Silent Spring & Rachel Carson: Good & Evil

Throughout Silent Spring, author Rachel Carson discusses the development of the United States chemical industry from its growth after World War II up until the present. She discusses several issues with the chemical industry and how its development has been detrimental to the environment. Rachel Carson goes through the development, use, and termination of DDT as a pesticide. Additionally, she discusses how such chemicals become incorporated into the water supply as well as within the soil. She continues her book by presenting alternatives to pesticides and herbicides. Carson then goes so far as to try and explain why wildlife, especially birds, are dying at such a high rate. Once again, the author goes on with the issues associated with DDT and the aquatic environments it effects. She then focuses on the DDT fogging methods used in order to control crop pests and how it had little effect on controlling certain types of insects, such as moths and ants. She goes on discussing household pesticides and the price we do and will pay for using such pesticides. She brings up the cancer statistic and argues that man is not to control his environment. Towards the end she discusses how certain insects are developing a resistance to the pesticides and once again she presents alternatives to the use of pesticides. It can be argued, that Rachel Carson has single handedly brought about the inadvertent deaths of millions around the globe. With her anti-chemical view and her startling claims, millions of readers have taken her advice and even the government has halted the use of certain pesticides. She has created a following that has become evasive to altering their environment. We, as human beings, are naturally equipped to alter our environment; it is what we have done since the beginning of our existence. By creating a passive grouping, people are no longer combating the forces of nature, instead we hide from such forces of nature; such as using mosquito nets in Africa rather than teaching the people to use another means of protection. They are taught to hide beneath the mesh rather than to lash out and take the offensive. The use of chemicals, especially pesticides (after proper testing of course), is a part of how we survive. Chemicals are a part our everyday life, chemistry is part of us.