Katrina vanden Heuvel: Killing Silent Spring (The Nation)

[marmar]

BLOG | Posted 05/29/2007 @ 6:33pm
Killing Silent Spring


Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and a seminal figure for the modern environmental movement, would have turned one hundred this past Sunday. "Carson's book altered the nature of environmentalism," is how the Washington Post described her legacy. "Previously, it had been mainly about preserving and appreciating parks and other beautiful places. But Carson's message was that all of nature should be protected, for its own sake and because people eventually would suffer if it was degraded."

"What she said was, the Earth itself needs an advocate," said Patricia M. DeMarco, Executive Director of the Rachel Carson Homestead Association.

But when Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland – where Carson was a longtime resident – tried to honor her with a Senate resolution it was blocked by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. "Rachel Carson has been an inspiration to a generation of environmentalists, scientists and biologists who made a difference and changed the irresponsible use of pesticides," Cardin said. "Honoring her 100th birthday should not be controversial. I wanted to share that with our country."

Indeed, Elizabeth Kolbert describes the magnitude of Carson's impact in The New Yorker, "As much as any book can, ‘Silent Spring' changed the world by describing it. An immediate best-seller, the book launched the modern environmental movement, which, in turn, led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the passage of the Clean Air, the Clean Water, and the Endangered Species Acts, and the banning of a long list of pesticides, including dieldrin."

But in a released statement Coburn insisted, " was the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT" which is used to fight malaria. Spokesman John Hart claims that the treatment of malaria was hindered by Carson's work: "…millions of people in the developing world died because the environmental movement, inspired by Rachel Carson, created a climate of fear and hysteria about DDT."

But those who have studied Carson's work know that it is Coburn who is reacting with unfounded hysteria. In a 1964 tribute/obituary in The New Yorker, E.B. White wrote that Carson "was not a fanatic or a cultist. She was not against chemicals per se. She was against the indiscriminate use of strong, enduring poisons capable of subtle, long-term damage to plants, animals, and man...." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=200380

[greenman3610]

1. the malaria thing is bullshit

your assumption has to be that you can continue to kill
90 percent or more of the mosquito population with
each application. But of course, mosquitos evolve
rather rapidly, and soon become immune to whatever
poison you throw at them.
animals and people, do not reproduce so quickly, and
are more vulnerable to accumulated poisons.
So, yes, we can have DDT, but we can't have DDT
along with healthy animal, fish, and bird populations.

the following story is apocryphal, but illustrates the point:

In the early 1950s, the Dayak people of Borneo suffered from malaria. The World Health Organization had a solution: it sprayed large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. The mosquitoes died; the malaria declined; so far, so good. But there were side effects. Among the first was that the roofs of people's houses began to fall down on their heads. It seemed that the DDT was also killing a parasitic wasp that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. Worse, the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckos, which were eaten by cats. The cats started to die, the rats flourished, and the people were threatened by potential outbreaks of typhus and plague. To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the World Health Organization was obliged to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo.