by Brian Payton
Rachel Carson's work celebrated the wonder and beauty of the natural world. Informing all of her work was the idea that, although human beings are part nature, we are distinguished by our power to alter itin some cases irreversibly. This was becoming abundantly clear to her in the alarming increase in the use of pesticides following the end of World War II. There were reports of livestock found dead in their fields. There was well-documented and widespread damage to wildlife; poisoned birds were literally falling from the sky. "By acquiescing in an act that can cause such suffering to a living creature," Carson wrote in Silent Spring, "who among us is not diminished as a human being?"
She explained her plans in a letter to a friend. "The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became. I realized that there was material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important."
Carson shifted her work focus from opening readers' eyes to the wonders of the natural world to warning them about the long-term effects of poisoning it. Silent Spring challenged the practices and views of the agricultural industry and government. She asserted that the indiscriminant use of DDT was poisoning not just "target" species but the environment itself, and called for an end to the misuse of this and other powerful toxins.
In Silent Spring, Carson succeeded in building a strong scientific case for her thesis while underscoring her belief in the "interconnectedness of life" found in her three previous books about the sea. Her skill as a writer, coupled with her scientific knowledge, allowed her to take a potentially daunting subject like chlorinated hydrocarbons and turn it into a work of literature: "The new environmental health problems are multiplecreated by radiation in all its forms, born of the never-ending stream of chemicals of which pesticides are a part, chemicals now pervading the work in which we live, acting upon use directly and indirectly, separately and collectively. Their presence casts a shadow that is no less ominous because it is formless and obscure, no less frightening because it is simply impossible to predict the effects of lifetime exposure to chemical and physical agents that are not part of the biological experience of man."
She wrote with passion and employed military metaphors to illustrate that "we are engaged in a war against nature that will inevitably destroy us as well as our supposed enemies."
In a chapter titled "Nature Fights Back," Carson explained that killing off one "targeted" insect leaves a hole in the environment. The hole is quickly filledoften with more troublesome speciesor the target species simply adapts, becomes resistant to the chemicals, and returns stronger than before. This initiates a cycle of requiring more and more potent toxins to kill the target species in a kind of unnatural selection, courtesy of the Chemical Age.
Carson claimed that at the heart of our motivation to introduce poisons into the environment lies a deeply held and outdated philosophyone that could ultimately lead to our undoing: "The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man."
Perhaps even more than her opposition to the reckless use of pesticides, it was this assertionwhich called into question fundamental beliefsthat ultimately got her into so much trouble.