been malignant. Radical mastectomy had to be perfo!in
1961 it was discovered secondary tumors on her sternum and radiation therapy was started.
She became very exhausted, still she managed the most important environmental books of
last century. At the end of 1962 she wrote to her close friend Dorothy Freeman that she never
had any choice, but to write the book. She quoted Abraham Lincoln;“ to sin by silence when
they should protest makes cowards of men“. Her name was Rachel Carson. The title of the
book was “Silent spring“. As pointed out by Tim Flannery in a book review in The New York
Review of Books; “Was there ever a more resonating book title ? The possibility of a “silent
spring“ strikes so acutely at our sense of life , beauty, and nature’s renewal that it chills us
deeply as a perpetual winter. “ The book opens with a description of small-town America,
secure and rich in wildlife and then devasted by a „rain of death“ (Flannery, 2012: 23).
A vast amount of hidden research supported the simple well phrased words of the book. A
long fight of controlling pestcides would follow and in 1972 an important victory when DDT
was banned in USA. It was proven and accepted that pestcides polluted the atmosphere, soil
and water and caused death by cancer, diabetes and other diseases. Still the fight continued.
Other pestcides continued to be used and quite a number are still used. The province of
Ontario banned pestcides for lawns and flower gardens in 2009. A review in British Columbia
in 2012 recomended tighter restrictions and in the Candian province of Manitoba a ban was
discussed. However, in many countries pestcides reamain uncontrolled and it has been
estimated that around one million humans anually suffer acute posioning (Flannery: 2101:
21). We have similair discussions in Europe, however none of them with as far reaching bans
as in Canada.
Rachel Carson conducts Marine Biology Research with Bob Hines. Atlantic Coast 1952.
The same year the Cuban missile crises developed. The relationship between the Soviet Union
and USA was at its coldest and the world at the brink of nuclear war. In the middle of the
developing crises the American president Kennedy answered a question of pestcide use. In his
answer he refered to advance extracts of the book published by Rachel Carson in “The New
Yorker“. Later the same year the Silent Spring climbed to the top of the New York Times
best-seller list. In her recently released biography of Rachel Carson, William Saunder claims
that Silent Spring marks the birth of the concept “environmentalism“. In his book Sauders
describes the concept as “bitterly divisive“ and claims that environmental politics before the
book was characterized by “gentle, optimistic proposition called „conservation“ (Saunders,
2012). In contrast environmentalism was politically polarizing because it involved a conflict
with pestcide manufacurers such as the large chemical firm of Ciba.
The scare of nuclear war most likely made Silent Spring all the more important. Armageddon
could be envisaged with nuclear rockets being launced simultanously from the USA and the
Soviet Union. Hitting the other and creating a white hot hell of thermonuclear doom and an
invisible cloud of nuclear radiation. Other popular authors of prose, like Neville Shute,
created vivid images of a world empty of human life with a cloud of radiation slowly creeping
down from the northern hemisphere towards Australia and countries in the south killing all
living life.
In the 1950s American school children were drilled to duck and cover under their school
desks by their teachers. Still, protection seemed nearly fruitless. President Eisenhower
declared that it was just not enough buldozers to scarpe the bodies off the streets.
I the 1960s a series of nuclear tests were being conducted in Australia, in Micronesia and in
Russia. Most of the tests was with the new devasting weapon the hydrogen bomb being
exploded in the atmosphere with unpredictable and terrifying results. In 1954 one bomb was
exploded at the Marshall Island producing an explosion two and a half time greater than the
estimates by the scientists. In the words of the american president Eisenhower the scientists
were “surprised and astonished“ and had to rethink the precautions for new tests. The
scientists should have been scared and in the opinions of today from a moral point of view
they ought to have rejected further tests. However, in the 1950s and the 1960s, such a stand
would had been unaccpetable and equal to being a traitor.
Luckily there were farsighted individuals and there were people protesting. A small obscure
group of individuals in the USA called the “Greater St. Louis Citizens Committee for Nuclear
Information“ started a collection of baby teeth from their area. A study completed in 2010
showed that men that died of cancer in middle age had more that twice the amount of
radioactive strontium 90 in their baby teeth as those that were still alive. Thanks to those who
collected the teeth, the few of them still alive in their 70s, 80s and 90s, the proof was there of
the devasting long-term effect of radiation. For environmentalists of today the collection of
baby teeth gives an important lesson of the importance of initatives not acknowledged as
important by scientists and society.
