vice president al gore As an elected government official, there is a sense of inferiority to Zuo Zuo, because it is a monument that provides irrefutable evidence that the power of ideas is greater than that of politicians. In 1962, when Silent Spring was first published, there was no "environment" subsection in public policy.In some cities, notably Los Angeles, smog has been the cause of some incidents, although it does not appear to pose much of a threat to public health. Resource conservation—the precursor to environmentalism—was touched upon in the 1960 bipartisan debates between Democrats and Republicans, but is only now popping up in the law on national parks and natural resources.In the past, there was virtually no discussion of the growing, invisible dangers of DDT and other pesticides and chemicals, except in some hard-to-see scientific journals. Like a cry in the wilderness, "Silent Spring" changed the course of history with its deep feeling, comprehensive research and eloquent argument.Without this book, the environmental movement may have been delayed for a long time, or may not have started yet.

The author of this book is a marine biologist who studies fish and wildlife, so you should not be surprised that this book and its author have received resistance from those who profit from environmental pollution.Most chemical companies attempted to ban the release of Silent Spring.When its fragment appeared in "The New Yorker", a group of people immediately accused the author of the book, Carson, as hysterical and extreme.Even now, when such questions are asked of those who seek economic gain at the expense of the environment, you can still hear the invective (I was labeled "Ozone Man" in the 1992 campaign, of course, It's not a name for praise, and I, for one, use it as a badge of honor, knowing that raising these questions will always inspire ferocious—and sometimes foolish—revolt).When the book began to be circulated, the power of resistance was terrifying.

The attack on Rachel Carson is definitely comparable to the attack on Darwin when it was published.Moreover, Carson was a woman, and much of the cynicism was directed at her gender, calling her "hysterical." "Time) magazine even accused her of being "sensational."She was dismissed as a "priestess of nature," her reputation as a scientist was attacked, and opponents funded promotional materials that were expected to discredit her research.It was all about a fierce, financially secure fight back, not against a political candidate but against a book and its author.

Carson had two decisive forces in polemics: respect for facts and extraordinary personal courage.She thought over and over again every paragraph in the book.As it turned out, her warning was short and to the point.Her courage, her foresight, far outweighed her willingness to shake up entrenched, lucrative industries.While writing, she fought through a mastectomy while undergoing radiation therapy.She died of breast cancer two years after the book was published.Ironically, new research strongly suggests a link between the disease and exposure to toxic chemicals.In a sense, Carson is literally writing for her life.

In her writings, she also fights against the stereotypes left over from the early days of the scientific revolution.Man (of course, refers to the male among human beings) is the center and ruler of all things, and the history of science is the history of men's domination—finally, reaching a near-absolute state.When a woman dared to challenge tradition, one of its preeminent defenders, Robert W. Stevens, replied as arrogantly and quaintly as the flat-earth theory: Balance is the main force in human existence. Yet contemporary chemists, biologists and scientists firmly believe that humans are firmly in control of nature."

It is the absurdity of this view of the world, as seen with today's eyes, that shows how revolutionary Carson's ideas were so many years ago.Blame from profitable conglomerates was predictable, but even the American Medical Association sided with the chemical companies.Moreover, the person who discovered the insecticidal properties of DDT won a Nobel Prize. But it is impossible to be suffocated.Although the issues it raises cannot be solved immediately, the book itself has been warmly welcomed and widely supported by the people.Incidentally, Carson had already achieved financial independence and public credibility with two previous bestsellers, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea.If "Silent Spring" had been published a decade earlier, it would have been silent, a decade in which Americans had prepared themselves for environmental issues and heard or noticed the messages in the book.In a sense, this woman came with the movement.

In the end, both the government and the populace became involved in the movement—not just those who read the book, but those who read the newspapers and watched television.When "Silent Spring" sold more than 500,000 copies, CBS produced an hour-long show about it, and the network continued to air the promotion even after the two major backers withdrew their sponsorship. President Kennedy discussed the book in Congress and appointed a panel of investigators to investigate its views.The panel's findings were an indictment of dismissive business and bureaucracy, and Carson's warnings about the potential dangers of pesticides were confirmed.Before long, Congress took it seriously and created the first agri-environmental organization.

