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On 4/18/2012 7:41 PM, John Kearney wrote:
> Rachel Carson in her book, Silent Spring, exposed the disregard for the
> environment, human health, and wildlife in the pursuit of profit. Some
> would argue that she is directly responsible for the establishment of
> environmental protection agencies around the world. As these agencies
> are now being dismantled or gutted, as our aerial insectivores and many
> other bird species are dramatically declining, I would like to honor her
> memory by asking: What would Rachel Carson write today if she was still
> here.
* as someone whose first serious books were her 'Sea Around Us' and
'Under the Sea Wind,' I think she'd be writing about the generalization
of industry-based lobbying against scientific results that was pioneered
in the opposition to 'Silent Spring,' which matured into the art of
denying the consequences of smoking Tobacco, and is now at the
deplorable height of its powers in the 'Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,
Human Population Growth, and Consumerism are Harmless' lobby.
It was very interesting to see how Aunt Rachel went from being regarded
as a Goddess of Wisdom to being treated as a She Demon as soon as she
applied the same methodology to describing the effects of pesticides on
ecology that she'd previously used to describe marine and intertidal
life, and so sad that she was taken out by cancer when so young.
She might also be writing about the suppression of independence among
government-employed scientists, and the channelization of their research
into officially prescribed cubicles. I'm reading Jack Vallentyne's 1974
'Algal Bowl,' which is a fully-featured aquatic 'Silent Spring,' told
from the personal point of view of a limnologist trying to explain
limnology to a resistant public and industry (yes LELA, it's not a new
struggle). This is a publication of the 'Department of the Environment -
Fisheries and Marine Service,' and it's totally - totally - unimaginable
that the Government of Canada would publish something like this today,
when researchers aren't even allowed to talk to the press, let alone
accurately forecast the state of eutrophication in Canadian waters for
the year 2000 (probably even today, what with fish farms and stuff,
certain gov't scientists aren't allowed to write about what the state of
certain Canadian waters was in 2000).
We're past the 40th anniversary of Canada banning phosphates in laundry
detergent (thanks in large part to Vallentyne's efforts), and
approaching the 40th anniversary of Canada banning DDT - both before
these were banned in the United States - and now we hear Environment
Canada scientists talking about being able to work until their supply of
chemicals runs out, and of graduate students who can't afford to measure
agricultural chemicals in the runoff they're studying...
fred
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Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills - http://pinicola.ca/mudpup1.htm
Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
South Nation Basin Art & Science Book
http://pinicola.ca/books/SNR_book.htm
RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
(613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
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