From the Archives: Rachel Carson Answers Her Critics

Editor's Note: The text below was transcribed from a speech Rachel Carson gave addressing the pesticide industry and others skeptical of the claims and findings in her influential book "Silent Spring." The speech was published, in full, in the 1963 September-October issue of Audubon magazine.

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Not often is it given to a generation to be able to change the course of events in ways that may significantly affect the future. Yet this is at once the privilege and the responsibility of us who live today.

We live in a time of challenge, which is also a time of opportunity. We live in a time when it is easy to despair, but which is also a time of great hope. We live in a time when it is necessary to know for what we stand, and to take that stand with courage.

It is, then, a time when we must have a realistic sense of values. We must decide what is worth while.We must be able to separate the trivia of today from the enduring realities of the long tomorrow.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” said the poet Keats. In modern times that humane and perceptive jurist, Justice William O. Douglas, has said that the right to search out a rare wildflower is just as inalienable as the right of a stock man to search out grass or of a lumberman to claim a tree.

There are scientific reasons as well as those which are esthetic. The world is inhabited by living species that are not only beautiful but full of meaning and significance. The evolution of the plants of today took millions upon millions of years. Who are we to assume the right, in this 20th century—a mere instant in time—who are we to say that those who come after us may never see some of today’s rare and endangered species?

What right do we have to destroy the scientific record contained in a living species? How do we know that we may not have great need of what it has to tell us—or of the function it performs?

People who consider themselves practical may sometimes make judgments that are extremely impractical. A Canadian forester recently wrote me of a meeting attended by industrial and research foresters. Everyone present was agreed on a campaign to get rid of a species of alder that invades cutover black spruce lands. Yet, no one knew anything about the life history of the alder, or its ecological relationships.

Apparently it had never occurred to anyone that they should find out: Later it was discovered that this shrub performs a necessary function–a nitrogen-fixing process in the soil—and so is definitely beneficial to the spruce and to the other trees.

In this rather tough and materialistic world, then, how much room is there for concern about our wildflowers? About all of nature? Are we being impractical when we protest the substitution of the “brown-out” for the color and beauty of flowers along our roads? Are we being sentimental when we care whether the robin returns to our dooryard and the veery sings in the twilight woods?

I am confident that the verdict of history will show that we–far from being the heedless sentimentalists—were indeed the tough-minded realists.

A world that is no longer fit for wild plants, that is no longer graced by the flight of birds, a world whose streams and forests are empty and lifeless is not likely to be fit habitat for man himself, for these things are symptoms of an ailing world.

In a recent speech in behalf of the World Wildlife Fund, Britain’s Prince Philip put the matter very simply: “Miners,” he reminded his hearers, “used canaries to warn them of deadly gases. It mightn’t be a bad idea if we took the same warning from the dead birds in our countryside.”

So today, as thousands of hapless wild creatures serve as canaries in the mines of our heedless technology, we have graphic reminders that all is not well in the environment of man.

In SILENT SPRING, I gave many examples of the destruction of wildlife following the use of insecticides. I am sure I do not need to tell you that a determined effort is now being made to discredit these reports. People are told that the incidents I reported happened years ago, that better methods, better controls now make this sort of thing impossible. We are told that destruction of wildlife occurs only when insecticides are improperly used–“follow the directions and no harm will result.”

Even as these reassurances are anxiously being given out, the newspapers carry other reports. These make it clear that incidents linking wildlife and pesticides did not stop with the publication of SILENT SPRING.

