Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Language and measures
- Acknowledgements
- Permissions
- Part I The Litany
- Part II Human welfare
- Part III Can human prosperity continue?
- Part IV Pollution: does it undercut human prosperity?
- Part V Tomorrow's problems
- 22 Our chemical fears
- 23 Biodiversity
- 24 Global warming
- Part VI The Real State of the World
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
22 - Our chemical fears
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Language and measures
- Acknowledgements
- Permissions
- Part I The Litany
- Part II Human welfare
- Part III Can human prosperity continue?
- Part IV Pollution: does it undercut human prosperity?
- Part V Tomorrow's problems
- 22 Our chemical fears
- 23 Biodiversity
- 24 Global warming
- Part VI The Real State of the World
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Rachel Carson, named by Time Magazine one of the 100 most influential people of the twentieth century, kick-started popular environmental awareness with her 1962 book Silent Spring. Here she told us how pesticides like DDT were spoiling the Earth, potentially leaving us with a silent spring, devoid of singing birds. In her vision of the future,
a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.
The shadow of death, the evil spell, was the onset of the chemical age: “For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.”
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Skeptical EnvironmentalistMeasuring the Real State of the World, pp. 215 - 248Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001