Google today commemorates the 107th birthday of renowned American biologist, Rachel Louise Carson with an illustrated doodle, that has her standing by the lakeside, with a note-book and binoculars observing the bio-diversity that is on display. Carson gained global renown for her book, the Silent Spring published in 1962 and considered by many the first real environmental conscious raising book. In the book
, backed by her research, she eloquently strove against the indiscriminate usage of pesticides, especially DDT. Building up her case, she tried to burst the human supremacy bubble, the belief that we at the top of the chain, are masters of everything that we see. Under severe attack from the chemical lobby, the book found unusual support from the public and the experts. Even President John Kennedy thumped his support and set up an expert panel to
examine the claims. It is only because of this research that US government enacted the Clean Air and Waters Act, environmental consciousness went mainstream, the Environmental Protection Agency founded in the US, and so on.
Carson, herself ailing from terminal breast cancer, died shortly after the publication of the book. Imagine, a sole warrior battling for her own life, also takes on the war that man has raised against nature. It is melancholic, but inspiring nonetheless.
Here’s a little selection of the oft-quotes passages and lines from the Silent Spring and other works:
“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
“The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”
“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.”
“Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man’s future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces.”
“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”
“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
“Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is — whether its victim is human or animal — we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity.”
“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”
“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”
“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”
“How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?”
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
“In nature nothing exists alone.”
“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
“Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species — man – acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world. ”
“A Who’s Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones – we had better know something about their nature and their power.”
“As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life – a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no “high-minded orientation,” no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.”
“Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species within bounds.”
“It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.”
“We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts.”’
“It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray.”
“Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself.”
“Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.”
“The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.”
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