CARSON, RACHEL (1907–1964)

Nature writer and marine biologist Rachel Carson set off a storm of controversy in 1962 with the publication of her book Silent Spring. In her exposé on the dangerous consequences of the indiscriminate use of pesticides, Carson questioned the benefits of the synthetic chemical DDT, condemned scientific conceit, chastised the chemical industry for pursuing dollars at the expense of nature, and chided agriculturists and government officials for polluting croplands and roadsides. Calling such behavior irresponsible, Carson suggested that if people were not careful, they would eventually destroy the natural world so completely that one day they would awaken in springtime to find no birds chirping, no chicks hatching, and a strange shadow of death everywhere.

Agriculturists and chemical officials scorned Carson's jeremiad and argued that she misrepresented the evidence, while conservationists such as Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas praised her for writing what he called "the most important chronicle of this century for the human race." From the Supreme Court to Ladies' Home Gardening Clubs, Americans discussed Carson's polemic, and in 1963, President John F. Kennedy entered the fray by commissioning a study on pesticides. In sum, Silent Spring contributed to a broader discussion of the environment and served as one significant catalyst for the emergence of the modern environmental movement.

Carson joined a growing number of voices that expressed concern about wilderness preservation, clean air and water, and nuclear energy. And, in concert with others, her writings and action—lobbying Congress, giving speeches, writing letters-to-the-editor, and working with conservationist organizations—spawned a host of environmental regulations that helped shape the contours of government policy, industrial action, scientific development, and individual lifestyles. In 1969, Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1970, the first Earth Day was held. Thus, Carson's work helped revolutionize the ways that many thought about the environment. President Jimmy Carter honored Carson posthumously in 1980 with the Medal of Freedom, saying, "Always concerned, always eloquent, she created a tide of environmental consciousness that has not ebbed."

Pesticide use was not Carson's chosen topic. She preferred to author works that simply fostered a deeper appreciation of nature. A shy and soft-spoken woman, Carson wrote with an Albert Schweitzer-like reverence for life. All was sacred to her. Her style was lyrical, vivid, and romantic, falling mostly within the nature-writing tradition. She gave her creatures anthropomorphic characteristics, set them in dramatic situations, hoping, she said, "to make animals in the woods or waters, where they live, as alive to others as they are to me."

Born in 1907 to Robert and Maria Carson, Rachel developed her admiration for nature in the woods and wetlands of her home in the Allegheny hills of western Pennsylvania. Her mother nurtured this interest with nature-study books. Simultaneously, Rachel cultivated her desire to write, publishing her first piece at eleven in the children's magazine St. Nicholas.

One of the greatest influences in Carson's life, next to her mother who was her lifelong companion, was her biology teacher at Pennsylvania College for Women. After a required course from Mary Scott Skinker, Carson switched her major from English to biology and, following her mentor's footsteps, pursued her studies with a master's in marine zoology from Johns Hopkins University. After a short stint of teaching at the University of Maryland, Carson landed a job in 1935 with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (later the Fish and Wildlife Department). In this position, Carson pushed for the protection of natural resources in twelve pamphlets she wrote for the Department's "Conservation in Action" series. To supplement her income, Carson wrote nature articles for popular magazines and completed the first two books of her sea trilogy.

The publication of her second book in 1951 brought Carson much acclaim and changed her life significantly. The Sea Around Us garnered positive reviews and was on the New York Times best-seller list for eighty-six weeks. Among other honors, it won the National Book Award and the John Burroughs Medal for excellence in nature writing. In 1951, Carson gained an esteemed Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1952 she resigned from her government position. Book royalties from The Sea Around Us made it possible for her to live by writing. In 1955, she released her third book on the sea, again to widespread praise and more prizes.

