175 of 209 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
DDT Doesn't Taste Good, December 17, 2002
Rachel Carson sent tremors through American society with the publication of her 1962 book "Silent Spring." Carson, a marine biologist who died two years after publication of the book, wrote "Silent Spring" when she received a letter from a concerned citizen lamenting the mass death of birds after a DDT spraying. Carson continues to serve as a touchstone for both mainline and radical environmental groups, from the Sierra Club to Earth First!. It is not difficult to see why; Carson's call for active involvement in our environment is still an absolute necessity today as the industrial system continues its rapid march across the landscape. If we do not want our children born with gills and fins, keeping Carson in mind is important.
Carson's analysis of DDT and other synthetic chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides resulted in a deeply ominous conclusion-pesticides destroy the environment and threaten everything within the ecological system. Carson examined the composition of pesticides, revealing that synthetic pesticides have the ability to not only kill their intended targets, but they also move right up the food chain, eventually reaching the human population. The pesticides then build up in the tissues of the body, rarely breaking down but often building in intensity through continued exposure or changing into forms that are even more toxic by interacting with other ingested chemicals. Even worse, these chemicals cause tremors, paralysis, cancer, and a host of other unpleasant ailments. Carson cites numerous stories about exposed people falling ill and dying shortly after spraying these toxic chemicals. Carson also shows the biological process these poisons take when they enter the body, when they cut off oxygen to the cells and raise the metabolic rate to unhealthy levels. Carson proves these chemicals move on to succeeding generations of offspring through mother's milk and other biological processes.
Most of the book deals with the effects of chemical spraying on wildlife in the environment. Separate chapters deal with birds, insects, fish, and plant life. Needless to say, the picture painted here is not pretty. Too often, spraying chemicals in the 1950's and 1960's brought into play the full ignorance of the human race. Carson's book shows how farmers applied pounds of poisons to their land, far exceeding the recommended application levels. Spray trucks moved through neighborhoods, hosing down the community with poison while the kiddies played outside in the yard. On several occasions, planes sprayed poison on cities. This reckless disregard for life in any form ruined landscapes, created mounds of animal corpses, and gave us tasty water that can melt your teeth.
What is surprising about Carson's book is that people knew all about the effects of these poisons. "Silent Spring" made a difference because it puts it all together, showing how a series of localized incidents is, in fact, a national problem. Carson also wrote her book in a style where even the densest yokels in the herd could figure out the dangers of the problem. Since I am a science idiot, I appreciated Carson's clear articulation of the problem without sacrificing the hard data behind the examples.
Carson delivers a stinging rebuke to our conception of mankind as the dominant force in the universe. If humanity truly rules the roost, so to speak, why are we such idiots about sustaining the very environment that feeds us? The ignorance of man in this book is astounding. Repeatedly, we destroy and destroy again even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the damage we are causing. Local governments kept spraying even when evidence showed it was a failure. Birds literally fell out of the sky while the trucks went out for another pass through the neighborhood. Dumb, dumb, dumb!
"Silent Spring" concludes with a call for sanity. Carson's answer to the insane escalation of chemical spraying is to seek out biological control methods. Many insects have natural enemies that, if introduced into a problem area, will keep down pest populations. Even localized spraying will work better than mass, indiscriminate spraying. Carson argues that biological control methods are increasingly important because insects are building up resistance to pesticides, requiring the creation of even more virulent poisons in a never-ending cycle where nobody wins.
"Silent Spring" is required reading for anyone concerned about the environment. Carson's book led to significant changes in environmental law (some would say not enough change) and resulted in the outright ban of DDT. My only problem with the book is the introduction written by Al Gore, as the publisher marketed the book with that fact in mind. Gore's name seems to merit equal billing with Carson's on the cover. One must remember Al Gore is a politician and is in league with the destroyers because he needs their money to run his expensive campaigns. Carson would be appalled.
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32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic for good reasons, February 12, 2006
This review is from: Silent Spring (Paperback)
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson (40th Anniversary Edition)
It was finally time for me to pick up the book that is often credited with inspiring or starting the modern environmental movement. I'd heard of Silent Spring many times from environmental speakers and had seen it referenced in The Ecology of Commerce and in Megatrends 2010 (see other reviews). The title has lost nothing of its timeliness or relevance with the passage of more than 40 years since its first printing. To that point, First Mariner Books published a 40th Anniversary Edition with introduction and afterword by Linda Lear and Edward O. Wilson, respectively, that place the book and author in historical context and give credit for the impact both have had on our world.
I want to first of all give the author praise for being much more balanced and far-seeing in her thinking than any of the detractors whose reviews I've read on Amazon would hint at. The main charge post-humously leveled is that rampant unthinking DDT (or worse) use would have saved lives lost to malaria had it not been for one woman writing a slanderous attack on the petrochem industry whose only apparent reason for being is to improve life. Rachel Carson's prose may have been very eloquent, pursuasive and moving but she was not advocating an extreme or unthinking position. Whereas she may have been extremely passionate about the need to make changes in the spray away mindset of the day, she did not call for throwing away what science could contribute to public health and well-being or even economic productivity. Quite the contrary, based on an ecological mindset and a commitment to understand nature and work with her, Carson encouraged exploring biologically wise means to control pests that thrive in a bio-defense impoverished monoculture. She cited figures and facts on successful pioneering integrated pest management programs and made a cost-benefit analysis that set the balance right.
I may have majored in Economics, but I'll gladly take my science from scientists like Rachel Carson rather than the PR department of a chemical firm with a vested interest in selling a "silver bullet" that has to be reapplied year after year in greater amounts. Carson makes an ironclad case for the dangers of bioaccumulation of toxins in the food chain (yeah and guess who's at the top), the ill-targetted dispersal methods, insect resistance due to extremely short reproduction cycles and the mutagenic qualities of many of the new wave of pesticides. She lays out her arguments in such clear language and with sufficient analogies and background that a layman can easily follow and be more conversant in the concepts of the subject matter. The other criticism of the book by detractors' reviews is that there are "too many facts" referenced in it - I don't think these readers have any sense for the time period that Rachel Carson was writing in and the need for a woman, an outsider, to make damn sure that she lined up all the facts she could behind her case so as to not just be dismissed ad hominem when raising concern about how the men in the white coats were wisley dragging us down the wrong path.
What's with all the wingnuts claiming that Carson is responsible for millions of malaria deaths by banning DDT? Nice Limbaughesque talking point, but as often, WAY OFF TARGET. The main thrust of the book is against agricultural pesticides where the damage caused by the target pest is economically less significant than the collateral damage of control efforts to the environment and human well-being. The reference to mosquito control in the actual book these buffoons claim to be reviewing is 1). a warning on mosquito resistance, 2). risk of wiping out the mosquitos natural predators with indiscrimminate control strategies (Nissan Island WWII), 3).exploring other more targetted control measures such as ultrasound.
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93 of 118 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Misunderstood, June 4, 2003
This review is from: Silent Spring (Paperback)
Too many reviewers see only one thread of Carson's argument: that DDT and pesticides like it endanger the environment. The other thread is that DDT resistance in mosquitoes develops very quickly, and the more quickly the more it is used. Which leaves us right back where we started. Her argument is not that pesticides should not be used, but that they should be used intelligently. In this age, when antibiotic resistant bacteria are becoming a very serious problem precisely because of antibiotic overuse (and not only in hospitals, but, most egregiously, as growth enhancers for livestock), this argument should be indisputable.
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