Living on Earth: Rachel Carson Remembered
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CURWOOD: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios in Somerville,
Massachusetts - this is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood.
Silent Spring. With those two words Rachel Carson sparked the
modern environmental movement back in 1962. Her book captured
the public's imagination with its devastating account of the dangers of
pesticides such as DDT. When Silent Spring was published Rachel
Carson was already the winner of the national book award for her
best-selling volume, the Sea Around Us. And let me read from her
acceptance speech:
"Many people have commented with surprise on the fact that a work of
science should have a large popular sale. But this notion that "science"
is something apart from everyday life, is one that I should like to
challenge. The materials of science are the materials of life itself.
Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the
why of everything in our experience. It is impossible to understand
man without understanding his environment".
Rachel Carson was born 100 years ago this month, on May 27, 1907
and her birthday is being commemorated in many places. Living on
Earth's Bruce Gellerman traveled to Cape Cod for this appreciation of
the legacy of Rachel Carson.
GELLERMAN: In the auditorium at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural
History, in Brewster Massachusetts a short video recounts the life of
Rachel Carson.
VIDEO: She started by writing radio scripts about fish. She continued
as a junior aquatic biologist. In 1936 one of only two professional
women in her agency.
GELLERMAN: This video was produced by the US Fish and Wildlife
Service where Carson worked as a writer for 16 years.
VIDEO: Her science meticulous, her writing still regarded as some of
the best...
GELLERMAN: Her friends said that "Ray" Carson, as they called her,
was a born writer. She was just 11 when her first story was published
and she wrote her first two books both on the science of the oceans
while she was still working for the Fish & Wildlife Service.
DWYER: Rachel's writing is very interesting in that it's not pure science
and it's not pure literature. It's well-written science.
GELLERMAN: Bob Dwyer is the Executive Director of the Cape Cod
museum. He says Carson's 1952 book "The Sea Around Us" made the
bestseller list for more than a year and won the National Book Award.
Carson took complex science and made it accessible to the layperson.
But she's most famous for the book she published a decade later,
"Silent Spring." It was a pioneering piece of investigative journalism
fact based and hard hitting. The book detailed the disastrous,
ecological consequences of synthetic pesticides.
VIDEO: Her 1962 book
"Silent Spring" challenged
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Living on Earth: Rachel Carson Remembered
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American agriculture and
caused society to re-think
it's relationship to the
natural world, she was far
ahead of her time, her work
changed the world forever
GELLERMAN: Time Magazine
later named Rachel Carson
one of the most influential
people of the 20th Century
and yet, says Bob Dwyer,
when the Museum began to
work on the Carson
centennial exhibit curators
were surprised by what they
found.
"Awakening
Nature's Voice:
Rachel Carson
1907-2007" will
be on exhibit at
the Cape Cod
Museum of
Natural History
through
November 30,
2007. (Courtesy
of Bruce
Gellerman)
DWYER: What we thought is
that people would remember
who Rachel Carson was and
we were basically going to
have a modest exhibit. And
what we learned as we
started to put this together
is that folks just did not
remember who Rachel Carson was. And we realized that we had an
incredible opportunity to tell a story, bring somebody back to life that
is really the head of the environmental movement as we know it.
GELLERMAN: The Carson exhibit on Cape Cod is a collaboration with
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
KLINGER: We have so much stuff that even a lot of it is not gonna be
able to go on display because we don't have the room.
GELLERMAN: David Klinger is a senior writer with the service. In the
basement of the museum, Klinger rummages through boxes of
Carson's files and photos. There's a replica of the brass diving helmet
Carson wore while doing research at the Marine Biological Laboratory
in nearby Woods Hole.
Klinger finds a piece of
paper. It's a Fish and
Wildlife press release
from 1946 which Carson
- as Editorial Director of
the Service - helped
write:
[PRESS RELEASE
READING]
GELLERMAN:
Government press
releases like this one
contained the seeds that would later grow into the book Silent Spring.
But these early warnings fell mostly on deaf ears.
David Klinger, Senior Writer at the USFWS
(Courtesy of Bruce Gellerman)
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[Paul J. Smith (composer) "Leave It To Beaver (Theme)" from 'All
Time Top 100 TV Themes' (TVT – 2005)]
GELLERMAN: Post World War Two America was a place of unbridled
faith in science and technology. Nuclear power promised electricity too
cheap to meter. It was an era of "better living through chemistry," and
Dave Klinger says synthetic pesticides like DDT played a big part.
KLINGER: You're not only looking at a chemical compound but you're
looking at an attitude in the 50's and 60's that said chemicals are all
good for you but there weren't as many warnings being sounded about
the downside of these things.
[RUMMAGING THOUGH A BASEMENT]
GELLERMAN: Klinger reaches behind a box and finds evidence of what
he's talking about, an old hand-pump spray can that was once filled
with insecticide.
KLINGER: Take a look at these pesticide containers. Virtually all of
them have five to 15 percent DDT in them, which is really what she
wrote about in "Silent Spring." This is the kind of stuff that was
commonly sold in drug stores and grocery stores.
GELLERMAN: Look at this
one. This one is Bugaboo by
Mobile Oil. Let's take a look
at it. Kills flies, mosquitoes,
moths ants and many other
kinds of household insects.
Let's look at the warning.
There is no warning.
(laughs)
KLINGER: Well they certainly
encourage you. It says it's
an extremely effective,
pleasantly scented insect
spray. But I mean, it was
almost comical some of
these brand names and how
the only good insect was a
dead insect.
David Klinger
holds a can of
"Keyspray"
insecticide spray.
