This coming Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of Rachel Carson's birth in Springdale, Pennsylvania. A series of centennial events are planned through 2007 to mark the life and legacy of the courageous woman whose book Silent Spring is often credited with launching the mondern environmental movement. Last week the Washington Post published this feature article, "An Environmental Icon's Unseen Fortitude: Rachel Carson's Persistence and Pain In Focus 100 Years After Her Birth." The article focuses on the personal struggle that Carson faced while completing her book. Even as she was working on it, she was fighting a losing battle with the cancer that took her life.
The WaPo article is largely laudatory. But it also repeats the outrageous allegation, without rebuttal, that Carson's crusade is responsible for the death of millions of African children due to malaria -- deaths that detractors love to claim would have been prevented if naive, wealthy, first-world environmentalists had not banned DDT:
In the years since her death, Carson's conclusions about DDT have remained controversial. This year, during a hearing meant to honor Carson in Annapolis, State Sen. Andrew P. Harris (R-Baltimore County) said her book had helped scare people away from a pesticide that could have saved numerous human lives. "In the end, you know, people are dying of malaria that don't need to die" because of bans on DDT, Harris, a doctor, said in an interview this week.
*****As an aside the article goes on to say this:
Outside Washington, Carson's book altered the nature of environmentalism. Previously, it had been mainly about preserving and appreciating parks and other beautiful places. But Carson's message was that all of nature should be protected, for its own sake and because people eventually would suffer if it was degraded.
It is true that Silent Spring altered the course of history, but this passage indicates poor understanding of the history of environmentalism. First of all, "environmentalism" as it has come to be known did not yet exist when her book was published; that would come in the years shortly to follow. The conservation movement, around since Teddy Roosevelt's administration, was not "mainly about preserving and appreciating parks and other beautiful places." Conservation had already evolved a great deal over the decades. This journalist apparently knows nothing, for example, about the growth of concern for forests and wildlife, soil conservation, pollution control, and private land conservation efforts from the 1920s to the 1950s. I expect he couldn't tell you much about Aldo Leopold, Hugh Hammond Bennett, Paul Sears, Jay "Ding" Darling, Lewis Mumford, the Civilian Conservation Corps, etc. etc. But I digress....*****
I was wondering why the journalist could do no better than finding an obscure Maryland state legislator as the voice of opposition to banning harmful, bioaccumulating pesticides. I should have guessed that something more was in the works.
And so it is. Courtesy of our well-heeled friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, you can now go to http://www.rachelwaswrong.com/ for all your reactionary right-wing talking-point needs:
"While Carson may have meant well, her rhetoric and anti-technology views produced devastating consequences, particularly for children in Africa," says CEI’s Angela Logomasini. "Our website includes photographs of some children who lost their lives to malaria since DDT was banned. We ask that people remember their birthdays too, with the hope that it will encourage policymakers to rethink foolish and dangerous policies."
I say, nothing like photos of dead children to promote informed discussion and policy debate! The Competitive Enterprise Institute website provides useful contact information of the "environmental expert available for interviews":
Angela Logomasini
Director of Risk & Environmental Policy
202-331-2269
alogomasini@cei.org
Do with that what you will...
Here's another Carson attack piece (reponding to the WaPo article), courtesy the T. Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow at something called the Business and Media Institute.
Well, I'll take the Maryland governor's statement today above Ms. Logomasini and Mr. Harris and the esteemed Pickens Fellow:
"With eloquence and insight, Rachel Carson helped people around the world understand the most simple of truths: that we are part of our natural world, and that what we do to that world we do to ourselves," said Governor O’Malley. "Today, a century after her birth, our collective ability to address the challenges facing our environment is only limited by our willingness to take responsibility for our actions and preserve our natural world."
And, don't worry, there's plenty of defense against the spurious charges of deaths due to them out-of-control, Rachel-inspired, malaria-hugging wackos. Here, for example, from a recent op-ed by John Mull, a professor of zoology at Weber State, in the Salt Lake Tribune:
Malaria does remain a serious killer, especially of young children in tropical Africa, but not for the reason that [Congressman Chris] Cannon suggests. Rather, it persists as the deadliest of insect-transmitted diseases for other reasons. These include the evolution of pesticide resistance in mosquitoes and of drug resistance in malaria parasites, lack of access to basic medical care and preventive measures, like mosquito netting, and deforestation and other forms of environmental degradation.
As we prepare to celebrate the Rachel Carson's life and legacy, you can study up on her brave work and tremendous legacy at http://www.rachelcarson.org/. It will get you ready for the crap-storm due to arrive this weekend from the far reaches of Reactionaryland.