Happy Birthday Rachel Carson

Even though some people blame you for no longer being able to dance in the spray of DDT and would like to dig you up to kill you:

Now Melanie Morgan of Disney Radio station KSFO 560 AM wants to dig up the grave of a dead person and kill them again!

In a conversation with John Berlau (author of Eco-Freaks from the ExxonMobile funded front group, CEI) broadcast on the 6:00 hour on December 01, 2006

They were discussing how good DDT is and the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

Lee Rogers: Well I think the moral of this story is beware of do gooders they'll kill ya.

Melanie Morgan: "or dig up Rachel Green and kill her all over again. I mean that would an appropriate,

Rogers: Rachel Carson.

Morgan: I'm sorry, Rachel Carson of Silent Green.


- Lee Rogers and Melanie Morgan on ABC Disney Radio station KSFO 12/01/2006 06:15 AM (The Lee Rogers and Melanie Morgan program, KSFO 560 AM) (audio link)

And Morse of The Republic of Sestakastan catches a senator:

Tom Coburn has blocked an honor for Rachel Carson.

A plan to honor environmental pioneer and "Silent Spring" author Rachel Carson on her centennial on Sunday was blocked by a U.S. senator who believes Carson created a climate of "hysteria and misinformation."

Sen. Tom Coburn (news, bio, voting record) derailed approval of a Senate resolution honoring the life of Carson, whose 1962 book "Silent Spring" warned of the dangers posed to wildlife and humans by the pesticide DDT and who is credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement.

"Rachel Carson's work both directly and indirectly created a climate of hysteria and misinformation about the impact of DDT on the human populations," said John Hart, a spokesman for Coburn, in explaining why the Oklahoma Republican withheld his support for the plan to honor her.

Why on earth is she so disliked by the rightwing?

Rachel Carson made environmentalism respectable. Before Silent Spring, nearly all Americans believed that science was a force for good. Carson's work exposed the dark side of science. It showed that DDT and other chemicals we were using to enhance agricultural productivity were poisoning our lakes, rivers, oceans, and ourselves. Thanks to her, progress can no longer be measured solely in tons of wheat produced and millions of insects killed. Thanks to her, the destruction of nature can no longer be called progress.

She stepped in the way of big corporations and showed people the consequences of pesticides. She taught a whole generation to question.

As early as 1945, Carson and her close colleague Clarence Cottam had become alarmed by government abuse of new chemical pesticides such as DDT, in particular the "predator" and "pest" control programs, which were broadcasting poisons with little regard for the welfare of other creatures.

[snip]

Meanwhile, the insecticide barrage had been augmented by dieldrin, parathion, heptachlor, malathion and other fearful compounds many times stronger than DDT, all of which the government planned to distribute through the Department of Agriculture for public use and commercial manufacture. "The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became," Carson recalled. "I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important."

[snip]

Silent Spring, serialized in the New Yorker in June 1962, gored corporate oxen all over the country. Even before publication, Carson was violently assailed by threats of lawsuits and derision, including suggestions that this meticulous scientist was a "hysterical woman" unqualified to write such a book. A huge counterattack was organized and led by Monsanto, Velsicol, American Cyanamid — indeed, the whole chemical industry — duly supported by the Agriculture Department as well as the more cautious in the media.

[snip]

By year's end, Audubon and National Parks Magazine had published additional excerpts from the book, and all but the most self-serving of Carson's attackers were backing rapidly toward safer ground. In their ugly campaign to reduce a brave scientist's protest to a matter of public relations, the chemical interests had only increased public awareness. Silent Spring became a runaway best seller, with international reverberations. Nearly 40 years later, it is still regarded as the cornerstone of the new environmentalism. v Carson was not a born crusader but an intelligent and dedicated woman who rose heroically to the occasion. She was rightly confident about her facts as well as her ability to present them. Secure in the approval of her peers, she remained remarkably serene in the face of her accusers. Perhaps the imminence of her own mortality had helped her find this precious balance and perspective. In most photographs, the pensive face appears a little sad, but this was true long before she knew that she had cancer. She was 56 when she died in April 1964.

Some of us wish you a Happy Birthday, Ms. Carson.



Thank you.