This book is part of the Penguin series “Green ideas”. Rachel Carson was a marine biologist and conservationist. She wrote a book, “Silent Spring”, which had a massive impact on the awareness of the influence of man on nature. This little book I read is one of the chapters of “Silent Spring” where Carson goes through the consequences of using pesticides that kill not only the bug that we want to destroy but also the crops, the fish, the birds, other animals, and the water around these fields that have been drowned in these pesticides… leading to a spring with no songs of birds, no splashing of fish. She also unveils the lack of data on the consequences of all these pesticides on human beings. This text is 60 years old but is still painful to read. Has anything really changed since then?
“Water, soil, and the earth’s green mantle of plants make up the world that supports the animal life of the earth. Although modern man seldom remembers the fact, he could not exist without the plants that harness the sun’s energy and manufacture the basic foodstuffs he depends upon for life. Our attitude toward plants is a singularly narrow one. If we see any immediate utility in a plant, we foster it. If, for any reason, we find its presence undesirable, or even simply a matter of indifference, we may condemn it to destruction forthwith. Besides the various plants that are poisonous to man or his livestock, or crowd out food plants, many are marked for destruction merely because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and many others are destroyed merely because they happen to be associates of the unwanted plants. Sometimes we have no choice but to disturb the relationships between plants and the earth, between plants and other plants, and between plants and animals, yet we should do so thoughtfully, with full awareness that what we do may have consequences remote in time and place.”
First published in “Silent Spring” 1962