Silent Spring by Rachel Carson Essay

The book Silent Spring, was published in 1962, was considered as the turning point of work to environmental writing. The author turns her awareness to the potentially injurious consequences of pesticides on the society especially those pesticides, involving DDT. DDT was used by aerial spraying in an effort to manage the population of insects on a huge scale. Silent Spring served as a public caution, using expert opinions on the hazards of this increasingly catastrophic practice. Throughout Carson's book, there are innumerable case studies reporting the detrimental consequences that chemical pesticides have had on the society. Along with these facts, Rachel Carson describes how in many cases the pesticides have done more harm than benefiting it in obliterating the pesticides they were designed to demolish. In addition to Carson's reports on pesticide use, she indicates that many of the abiding effects that these chemicals may have on the society, as well as on human beings, are still unknown. The dispute that was caused by Silent Spring led to the establishment of government agencies to better control the utilization of these chemicals and the passing of environmental legislation. Rachel Carson first became cognizant of the harmful effects of chemical pesticides on society while working for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. Rachel Carson's main problem to her was the government’s utilization of chemical substances such as DDT.

Carson was familiar with early studies of DDT and knew of its hazard and lasting effects on the society. Rachel Carson starts book Silent Spring by showing us a picture of a tiny quiet town. In this small town, Carson explains that the people are living a humble life, and everything is going well. This is utilized to show us the calm before the storm happened. However, people that lived in that small town began to realize odd things happening around them, such as unfamiliar diseases and birds dying all the time. People themselves have no clue of what is happening around them, and they are to blame. This example is similar our society today. We are oblivious of the harmful effects that is being done to our society today by pesticides in the long term and if we don’t become more cautious of these harmful effects, everlasting destruction will be done to our society. Second chapter of the book, Carson describes that this destruction to our society is caused by a conflict on insects. We’ve become so determined on manufacturing the most plants and crops possible that we are willing to spray our plants with the most poisonous substances. However, if we keep doing this we will only have a short term consequence on the insects and plants before they build immunity to it. In chapter 11, Carson states that everyone who lived long before 1942 had never showed any signs of DDT in their body ever. However, today people are always consuming food containing DDT which impacts our bodies in so many ways and which has been found to cause negative effects on our bodies. Rachel Carson states that we have eras referred to as “the age of reason” and “the age of innocence”, however, Carson is worried that our era will be referred to as “the age of poisons” (p.157). All kinds of poisons that we are introducing into today's society is causing us a new heap of health problems. At some point we all had to be concerned about stuff such as the bubonic plague, however nowadays, we have to worry about what Carson mentions in her novel “environmental disease” (p.169). By 1972, DDT was prohibited in the U.S. about ten years after the publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. However, Rachel Carson, died in 1964, she never got to witness her success. In 1970 the EPA, which was formed by President Nixon, however, it was Carson’s call for an ‘independent board’ in the government that brought the Environmental Protection Agency into existence.

This is one of the biggest problems that our government does try to control or even stop it. The United States was unanimous about the effects that would happen. Our government is the first ones to blame for putting all of these harmful substances and pesticides which is a huge problem our country faces today. Without even thinking about the negative impact we have on the earth and people we are disposed to encourage our economy at any cost. Rachel Carson discusses far and beyond about the impact of the poisons that could affect your health in so many different ways. All of these chemicals, that we are being exposed to almost every single day are exposed to almost anywhere you go out in public. These chemicals could be found in the wrong places where they are not meant to be. However, since the U.S. has an inattentive distribution techniques like planes dropping a numerous amounts of pesticides almost every single day on to farmland, crops, insects, and animals, pesticides can then spread anywhere easily. However, Rachel Carson never tried to ban the usage of pesticides and poisonous substances since she views the inherent advantage of them in our society. However, what Rachel Carson does want is What she is calling for is the correct dosage for areas, as well as planning for these actions. Overall the book Silent Spring was mostly talking about how taking full responsibilities for what we as a society create and the negative impacts we cause at the same time

Rachel Carson's warnings are still incredibly applicable in our today's society. Organic pesticide agriculture is still the exception rather than the usual. Insecticide and pesticide utilization continues to increase till this day with a whole new different class of chemicals and substances. In today's society, the rapid reduction of the bees populations has been largely attributed to neonicotinoid insecticides, which are being utilized in large amounts around the U.S. and the U.K. Small doses well below the safe limits set by the European governments can damage the performance of bees and any other pollinating type of insects. The impact on the good chain and the plant life could be disastrous. Global bees have been declining due to climate change, parasites, and industrial agriculture. Honeybees and wild pollinators face numerous amount of threats due to loss of their biodiversity, the destruction of

their habitat, and deficiency of forage due to bee killing pesticides and monocultures. One of the most essential thing that bees do is pollinate. Pollination is very essential and is needed for plants to reproduce, a wide amount of plants depend on other insects or bees especially as pollinators. This shows how Silent Spring is still relevant till this day since we haven't stopped using poisonous substances that could harm the agriculture, animals, and insects. In our society today, chemicals are being manufactured to kill certain plants. Chemicals are being increased and each day more and more people are being replaced with the work of machines. Those machines make it simple to help extend and spread the chemicals in the lands and at that point they can only do harm to our society in this situation.

Societies moved from a generally and large matriarchal framework to a patriarchal one, and we presumed that the earth was a perpetual supply of shelter, food, and fuel. Women back then were seen as a lower-rank and the biological systems that encompassed us were seen as tools, as unfortunate obligation, as sustenance. It wasn't until the 1970's that we began to take a decent, look around us and acknowledge what we were doing to our society and to our Earth. As woman's rights moved, so did our states of mind towards nature. Furthermore, that is where ecofeminism becomes an integral factor. For instance, Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was published and it shocked everybody. Relatively because she talked about how America uses chemical substances in numerous amounts. With her book, Rachel conveyed two colossal messages to all the people of the world: shockingly, young ladies can be researchers and scientists as well, and we're presumably killing everything. Laws changed fast after Carson's book was published , poisonous spray utilization on plants and insects dropped drastically. Carson is only one case of numerous enthusiastic, shrewd ladies who care about their general surroundings, and an ideal case of an ecofeminist at work.

The book Silent Spring changed the course of environmental history. As we solve the secrets of the scientific world, we all recommence to disregard the important meaning behind Silent Spring. In order to have a balanced way of life, we must acknowledge our negative impacts on the environment and its natural method. Rachel Carson's message is very essential now more than ever as we stabilize scientific progress with the preservation of the natural world. One of the most essential bequest of the book Silent Spring, was a unique public recognition that the natural world was important to human interference. Rachel Carson had made a comprehensive idea: at times, technological progress is essentially at odds with natural procedures that it must be reduced. Preservation never raised much general public interest, few people were concerned about the vanishing of wilderness. But the warnings Rachel Carson had talked about which are the the genetic damage, the deaths of entire species , contamination of the food chain, cancer, were too scary to just ignore. For the first time, the need to adjust production in order to preserve and protect the society became widely accepted, and that was when environmentalism introduced.

Cite this page