Rachel Carson turned out to be light-years ahead of Kennedy’s men and all those “best and brightest” who have followed in the decades since. What Carson glimpsed in the early 1960s has now become plainly evident: To preserve the American way of life will require curbing its excesses. The countless decisions, large and small, made over the course of a century or more that define freedom in terms of indulging our appetite for consumption, mobility, and unlimited choice have created threats more dangerous than any faraway nation-state.35 We have become our own worst enemy.
