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Why do we love Rachel?
Rachel Carson was, first and foremost, a naturalist. She grew up studying birds on her family's Pennsylvania farm and spent much of her adult career writing about life undersea. She could easily have spent her life in academic obscurity, as she had little taste for politics. But Rachel Carson became one of the most influential Americans of the last century by writing a small book that bore witness to the dark side of our scientific prowess, Silent Spring.
Silent Spring, published in 1962, sounded an alarm in American society about the dangers of uncontrolled pesticide use and chemical pollution. The book was based upon evidence that had piled up over years of observations and research, studiously ignored by the media, that many of the agricultural chemicals in use at the time were killing wildlife and poisoning the food and water supply. The writing of the book was triggered by a letter from a friend who owned a small private bird sanctuary which was devastated by a an unannounced aerial DDT spraying by the government to control nearby mosquitoes. At that time there was no outcry against such dangerous practices because no one would admit they were dangerous - in the public mind the natural world existed to be controlled by chemical use and scientific progress was always good. Silent Spring brought to public attention the idea that pouring chemicals into the landscape was not always "better living through science" but was, instead, potentially a recipe for environmental and human disaster.
After Silent Spring was published, Rachel was villified by corporate and government representatives who denounced her as a "hysterical" woman, unqualified to write such a book. But Rachel was not a radical or an attention-seeker, she was a scientist who had worked for the Department of Fish and Wildlife for 16 years. She was a published author who had written several previous books on nature and she knew the warning message she was sending out had to be heard. She had no illusions that her one little book would save the world but she knew the facts she presented were valid and believed the book would stand. And it did - becoming a national bestseller and the founding text of the field of Ecology. The book was largely responsible for the eventual banning of DDT use by Congress in 1972. Rachel Carson died of breast cancer on April 14, 1964. She was fifty-six.
We love Rachel for her bravery and conviction - her last public appearance before her death was a testimony before a Congressional committee on environmental hazards. But we also love her for her scientific mind, her acute observational powers and her beautifully timeless prose. As a scientist, a writer and a lover of nature she made precious and powerful contributions to the world she left behind.
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