Let me give you a few examples:

• A few weeks ago, Canadian newspapers carried a warning that wood-cock being shot during the hunting season in New Brunswick were carrying residues of the insecticide heptachlor and might be dangerous if used as food. These birds had wintered in the Southern United States, where heptachlor was used in the fire ant program. This was a program sponsored and carried out by the state and federal governments. It was no unplanned or accidental application.
• For a number of years the eagle populations have shown an alarming decline. The Fish and Wildlife Service recently made news by announcing its discovery of lethal quantities of DDT in eagles found dead in the wild. It also discovered DDT in eagle eggs that failed to hatch.*
•  In Southern Michigan, state agricultural officials are again using the very poisonous insecticide dieldrin in their campaign against the Japanese beetle. According to a report sent me by a biologist on the scene the destruction of rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, and many songbirds is again great. This time the farmers themselves are protesting against the program presumably intended for their benefits.
• Strong protests are also being heard in Southern Illinois where a similar program has destroyed several hundred quail and rabbits in two small areas.
• And in the Boston area, as a legacy from years of insecticide spraying, fish in the Framingham, Mass. reservoir are carrying DDT in amounts 10 times the legally permissible level. This was discovered by the excellent research of biologists of the Massachusetts Fish and Game Department.

No, the problem of pesticides is not merely the dream of an avaricious author, out to pile up royalties by frightening the public—it is very much with us, here and now.

I was amused recently to read a bit of wishful thinking in one of the trade magazines. Industry “can take heart,” it said, “from the fact that the main impact of the book (i.e., SILENT SPRING) will occur in the late fall and winter—seasons when consumers are not normally active buyers of insecticides… it is fairly safe to hope that by March or April SILENT SPRING no longer will be an interesting conversational subject.”

If the tone of my mail from readers is any guide, and if the movements that have already been launched gain the expected momentum, this is one prediction that will not come true.

As you know, the threat to wildflowers and other native plants along the highways of America has become a conservation crisis. Blanket spraying of chemical herbicides to control roadside vegetation is turning our roads into barren, unsightly wastes. The wildflowers, the ferns, the shrubs bright with flowers or berries are rapidly being replaced by nearly lifeless strips. Botanists at the Connecticut Arboretum have deplored the elimination of native shrubs and wildflowers by spraying. I have seen it happen along the roads in Maine where I spend the summers. I have heard the bitter complains of the tourists and “summer people”—who came expecting beauty and found, instead, desolation.

This is one instance in which the tourists are right. For there is even more than beauty involved. Natural vegetation has its place in the economy of nature. The many millions of acres of roadside borders and highway right-of-ways are—or could be—an excellent wildlife habitat. If maintained as a community of shrubs and wildflowers, they provide food and shelter for birds and many small mammals, and for the bees too—the wild pollinators so important in maintaining many crops and other plants.

Blanket spraying destroys these natural communities. It is expensive. It contains the feature of built-in obsolescence, and has to repeated year after year. This presumably makes the manufacturers and salesmen of chemicals happy. But it is not good community economics, and it is not good conservation.

There is a good solution for this problem and it is ironical that it has not been widely applied. Selective spraying–aimed at young trees and very tall shrubs—quickly creates a stable plant community–a community of low growing shrubs, ferns, and wildflowers. This community resists the invasion of trees.

Once created—and two or three seasons’ work will usually accomplish it—spraying need not be repeated. The community has been stabilized and will remain so for perhaps 25 to 30 years without further treatment. So a minimum use is made of chemicals–the taxpayer’s purse is spared, conservation values are preserved.

The chief architect and developer of this plan of ecologically sound, selective spraying is Dr. Frank Egler of Connecticut. Dr. Egler and five other ecologists and botanists have now formed an organization known as Right-of-way Resources of America. This is one of the most gratifying events of the past few months.

All this is not to say we can afford to be complacent about the pesticide situation as a whole. If we are ever to find our way out of the present dilemma—we must remain vigilant, we must continue to challenge and to question, we must insist that the burden of proof lies with those who would use these chemicals to prove the procedures are safe.

Having recognized and defined our values, we must defend them without fear and without apology.

It is not necessary to feel that all who take the opposite view do so out of unworthy motives. There are entomologists who sincerely believe that the temporary advantage of an all-out assault on an insect population is great enough to justify the risk of side effects. There are, no doubt, chemical manufacturers who cannot see beyond the examples of beneficial use.