The danger of nuclear fall-out was from early on connected to the use of pestcides. In the
USA the traditional Thanksgiving dinner involves a large turkey, sage and cranberries. In
1959 people had to throw away their cranberries because they had been sprayed by a cancer –
causing pestcide. The berries had to be withdrwan from sale and may people had the
schocking experience of eating thanksgiving turkey without cranberries. In some ways it was
like having Christmas without Santa Claus because he was likely to spread typhus or some
other dangerous contagious diseas.
Rachel Carson herself was not against all use of pestcides. She accepted some controlled use
of pestcides in order to protect crops, but within limits so that use would not damage the
environment and animal life. Still, there were pestcides she found so harmful and destructive
that they had to be banned.
Fifty years after Rachel Carson published her book we know the importance of her
publication. At the time she was well acknowledged as a writer, hoowever the fight for
practical acceptance of her ides was a tough one. The industrial interests behind the
production and use of pestcides spread lies about her such as that she was a communist, that
her research was tainted and that she was anti american. The accusations resulted in her being
investigated by the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigations) and made many people sceptical
towards her. For that matter quite a number of people still are.
The first print-run of Silent Spring was 150.000 copies
At the time of publishing Silent Spring Rachel Carson was already a best selling author. She
had for several years worked as a writer for the Fish and Wildlife Service of the Department
of the Interior. Her first book was published in 1941 and won great popularity. It was called
“Under the Sea-Wind“ and was called “beautiful and unusal“, however it only sold 1.700
copies. In 1950 she published her first best-seller “The Sea around us“. Actually the book won
great popularity even before it was printed as a book. To popular weekly magazine “The New
Yorker“ had printed ten chapters in advance and other magazines had printed other chapters.
As soon as the book was released it reached the best- selling list and soon afterwards “Under
the Sea-Wind“became a best- seller too.
The two best-selling books made Rachel Carson finacially independent. She bought a
property on Southport Island off the coast of Maine. It is a rough coastline, however it is
dotted with islands and protected inlets and bays. Southport Island is a windblown place with
just 250 residents. However, it is the vacation place for many wealthy americans interested in
sailing and isolation rather than crowded warm beaches further south.
In 1955 she delievered the manuscript to another book. It was given the title “The Edge of the
Sea“. The book was three years behing schedule and it was to her astonishment another best-
seller. From the publishing point of view Rachel Carsonssucess was a great surprise. Most
other books at the bestselling lists were popular fiction. Her books were nature books, they
were popularized scientific books yet based on immense amounts of reading and a great
dedication ad ability to describe nature and her surroundings.
Actually Rachel Carson did very little research on her own, Still she had a great ability to
analyze and use the research of others. Even more important she was able to relate the research
and state of the art science to surroundings in ways most people could understand. “Silent
Spring“ was to be the last of her books. The scale of research involved behind the book was
immense and she had a hard time farming the work. The title she had thought of for the book
was “Man against the Earth“, however her publisher Paul Brooks suggested “Silent Spring“.
Initially that was a title for the chapters on the impacts of pestcides on birds. That title strikes
the emotions of most of us, and it still does.
In 1962 Rachel Carson was a 55 year old spinster, a single unmarried lady, living with her
adopted grandnephew and a cat in Maryland ad spending her summers in Maine. She was in no
way a typical revolutionary nor protester. In addition to her skills as a writer and as a scientist
that made her all the more convincing. She was a deeply worried lady that loved the birds
coming to her birdfeeder, enjoyed flowers and butterflies, took great care of her adopted son
and loved walking along the beach looking at crabs, sea shells and what ever else was to be
found. She was the kind of lady that children loved to be with, young people found interesting
and the older ones hardly had noticed until her carefully well phrased penetrating words reached
the public. After that she was a celebrity and those few people who walked along the seashore
with her found that she was able to open a wonderful, beautiful, unbelievable world to them.
The superlatives are not mine they are from Dorothy Freeman who walked along the shore with
Rachel Carson. She uttered them after looking at samples they had collected through a
microscope.
In her own words to a person she loved she could go on and tell reasons why she loved.
However, that would take quite a while and she thought that the simple fact that she loved
covered everything. Even if those words were to another human being, to Dorothy Freeman,
they cover her dedication to nature and life as well. Rachel Carson was a great writer because
she managed to communicate her love and dedication to nature.
Literature:
Carson, Rachel (1962). Silent Spring.
Carson, Rachel (1955). The Edge of the Sea.
Carson, Rachel (1950). The Sea around us
Carson, Rachel (1941) Under the Sea-Wind..
Flannery, Tim (2012). A Heroine in Defence of Nature. New York Times Review of Books.
November 22. 2012, page 21 – 23.
Shute, Neville () On the stump.
Souder, William (2012). On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson. New
York: Crown