HISTORY
Figure 9 : Crop duster try . It also called into question a major item of faith in the 20th century — the authority of scientific experts . Carson showed how experts trusted their own creations too greatly and how they themselves were implicated in a vast complex of private and public interests designed to produce profits for chemical manufacturers and the growing agribusiness sector .
Most importantly , Silent Spring launched the modern global environmental movement . The ecological interconnections between nature and human society that it described went far beyond the limited concerns of the conservation movement at the time and into the protection of soil , forests , water and other natural resources .
People could also see “ engineering consent ” for what it was : an attempt to dupe people for corporate profit . Scientists were no longer to be believed without question because some could be bought .
There were also vested interests in government that would permit the environment to be trashed for profit , whatever the cost to ordinary people .
A new generation found their perspectives widened and their activism inspired by Carson ’ s powerful work . And that work is ongoing . The world today is awash in a sea of chemicals never before seen in nature .
The increase of endocrine disruptors in food and water has raised suspicions that they are responsible for a multitude of perplexing new problems : genital deformities in increasing numbers of newborn boys , earlier puberty in girls , declining sperm count in adult males , rising rates of prostate and testicular cancer , and problems in sexual development and reproduction .
Other possible health effects include abnormal brain development , obesity and diabetes . Plastic poisons the seas .
The chemicals are not the same as the ones Carson indicted in Silent Spring , yet they are produced , sold and used on an unsuspecting public by the same interconnected complex of profit-driven companies and government authorities .
Figure 10 : Rachel Carson
Carson ’ s words still apply : No witchcraft , no enemy action produced our stricken world . People have done it to themselves .
Grassroots Vol 21 No 3 November 2021 46