We take the long view. We do not ask that all chemicals be abandoned. We ask moderation. We ask the use of other methods less harmful to our environment. But we would be naive and unworldly if we did not recognize the fact that this is a large industry, fighting with every device to preserve its profits.

Above all, we must not be deceived by the enormous stream of propaganda that is issuing from the pesticide manufacturers, and from industry-related—although ostensibly independent—organizations.

This is not merely a campaign against an author and a book—it is a campaign against a cause, and that cause is the promotion of sanity and restraint in the application of dangerous materials to our environment. If you read the trade magazines, you know that the announced strategy of the industry is to concentrate on repairing and building up the somewhat battered image of pesticides. There is already a large volume of handouts openly sponsored by the manufacturers.

There are other packets of material being issued by some of the state agricultural colleges, as well as by certain organizations whose industry connections are concealed behind a scientific front. This material, in enormous volume, is going to writers, editors, professional people, and other leaders of opinion.

 It is characteristic of this material that it deals in generalities, unsupported by documentation. In its claims for safety to human beings, it ignores the fact that we are engaged in a grim experiment never before attempted. We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals which animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effect.

Those exposures now begin at or before birth and—unless we change our methods–will continue throughout the lifetime of those now living. No one knows what the result will be, because we have no previous experience to guide us.

Let us hope it will not take the equivalent of another thalidomide tragedy to shock us into full awareness of the hazard.

The way is not made easy for those who would defend the public interest. In fact, a new obstacle has recently been created, and a new advantage has been given to those who seek to block remedial legislation. I refer to the income tax bill passed by the 87th Congress, a bill which becomes effective this year.

This bill contains a little known provision which permits certain lobbying expenses to be considered a business expense deduction. This means that the lobbyist may deduct expenses incurred in appearing before legislative committees or submitting statements on proposed legislation. It means, to cite a specific example, that the chemical industry may now work at bargain rates to thwart future attempts at regulation.

But what of the nonprofit organizations such as the garden clubs, the Audubon Societies, to be specific, and all other such tax-exempt groups? Their status is not changed. Under existing laws they stand to lose their tax-exempt status if they devote any “substantial” part of their activities to attempts to influence legislation.

The word “substantial” needs to be defined. In practice, even an effort involving less than five per cent of an organization’s activity has been ruled sufficient to cause loss of the tax-exempt status.

What happens, then, when the public interest is pitted against large commercial interests? Those organizations wishing to plead for protection of the public interest do so under the peril of losing the tax-exempt status so necessary to their existence. The industry wishing to pursue its course without the legal restraint is now actually subsidized in its efforts.

This is a situation which conservation and similar organizations, within their legal limitations, might well attempt to remedy.

There are other disturbing factors. One is the growing interrelations between professional organizations and industry, and between science and industry. For example, the American Medical Association, through its newspaper, has just referred physicians to a pesticide trade association for information to help them answer patients’ questions about the effects of pesticides on man.

I am sure physicians have a need of information on this subject. But I would like to see them referred to authoritative scientific or medical literature–not to a trade organization whose business it is to promote the sale of pesticides.

 We see scientific societies acknowledging as “sustaining associates” a dozen or more giants of a related industry. When the scientific organization speaks, whose voice do we hear—that of science or of the sustaining industry? It might be a less serious situation if this voice were always clearly identified, but the public assumes it is hearing the voice of science.

Another cause of concern is the increasing size and number of industry grants to the universities. On first thought, such support of education seems desirable, but on reflection we see that this does not make for unbiased research—it does not promote a truly scientific spirit.

To an increasing extent, the man who commands the largest expense account and who brings the largest grants to his university becomes an untouchable, with whom even the university president and trustees do not argue.

 These are large problems and there is no easy solution. But the problem must be faced. It must be clearly recognized by the public, for only then will it lose some of its power to stand in the way of public good.

As you listen to the present controversy about pesticides, I recommend that you ask yourself: Who speaks? And why?