TheMillerCircle.org

Billy Moyer’s Journal has a small piece on Rachel Carson and her impact as conveyed by E.O. Wilson. The influence of Rachel Carson on our environmental awareness has been remarkable, especially for someone who died shortly after her major publication “Silent Spring,” leaving her message to be carried by her written words rather than her presence. Her work directly led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Endangered Species Act and instilled in the World a new attitude about the impact that our activities, industrial waste and chemical products have on the balance of nature. Although her book focused on DDT, which was banned in the 1970s, her writing and concerns illuminated an area that was long overdue for intense inspection and public scrutiny.

But “Silent Spring” was also the trigger point for the anti-environmentalist movement and it helped move the Republican Party to the party against regulation and control by anyone other than those serving the interests of the extraction industries. Today the banning of DDT has entered into a new state of controversy, largely related to its possible use in controlling malaria. And Tom Delay, the former bug exterminator, has claimed that Rachel Carson’s inspired ban on DDT led to millions of deaths that might have otherwise been saved by the insecticide. Of course, you don’t hear Delay or any other proponent of these views mention that DDT would by now have eliminated most predator birds and that, in all likelihood we would be looking around for a new national emblem. Also, those that claim DDT was without impact on human health don’t realize that the insecticide wasn’t around during the period that we adopted more sophisticated methods of looking and testing for environmental impact on human health. They too do not realize that DDT was early on demonstrated to be an effective agent for blocking the nerve action potential and that human disorders thought to be caused by DDT have been reported. The lack of a biodegradation pathway for DDT means that it would continue to build up in the fatty tissues of animals, ascending first up the predator scale, eventually finding its way into tissue stores of all interconnected species, meaning all of us. The Eskimos have been a giant repository of DDT. Anyone who claims that DDT should not have been banned must be guilty of the modern affliction of Republicanism: short-term thinking only. It’s endemic to that culture. A website devoted to Rachel Carson and her work is available.