While Carson's favorite topic was the sea and coastal shores, she saw the "contamination of man's total environment" as "the central problem of [her] age." Watching her own Allegheny Hills change in the wake of burgeoning industrial activity fed this concern. The atomic bomb and the dumping of nuclear wastes on the ocean's floor increased her anxiety. But it was the spread of synthetic pesticides that disturbed her the most. Although troubled by research on DDT in the 1940s, Carson did not get embroiled in the issue until 1957 when she followed a trial in Long Island, New York between local citizens and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At issue was the spraying of pesticides over private land. Disturbed by plaintiff complaints of poisoned bird sanctuaries and gardens, Carson spent the next four years researching and writing about the impact of synthetic chemicals on the ecosystem.

Carson's work on pesticides and her writings on the sea are two parts of the same message. In all, she wanted to communicate the wonder she felt for the natural world, a world she saw as harmonious, balanced, and beautiful. And, in each, she challenged her fellows to reverence nature and act responsibly to preserve and protect natural habitats. Disputing the notion that humans live separate from and in dominion over the rest of nature, Carson placed people within a "vast web of life" connected to all parts of the ecosystem. Humans were but one small piece. They ought, she emphasized, to respect that place and not squander the world's resources. In the interests of energy use, the message was clear. Harvesting and employing the earth's natural resources was no longer a matter of human need only. Energy officials and policy-makers must consider the requirements of other constituents in the ecosystem, and must heed possible long-term environmental consequences.

Carson succeeded in conveying this view, in part, because she was not the only one fighting for environmental protection. For close to a century, since at least the writings of George Perkins Marsh, the conservationist movement had been building. In the 1940s, conservationists Aldo Leopold and Paul Sears espoused a similar ecological ethic and, for much of the 1950s, David Brower, head of the Sierra Club, fought for public attention in the hopes of saving natural wilderness areas. In 1956, Brower and others successfully resisted the damming of Echo Park in Colorado, a moment now marked as a turning point in environmental protection, and one that had immediate consequences for developers interested in harnessing the energy of water. In the same year that Carson released Silent Spring, Murray Bookchin offered a parallel warning in his book Our Synthetic Environment. It is in this context that the success of Carson's work makes sense. Her writings complemented other actions. Still, it was Carson's lay appeal—her refusal to use technical and scientific jargon—that popularized this ecological vision and catapulted concerns about nature into the mainstream of American life, making the environment a crucial part of the agenda in any future technological decisions.

The modern environmentalist's interdependent understanding of the world that tied humans to nature has had multiple implications for technology and energy issues, both nationally and globally. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, technological decisions and government, business, and individual energy needs could not easily be divorced from social or ecological concerns. By the 1970s the common assumption was that human actions almost always changed the environment, often in irretrievable ways. Questions of costs and benefits and issues of short term and long-term effects dominated policymaking. This became most apparent in 1973 when the energy crisis intersected with the environmental movement. With the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) embargo, costs of oil soared, forcing the nation to focus on the depletion of natural resources and America's high energy-dependent lifestyles. Energy issues became inextricably tied to environmental and economic factors.

Rachel Carson played a crucial role in the ways Americans interpreted these events. Though a quiet person, more a recluse than an activist, her naturalist concerns won out. Propelled away from her refuge by her beloved sea to write a book on pesticides, Carson's activism grew and she spent her last days in the halls of Congress lobbying for environmental legislation. Her fight was short-lived, however. Carson died of breast cancer in 1964, two years after the publication of Silent Spring.

Linda Sargent Wood

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bookchin, M. (1962). Our Synthetic Environment. New York: Knopf.

Carson, R. (1941). Under the Sea-Wind: A Naturalist's Picture of Ocean Life. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Carson, R. (1951). The Sea Around Us. New York: Oxford University Press.

Carson, R. (1955). The Edge of the Sea. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Carson, R. (1962). Silent Spring. Boston: Fawcett Crest.

Lear, L. (1997). Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Lear, L., ed. (1998). Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson. Boston: Beacon Press.

Lutts, R. H. (1985). "Chemical Fallout: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Radioactive Fallout and the Environmental Movement." Environmental History Review 9:210–225.

Melosi, M. V. (1985). Coping with Abundance: Energy and Environment in Industrial America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Worster, D. (1977). Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. New York: Cambridge University Press.