Rachel Carson: The Environmental Movement’s Fountainhead
June 24, 2008
In contemporary American environmental history there have been a number of distinctive movements that have sought to protect nature from the onslaught of human beings. Two commonly shared characteristics of recent movements has been the way in which ideas about nature and the differing interest have competed for ascendancy. The differences, when comparing the turn of the century conservation and post-war environmental movements, has been in the way that people have not only related to the ideas put forth but also within the way they relate to nature conceptually. If there is any real clear “winner” in this unplanned contest, it has been the way in which the postwar environmental agitators have bridged the confines of class to achieve radically altered perceptions of the durability and endurance of nature.
To illustrate these points a brief overview of the roots, characteristics and differences of these movements is required. The conservation movement found its roots in turn of the century progressivism, from roughly 1890 to 1920. The movement was compromised of people from disparate groups but with a shared perspective of nature. Progressives observed nature at once being capable of an “endless abundance” but by the turn of the century they observed the wantonness of modernity and believed that nature, at the hands of man, had been relegated to a “finite and fragile” position.
Nothing quite embodied these new American perceptions of nature better than the story of the passenger pigeon. Jennifer Price, in her book “Flight Maps” uses the example of the decline and rapid extinction of the passenger pigeon to explain how perceptions of nature at the turn of the century were irrevocably changed. Price relays the story of ornithologist Alexander Wilson’s observation of a cold, dark and 240 mile long, massive flock of passenger pigeons encountered on the Ohio River in the early 1800s. According to Price, these “flocks were becoming icons of the past in a time of rapid change.” (Price, 47) The extinction of the pigeons in 1914 came to symbolize “Americans’ rapid conversion of a landscape of abundance into one of scarcity.” (Price, 13)
In no place were these concepts better embodied than in the words of George Perkins Marsh in “Man and Nature,”
“Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste…
… [Nature] has left it within the power of man irreparably to derange the combinations of inorganic matter and of organic life…” (George Perkins Marsh, “Man and Nature,” 315)
While the conservation movement was in large part based upon the arguments of Marsh and though he was critical of man and modernity, those well educated and well to do progressives at the turn of the century however still put a tremendous amount of stock in the idea of progress. They had enormous faith in “utility, expediency and most importantly, efficiency.” To the conservationist, much credence was put in the idea of technocracy or belief that scientific experts should manage the resources of the nation. A top down approach that concentrated power in the most highly educated in the scientific method became the goal.
Samuel Hays, in “From Conservation to Environment,” explains how the postwar environmental movement diverged from this technocratic treatment of nature. While the conservation movement “grew out of the political implications of applied science,” (Samuel Hays, “From Conservation to Environment,” 331) it was “the widespread expression of social values in environmental action [that] marks off the environmental era from the conservation years.” Contrasted with the environmental movement, Hays contends that the conservation movement had little “broad popular support for the substantive objectives” and “scanty evidence of broadly shared conservation values.” (Samuel Hays, “From Conservation to Environment,” 333) The environmental movement on the other hand according to Hays, derived its power from the grassroots “that are well charted by the innumerable citizen organizations and studies of public attitudes.” (Samuel Hays, “From Conservation to Environment,” 333)
Rachel Carson, with her book “Silent Spring,” was instrumental in changing the source of the environmental movement’s power. According to Linda Lear in “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” Carson reproached “industrial empires” and “exposed a scientific establishment that cherished its elitism.” (Linda Lear, “Rachel Carson’s Ecological Vision,” 459) Carson directly challenged the outcomes of the conservation movement by criticizing the “culture’s unequivocal devotion to technological progress” and by going after the systematic dominance of its institutional arrangements. (Linda Lear, “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” 459) By educating the public to the dangers posed by the creations of the chemical industry, Carson was able to renew “the political power of homeowners and housewives.” (Linda Lear, “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” 459)
It was Carson’s ability to convey complex, scientifically reasoned points that stoked the public’s fear of exposure to insidious life altering chemicals. Accompanied with concerns about nuclear conflict and radiological fallout her illustrations helped to transcend class and brought widespread changing perceptions of nature in the postwar environmental movement. Moreover, it was Carson’s ability to restore human values to the conversation that she was able to persuade with eloquently powerful words;
“Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -man- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.” (Rachel Carson, “Silent Spring,” 438)
The average person might not understand the intricacies of targeting pests capable of rapid evolutionary adaptation with man-made chemicals that could exponentially accumulate in organisms at the top of the food chain, but they most certainly could understand war, especially after recently having come through the world’s most destructive conflict.
