Silent Spring in The Roundtable

Jan 10, 2014 Christopher rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobooks, non-fiction, 20th-century, american, science

Silent Spring or, How the Reader Decided to Become a Hunter-Gatherer

What begins with a surprisingly beautifully written introduction that would rival the best nature writing quickly gives way to an onslaught of data, a barrage of statistics all perfectly designed to regret your participation in the modern world.

Of course, this book is outdated. It came out in the sixties and, though I don't actually know anything about anything, I'm pretty sure most of the problems Rachel Carson describes in Sil Silent Spring or, How the Reader Decided to Become a Hunter-Gatherer

What begins with a surprisingly beautifully written introduction that would rival the best nature writing quickly gives way to an onslaught of data, a barrage of statistics all perfectly designed to regret your participation in the modern world.

Of course, this book is outdated. It came out in the sixties and, though I don't actually know anything about anything, I'm pretty sure most of the problems Rachel Carson describes in Silent Spring have been dealt with. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), an infamous chemical used as a pesticide during the first half of the twentieth century, was banned in the US and most of the world, due in large part to Carson's book.

But what makes this book great is its universalness. Yes, Carson focuses almost solely on the consequences of the use of chemicals in agricultural production, but its thesis can be reapplied to any time or situation; in fact, as technological developments increase exponentially, it becomes all the more important to ask Carson's question: how does this affect the environment, plants, animals, and even humans in both the short and long terms?

But I can't leave this review on such an optimistic note. I don't believe that humanity as a whole is capable of asking itself questions like that and conforming to the honest answer. When farmers first began using pesticides, it wouldn't have taken much to ask themselves, "is it really a good idea to spray poison all over my land?" The obvious answer is "no". It doesn't take a genius to figure out that it will come back to bite you in the ass someday. But of course it's much easier to ignore those thoughts and get a pretty field of homogeneously green soybeans, empty of all insect life.

Is it really a good idea to take oil out of the ground and burn three billion, five hundred and seventy million gallons of it per day? I mean, why do we pretend that there aren't going to be consequences for that? That after billions of years of existence, we can take a beautiful, green, lush planet and do whatever we want with it and think "ahhh... everything's gonna be just fine". But of course, we want what we want. It's cold out today, so I'm running my furnace. And I'm typing on a laptop and later I will drive my car to the grocery. As the wonderful Louis C.K. puts it, "I wanna go faster... er, um... I'm not fast enough".

It's books like these that make me want to become a hunter-gatherer. ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Jun 04, 2017 Wendy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, science-nature, 500-women, 2017

I had to set this book down many times to research the details. Did airplanes really spray chemicals over cities in the 50s and 60s? (answer: yes.) What is the modern method of dealing with fire ants? (answer: basically what Rachel Carson recommends in this book). Whatever happened to Rachel Carson anyway? (answer: she died of cancer just a few years after this book came out. Her voice in Silent Spring has a certain desperation about it--and understandably so.)

While at times I felt she leaned a ...more

6 likes · Like · see review