The seeds of a new activism have been sown and have taken root among the broad masses of the people. After the death of Rachel Carson in the spring of 1964, it became clear that her voice would never be silenced.She awakened not only our country, but even the whole world.The publication of should rightly be seen as the beginning of the modern environmental movement. The personal influence on me was considerable, and it was one of the few books we read at home at my mother's suggestion, and we discussed it around the dinner table.Neither my sister nor I like to bring any book to the dinner table, but it is an exception.Our discussions were pleasant and left vivid memories.In fact, Rachel Carson is one of the reasons why I became aware of the importance of the environment and became involved in the environmental movement.Her example inspired me to write The Earth on the Brink, which was published by Hatton Mifflin, certainly not by accident.The company has supported Carson throughout her polemics and has built a reputation for publishing many good books about the environmental dangers facing our world.Her picture hangs on the wall of my office along with the pictures of the political leaders -- the presidents and the prime ministers.It has been there for many years and it belongs there.Carson had as much influence on me as they did, if not more than all of them, more than all of them put together!

As a scientist and an idealist, Carson was also a lonely audience, which is often difficult for people in officialdom.She conceived the idea when she received a letter from a woman named Olga Hudgens in Dukesbury, Massachusetts, about DDT killing birds.Now that DDT has been banned because of Carson's efforts, some birds with which she has a special relationship, such as hawks and migratory falcons, are no longer on the verge of extinction.Because of her writings, human beings, at least countless human beings, have been saved. Undoubtedly, the influence of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is comparable.Both precious books changed our society.Of course, they also have big differences.Harriet Becher; Stowe made it known.The focus of public debate was written as a novel; she injected a more human element into national interests and public concerns.The image of the slave she portrayed moved the conscience of the nation.Lincoln met her at the height of the Civil War and said to her, "You're the little lady who started the whole thing." Instead, Rachel Carson warned of a danger that was hard for anyone to see, and she tried to turn the Environmental issues are placed on the national agenda rather than providing evidence for what already exists.In this sense, her cry is even more commendable.Ironically, when she testified before Congress in 1963, Senator Abraham Ribicof welcomed her with a disturbing imitation of Lincoln's words from exactly a century earlier: "Miss Carson, you The lady who started it all."

Another difference between the two books is the constant connection to reality.Slavery could, and did, end within a few years, though it would take a century or more to deal with its aftermath.But if slavery can be abolished with the stroke of a pen, chemical pollution cannot.Despite the strength of Carson's rhetoric, and despite the actions taken by the United States to ban DDT, the environmental crisis is not getting better, but getting worse.Perhaps the rate of catastrophe growth has slowed, but that in itself is a troubling concern.Since publication, pesticide use on farms alone has doubled to 1.1 billion tons per year, and production of dangerous chemicals has increased by 400%.We have banned some pesticides ourselves, but we still produce them and export them to other countries.This not only puts us in a state where we profit by selling a nuisance we don't want to accept, but it also reflects a principled error in our understanding of the notion that science has no borders - poisoning the food chain wherever it ends up Can cause all food chain poisoning.

The last of Carson's few lectures was at the Garden Club of America.She concedes that things will get worse before they get better: "There are many problems and no easy solutions." But she also warns that the longer we wait, the more dangers we face: " We are suffering from a total contamination of chemicals to which we are exposed. Experiments on animals have shown them to be extremely toxic and in many cases their effects are cumulative. The aggression begins at or before birth. If we do not change our methods , this violation occurs throughout the life course, and no one knows what the outcome will be, because we have not experienced it.” Since she made these assertions, we have sadly experienced many, cancer and other pesticide-related diseases. The incidence has skyrocketed.The trouble is that we haven't done nothing, we've done some important things, but we haven't done enough. The Environmental Protection Agency (EnvironmentaI Protection Agency) was created in 1970, in large part because of the awareness and care Rachel Carson aroused.Pesticide regulation and the Food Safety in-spection agency have both been moved from the Department of Agriculture to new agencies, and the Department of Agriculture naturally just wants to understand the benefits, not the dangers, of spraying grain with pesticides.Since 1962, Congress has called for the establishment of pesticide testing.There are standards for registration and profiles, not once, but three times, and most of them are ignored, postponed and discarded. For example, when the Clinton-Gore administration took over, standards for keeping farmworkers safe from pesticide poisoning hadn't been established, even though the EPA was "working" in the early 70's with broad-spectrum pesticides like DDT They have been replaced by more toxic narrow-spectrum insecticides, but they have not been fully tested and are equally or more dangerous. Most hard-liners in the pesticide industry have succeeded in delaying the kind of protective measures that China has called for.It's amazing how much Congress has continued to favor these industries after all these years.Regulate pesticides.Fungicide and rodenticide regulations have far looser standards than food and drug laws, and Congress deliberately made them difficult to enforce.When formulating safety standards for pesticides, the government considers not only their toxicity, but also their economic benefits.This is purely digging your own trap.Increases in agricultural output (which can also be increased by other means) come at the expense of potential increases in cancer, neurosis, etc.Moreover, it will take 5 to 10 years to remove dangerous pesticides from the market.New insecticides, even if highly toxic, will be allowed if they are slightly more effective than existing ones. In my opinion, this is very much like a psychological balance of "staying in the trough for a long time, but feeling rising".The existing system is a Faustian bargain—sacrificing long-term interests for short-term gains.Arguably, this near-term benefit is rather short-lived.Many pesticides cannot completely eliminate all pests.Maybe at first, but the pests gradually adapt through genetic mutations, and the chemicals lose their effect.What's more, we focused on the effects of insecticides on adults, not larvae, which are particularly vulnerable to chemicals.Scientists have always tested their effects separately, rather than combining them, and this is our field.Potentially great danger in pastures and rivers.What matters is that we have inherited a system of laws and loopholes, enforcement and delays, and a far-fetched facade that masks policy failures across the board. Rachel Carson tells us that the overuse of pesticides is out of step with fundamental values.At worst they create what she calls "rivers of death," and at best they cause relatively long-term, slow damage.However, the true outcome is that 22 years after publication, the laws, regulations, and political institutions have not responded adequately.Because Carson is not only familiar with the environment, but also deeply aware of the divisions in the political world, she has anticipated the reasons for the failure.Speaking at the Garden Club when almost no one was discussing the two major pollutions of money and power, she noted that "advantage . . . goes to those who resist changing the laws." Campaigning for the expense tax (which the current administration is seeking to repeal) and noting that such tax cuts "mean (to take a particular example) the chemical industry can bargain on donations against future regulation.  …Pursuing unlawful industry is benefit from their efforts".In short, she boldly asserts that the pesticide problem will be perpetuated by politics; cleaning up pollution is above all about clarifying politics. Sustained failures of one kind of effort for several years may explain failures of another, and the results will be as undeniable as they are unacceptable. In 1992, our nation shared 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides, which equates to 8 pounds per capita.We already know that many insecticides are carcinogenic, and others can poison the nervous and immune systems of insects, which is also possible in humans.While we no longer have the dubious benefits of household chemicals that Carson described—"we can plan our floors with a wax that kills the bugs on them," there are now more than 900,000 farms and 69 million households use pesticides. In 1988, the EPA reported that surface water in 32 states had been contaminated with 74 different agricultural chemicals, including the herbicide atrazine (A-trazine), which is considered a potential carcinogen in humans things.Farmland in the Mississippi River Valley is sprayed with 70 million tons of pesticides each year, and 1.5 million pounds go into the drinking water of 20 million people.Atrazine is not extracted during municipal water treatment.When spring comes, the amount of atrazine in the water will often exceed the safe standard for drinking water. In 1993, 25% of the water in the entire Mississippi River was like this. DDTs and PCBs are really banned in the US for other reasons.But estrogen-mimicking insecticides, close relatives of the chemical, are back in abundance, and growing.Studies from Scotland, Michigan, Germany and elsewhere have reported that they can lead to decreased fertility.Cause testicular cancer and lung cancer and reproductive organ deformities.In the United States alone, the incidence of testicular cancer has increased by 50 percent in the 20 years since the hormonal pesticides became widespread.This figure means that, for some as yet unknown reason, sperm counts worldwide have dropped by 50%. Some literature suggests that these chemicals also affect the reproductive capacity of wild animals."Many wildlife populations are now at risk," a trio of researchers who studied data in the Journal of the Institute of EnvironmentaI Health Services concluded. Most of these species The problems are symptoms of vast and unforeseen changes in the reproductive systems of animals and humans, but existing laws on risk assessment do not take into account the potential harmful effects of pesticides, which the new government proposes to test. Defenders of these chemicals will no doubt give the conventional answer: experiments on humans have shown no direct link between chemicals and disease, and coincidence does not equal causation (although some coincidences call for caution, not recklessness. decision), and experiments on animals are not always absolutely and necessarily equivalent to experiments on humans.These responses remind us of the responses Carson suffered to his work, both from the chemical industry and from university scientists.She anticipated this answer, writing in her essay, "Take a little less of the sedative of half-truths. We urgently need to put an end to these false assertions and excuses." Environmental ignorance was at its peak in the 80's, especially with James Watt at the Interior Department and Ann Gorsuch at the EPA, poisoning the environment was almost considered a hard-line economics utility symbol of doctrine.In Gorsuch's EPA, things like Integrated Pest Management (IPM), like chemical substitution, were literally declared heretical.The EPA banned the publication of anything about it, and certifications for integrated pest management methods were outlawed. The Clinton-Gore Administration began with a different perspective, and we were determined to turn the historic tide of pesticide pollution.The government has taken three tough measures: stricter standards, reduced use, and mostly replacement with biological agents. Obviously, the rational use of pesticides has to balance the relationship between risk and benefit, and economic factors must also be considered, but we also have to exclude special interests from the standard.In addition to balance, standards must be clear and strict, and inspections must be thorough and authentic.For too long, our children have been prescribed hundreds of times more tolerance for pesticide residue than they should be.How can economic efficiency be calculated to justify it?We must examine the effects of chemicals on children, not just adults.At the same time, we had to examine different combinations of a range of chemicals.We must examine, not only to reduce our fears, but to reduce what we have to fear. If a pesticide isn't necessary or doesn't work under certain conditions, then don't take the liberty of using it.Benefits should be real, not probable, temporary or speculative. In conclusion, we must focus on biological agents, which industry and political apologists are perhaps hostile to.In Silent Spring, Carson speaks of "really great alternatives to chemical insect control".Today, these alternatives are widespread, despite the indifference of most officials and resistance from manufacturers.Why aren't we committed to promoting non-toxic? Finally, we must build a bridge of cultural understanding between the pesticide production and agriculture groups and the public health groups.As long as the people in the two groups come from different backgrounds, go to different universities, and have different points of view, with suspicion and hostility instead of looking each other in the eye, we will find it difficult to change a system whose products and profits are at the expense of pollution. very tough.An effective way we can end this system is to narrow cultural boundaries and have agricultural affiliates encourage alternative chemicals.Another way is to have a dialogue where the two groups that feed us and protect our health negotiate with each other. The Clinton-Gore administration's policies to deal with pesticides had many architects.Probably the most important of these is a woman.She retired from government service in 1952 so that she could devote herself to writing, not just on weekends or evenings.But in spirit, Rachel Carson has been present at every environmental meeting of this administration.We may not have achieved everything she expected, but we are moving in the direction she pointed out. In 1992, an organization of prominent Americans voted it the most influential book of the past 50 years.Throughout all the political debates over the years, this book has been a rational critique of self-satisfaction.It warns us that caring about the environment is not only the business of the industry and the government, but also the duty of the people.Put our democracy on the side of protecting the planet.Gradually, consumers are turning against environmental pollution even when the government does nothing.Reducing the amount of pesticides in food is currently becoming as much of a sell as it is a moral imperative.The government must act, and the people must act decisively.I firmly believe that the people of the people will no longer allow the government to do nothing, or do the wrong thing. Rachel Carson's influence has outgrown those matters in which she cares.She brings us back to a fundamental idea that has been lost to an alarming degree in modern civilization: the integration of humans and the natural environment.Like a bolt of lightning, this book brings to light for the first time the most important matter of debate in our time.In the last few pages of , Carson describes for us "the road less traveled" in Robert Frost's famous line.Some have hit the road, but few have led the world on it like Carson did.What she did, the truths she revealed, the science and research she inspired not only served as a powerful argument for limiting the use of pesticides, but also as a powerful testament to the extraordinary things that individuals can do.