Carson was also successful in making the argument that the demise of human beings might not only come about through our direct malevolent intentions. She reasoned that it was possible that humanities’ destruction could potentially be wrought through the inadvertent outcomes created by toying with chemicals beyond our understanding and control,
“Along with the possibility of the extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man’s total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm – substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon which the shape of the future depends.” (Rachel Carson, “Silent Spring,” 439)
Carson’s book not only pointed out what was lacking in the application of conservation philosophies, it reinvigorated the environmental movement. Ironically, the conspicuously missing feature of the conservation movement in the land of the free was democracy. This new movement incorporated not only new ecological values of the fragility and interconnectedness of nature (Linda Lear, “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” 464) they also provided enduring energy in the form of democratic values, organizations and institutions. No longer would self-interested elites dominate the environmental movement. And while Rachel Carson was perhaps the “fountainhead” (Linda Lear, “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” 464) for this new movement, like all democratic movements, new leadership can only succeed through inspiration. The people must choose to act. Whether or not the movement endures depends upon collective actions. It is not only the strength of Carson’s ideas but their lasting ability to inspire action that can only lead to one conclusion; when contrasted with the conservation movement, the hegemony of the postwar environmental movement will persist as long as democratic action continues to endure.
(Excerpts provided from “Major Problems in American Environmental History” by Carolyn Merchant. Cover photo by Daniels/EPA/National Archives via pingnews & article photo by Flickr user FreeWine used under a Creative Commons license.)
Book Review: “The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River,” by Richard White
June 13, 2008
Subjects of study often change in their significance depending upon the angle upon which one observes them. In this way, Richard White, in “The Organic Machine,” alters the perspective of environmental historians by asking them to consider the difficulty of disentangling human history and its mechanical artifacts from the natural. To White, the instructive lessons of natural and human history are to be found not in detailing their separate events but in the inextricable relationships between the two.
While White explains that Rudyard Kipling sees nature and man-made technology as 2 disparate issues, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “American capitalism’s poet/philosopher,” sees things quite differently. When Kipling observed a human technological artifact, a cannery for instance, he saw a stark contrast with nature; inside, mechanized, routine, crowded and unnatural. When he observed nature he saw something quite the opposite; outside, organic, life, solitude and freedom.
White clearly sympathizes with his interpretation of Emerson and the book is a reflection of this. While Kipling observed a dichotomy between humans and nature, White believes that Emerson saw that by putting land and water to work human beings were opening up potential new ways of accessing nature. More sophisticated readers (besides this author) may take issue with the nuances of White’s characterization of Emerson ideas about nature and technology. White also believes that Kantian reason justified this way of thinking. The mechanical was not the antithesis of nature; it was the realization of nature in a new form. However, White lucidly recognized the echoes of both men’s ideas in the way Americans related to nature.
When Americans spoke of nature they acknowledged the dichotomies provided by Kipling but when they acted in nature, as illustrated in this case by their actions on the Columbia River, they are Emersonians through and through. It is in this Emersonian way that humans come to know nature, by imbuing it with their cultural intentions, their hopes and their dreams.
White’s contribution to environmental history is by recognizing that humans have failed to see the Columbia River as a whole. They have also failed to recognize it as an “organic machine” in a constant state of flux and seemingly with its own volition, yet inextricably influenced by human culture. In doing so, we have not only created further social and cultural divisions, as well as mechanized disassembly of the river; we have failed to appreciate the implications of our history. White’s Emersonian vision doesn’t see human beings “raping” or “killing” nature but rather our failure is in understanding our relationship with it.
White uses salmon to not only illustrate these points but also as a way to define the river and how humans relate to it. The salmon are both symbols of nature as a token for a way of life and as an example of how the river brings together the energy of the land and sea with human and non-human labor. The salmon are fished for a multitude of reasons but especially because they define the lives of people who fish them. In failing the salmon we have failed ourselves.
We have disappointed the salmon by consciously deciding not to create the conditions on the river for their prosperity and we have done so because we have refused to see the whole and our relationship to it. In doing so, we have created a detrimental division of the river. In failing to acknowledge that human and salmon history have merged at the crossroads of the Columbia River, we have neglected to identify the extent of the consequences to the salmon, the river, our labor, our institutions and our way of life. White uses our relationship with the salmon to elevate this more important metaphor and to refocus the conversation with salvation for not only the salmon and the river but with us in mind.
While White convinces the reader about “organic machines,” human relationships with nature and knowledge of nature through labor, many of his descriptions of man’s impact on nature to a certain extent belie his conclusions. By his own standard of measurement for success and through his laborious descriptions of dams, governmental institutions, industry, etc. the reader is still unsurprisingly left with Kipling’s dual dichotomies of nature on the one hand and human beings on the other. For instance, while White informs us that plutonium exists in minute quantities in nature he goes on to explain the fouling of an entire environment and the subsequent likely untimely death of hundreds, if not thousands of people in its production. The irony is that this element was being created supposedly for the defense of these people and the environments in which they lived.
The reader certainly believes that man is a part of nature but nature itself and the other organisms that share this planet don’t do the types of things White describes. Nature and other species of life on this planet do not intentionally poison the environment in which they live. Nature doesn’t have a clear volition or an ability to understand its being. The great irony that White fails to adequately explain is that human beings are the only organisms capable of truly understanding their relationship with nature but yet they choose not to accept the realities of their position and instead radically alter environments for social, political and especially economic gain. White tangentially touches upon but doesn’t effectively address that until man figures out his true nature and comes to grips with the artificial that he creates for unnatural purposes, the problems that man experiences with nature as described are going to continue, ad infinitum.
The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. Richard White. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995. 113 pp. Illustration, bibliographical essay, index. $13.00
Recent Comments:
