Silent spring was written by

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make yourown. Written by Anastasia Melnyk The planet we so baldly and presumptuously call ours is also a home for animals, fish, birds, insects, plants, and mushrooms. If you go outside and have a look at your surroundings, you will see trees, birds, pets, and other living beings. These are usual things that we don’t even notice, taking them for granted. However, there might be a day when parks, forests, and meadows disappear because we can really estimate the full impact of our decisions. Silent Spring illustrates one of the possible scenarios of our future. Do we even notice insects? Some people say that we have our own problems, so there is no point in thinking about them. Here is the most terrible mistake. People have to understand that we do depend on nature. Let’s imagine all insects will disappear now, what will happen? As we all know, the food chain will be destroyed. Birds will probably perish first, then animals, and only then we. For now, the technologies are not that advanced to be able to replace insects and perform their part in pollination of plants. If pesticides kill insects, there is a high risk of hunger being on the rise in the world. We can’t even fully foresee what we and other living beings will have to endure. However, it is possible to assume that people are not going to like the new world where springs and summers will ...

is considered the book that started the global grassroots environmental movement. Released in 1962, it focuses on the negative effects of chemical pesticides that were, at the time, a large part of US agriculture. Silent Spring carries a message that is as relevant today as it was back in the 1960s. Humans are dependant on their living environment and it is, therefore, pure madness to disregard this environment’s protection. Because of the boldness and simplicity in how Carson articulates this truth, her book still inspires activists all around the world today. Here are 3 lessons I took away about the use of pesticides and environmental protection: • The main problem with pesticides is that they don’t target pests exclusively. • DDT can harm people even without direct exposure. • To prevent the harmful effects of pesticides, we need more education and other, environment-friendly ways to preserve crops. If you are all about making the world a better place and protecting nature, there’s no time to waste. Let’s go! Silent Spring Summary If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want. Lesson 1: Pesticides destroy not just the particular pests, but whole ecosystems. Humanity “inherited” pesticides from When the war ended, upon observation, those same substances were lethal not only to humans – but also, to insects and some other agricultural pests. So, at first, using chemicals seemed like a great way to protect crops. But since ...

Rachel Carson’s watershed work Silent Spring is first published on September 27, 1962. Originally serialized in The New Yorker magazine, the book shed light on the damage that man-made pesticides inflict on the environment. Its publication is often viewed as the beginning of the modern environmentalist movement in America. Carson received a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932 and spent the next several decades researching the ecosystems of the East Coast. She rose through the ranks of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and published many works on the environment, including The Sea Around Us. In the late '50s, she became concerned by reports of the unintended effects insecticides were having on other wildlife, and the Audubon Society approached her about writing a book on the topic. Silent Spring was the result of this partnership and several years of research, focusing primarily on the effects of DDT and similar pesticides. Carson was diagnosed with breast cancer during this time, causing the book’s publication to be delayed until 1962. Silent Spring did not call for an outright ban on DDT, but it did argue that they were dangerous to humans and other animals and that overusing them would dramatically disrupt ecosystems. Carson met with staunch criticism, largely from the chemical industry and associated scientists. She was called “a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature” and “probably a communist,” among other things, but the f...

When Silent Spring was published in 1962, author Rachel Carson was subjected to vicious personal assaults that had nothing do with the science or the merits of pesticide use. Those attacks find a troubling parallel today in the campaigns against climate scientists who point to evidence of a rapidly warming world. By • June21,2012 Yes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. More than a century and a half after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species appeared, nearly half the adults in the United States still don’t believe that evolution happens. And 50 years after the 1962 publication of Silent Spring, naysayers still rage from long-entrenched positions of ignorance at Rachel Carson and her ground-breaking critique of pesticide use. The parallels with today’s assault on climate science are striking. The personal, vitriolic attacks that were leveled at Carson are echoed today in the organized assault on the scientists who bring us uncontroverted evidence that greenhouse gases are rapidly warming the planet. But Carson savored a victory that today’s climate scientists have yet to taste — her book spurred concrete action to curtail the use of pesticides that were causing widespread harm. Rachel Carson was the first female biologist ever hired at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. I came to Carson’s book from a special angle. Several years after her death in 1964, her editor at Houghton Mifflin asked me to bring the history of the book’s publication up to date, and my work a...