Silent Spring

by Rachel Carson

I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially. E. B. WHITE

7,000,000 pounds of parathion are now applied to fields and orchards of the United States—by hand sprayers, motorized blowers and dusters, and by airplane. The amount used on California farms alone could, according to one medical authority, “provide a lethal dose for 5 to 10 times the whole world’s population.”

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

At other times spraying, while reasonably effective against the target insect, has let loose a whole Pandora’s box of destructive pests that had never previously been abundant enough to cause trouble.

“We must change our philosophy, abandon our attitude of human superiority and admit that in many cases in natural environments we find ways and means of limiting populations of organisms in a more economical way than we can do it ourselves.”