(Courtesy of
Bruce Gellerman)
GELLERMAN: Synthetic pesticides, like DDT were created as weapons
during World War II. But Rachel Carson knew they could also be
weapons against nature. DDT, Carson said in "Silent Spring," was not
an insecticide but a Biocide.
CARSON: We spray our elms and the following springs are silent of
robin songs. Not because we sprayed the robins directly but because
the poison traveled step by step through the now familiar elm leaf,
earthworm robin cycle.
GELLERMAN: Carson said DDT and other synthetic pesticides were also
killing beneficial insects, like honeybees, wreaking havoc on birds of
prey, like bald eagles, and working their way up the food chain
poisoning people, and disrupting our endocrine systems. "Silent
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Spring" hit like a bombshell. The chemical industry vilified Carson. She
was called an irresponsible woman. The largest manufacturer of DDT
said she wrote, quote: "Not as a scientist but rather as a fanatic
defender of the cult of the balance of nature." Every effort was made
to discredit her.
[RUMMAGING SOUNDS]
GELLERMAN: David Klinger searches for another box and pulls out a
document pages sandwiched between plastic sheets. We came across
her FBI file. It's a two-page letter. That ah...
GELLERMAN: You can't read it, it's all been redacted it's all blacked
out. Yes, Dec. 11.
KLINGER: It looks like 11th or 14th 1962.
GELLERMAN: It says US Department of Justice Federal Bureau of
Investigation. The New York office of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service advised on August 30, 1962 that...and the rest
of the page is
KLINGER: The rest of the
page is blacked out. We
see one word here:
Russia.
GELLERMAN: That's it.
There's nothing else of
substance in the FBI
document. But at the
height of the cold war a
link to Russia was enough
to discredit anyone.
Rachel Carson's FBI file. (Courtesy of Bruce
Gellerman)
[MUSIC: Bob Dylan "The
Times They Are A Changin'" from 'The Times They Are A
Changin'' (Sony Music – 1964)]
GELLERMAN: In 1962, the civil rights movement was gathering steam.
The anti-Vietnam war movement still lay ahead. Rachel Carson and the
fledgling environmental movement, which "Silent Spring" helped
spearhead, were at the front lines of dramatic social change in the US.
Bob Dwyer of the Cape Cod museum:
DWYER: I think what Rachel was trying to explain to people is that just
because the government is trying to tell you something is ok doesn't
mean it's ok. Ah, if you have some reason to question something, it's
your duty to do exactly that.
KLINGER: Rachel Carson was, she was a lone woman
GELLERMAN: Again David Klinger.
KLINGER: A lonely voice in the late 50's and early 60's getting into
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some pretty heavy weight subjects that really challenged government
and agriculture and industry.
GELLERMAN: After "Silent
Spring" was published,
President Kennedy convened
a special commission to
investigate pesticides.
Klinger pulls out a picture of
the panel.
KLINGER: And you notice of
course that every member of
the committee is a white
male except for one woman
at the tail end of the table,
and that's Rachel Carson.
GELLERMAN: Carson
testified before the
committee, which ultimately
issued a report warning
against the indiscriminate
use of pesticides. She also
Rachel Carson
appeared before the Senate,
(Courtesy of U.S.
calling for the creation of a
FWS)
federal pesticide agency. By
the end of the decade, Congress created the Environmental Protection
Agency, which was given jurisdiction over pesticides. In 1972, the sale
of DDT was largely banned in the US. And now, 35 years later, bald
eagles may finally be taken off the endangered species list.
Still, in the decades since Carson wrote "Silent Spring," the amount of
synthetic pesticides used in the nation has doubled and they're still
part of everyday life. You can even find them here in the basement of
the Museum of Natural History, where Rachel Carson's archives are
temporarily stored
KLINGER: Right over there is a can of OFF!
GELLERMAN: And that's part, in your office, and that's not part of the
exhibit.
KLINGER: No, no, we still use chemicals. I mean, there is a place for
chemicals.
GELLERMAN: Rachel Carson agreed if she was misunderstood by the
chemical industry, well she was sometimes misrepresented by the
fledgling environmental movement as well.
CARSON: Anyone who has really read the book knows that I do not
advocate the complete abandonment of chemical control, that I
criticize modern chemical control, not because it controls harmful
insects but because it controls them badly and inefficiently; and
because it creates many dangerous side effects in doing so. I criticize
the present methods because they are based on a rather low level of
scientific thinking. We really are capable of much greater
sophistication in our solution to this problem.
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GELLERMAN: Less than two years after Rachel Carson gave this speech
at the National Women's Press Club she died of breast cancer, which
she battled quietly while writing "Silent Spring." The book has never
gone out of print.
GELLERMAN: David Klinger, from Fish and Wildlife.
KLINGER: You know, the power of this woman is in her words and
what she wrote was not is not in a dusty old book from 50 years ago,
it's as contemporary as today.
GELLERMAN: Rachel Carson: environmentalist, scientist and journalist,
would have been 100 years old this week.
The Rachel Carson exhibit at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History
in Brewster, Massachusetts, is on display through November.
For Living on Earth, this is Bruce Gellerman.
[MUSIC: Bob Dylan "The Times They Are A Changin' (Refrain)" from
'The Times They Are A Changin'' (Sony Music – 1964)]
CURWOOD: You can find a link to the Rachel Carson exhibit as well as
a set of readings from her book "The Sea Around Us" on our website,
l-o-e dot O-R-G.
The Cape Cod Museum of Natural History
USFWS: Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson's FBI files
"The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson"
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