Against Silencing Nature or Killing with Chemicals

They have been a part of our lives in many ways for the last century. They invade our homes, our bodies and now every part of the green planet. Much of the convenience of running our lives and our homes depend on chemical cleaning power. Crops depend on their killing power (of pests, etc.) But as we clean and kill our way through life, the Killer Chemicals are building up.

There is a lot of information out there on our use of chemicals and I will provide various links and cues for those who want ways to deal with this Frankenstein. Here, I give some excerpts from the introduction to the book.

She was one of the foremost environmentalist (yes, she was a woman)- Rachel Carlson. Few may be aware of her pioneering work back in the 1940s, USA. She launched a movement and was demonized by America’s chemical lobby. To put it in the words of Linda Lear who wrote the Introduction to the new edition of Carlson’s book, -

“In postwar America, science was God, science was male.

Carlson was an outsider who had never been part of the scientific establishment, first because she was a woman but also because of her chosen field, biology, was held in low esteem in the nuclear age….

In Carlson’s view, the postwar culture of science that arrogantly claimed dominion over nature was the philosophic root of the problem. (Isn’t it still!)

In 1962 however the multimillion dollar industrial chemical industry was not about to allow a former government editor, a female scientist without a PHD, or an industrial affiliation…..to undermine public confidence in its products or to question its integrity….She had overstepped the boundaries of her gender and her science. But just in case her claims did gain an audience, the industry spent a quarter of a million dollars (it was the 1940s, remember!) to discredit her research and malign her character….

Silent Spring compels each generation to re-evaluate its relationship to the natural world. In arguing that public health and the environment, human and natural, are inseparable, Rachel Carlson insisted that the role of the expert had to be limited by democratic access and must include public debate about the risks of hazardous technologies.”

Silent Spring has been published in its 40^th anniversary edition. Carlson’s other books include Under the Sea-wind, The Sea around us, The Edge of the Sea.

Her books do not provide dry facts but are a pleasure to read in their lyrical prose.

 Available from Flipkart and Amazon and various bookstores.