Silent Spring Report

As people become more involved in their own affairs, they often overlook just how vulnerable nature really is. In 1962, marine biologist Rachel Carson became enraged with how the environment was treated and released a book named Silent Spring, which addressed the harmful effects of pesticides and would also completely revolutionize how people thought about the environment, causing the start of environmentalism, a movement in which people seek to protect and improve the natural environment. In addition, the controversial book sparked much debate within the American society over how the environment should be treated and whether the environment needs to be protected or not. In Silent Spring, Carson informs and galvanizes people into changing how …show more content…
Carson provides facts and examples that exhibit the devastating nature of parathions on the environment in order to educate Americans who are ignorant about the effects parathions can have on the environment as well as motivate them into changing how they treat the environment. After introducing parathions, Carson mentions that after a group of farmers engaged a spray plane to “treat an area of river bottomland” with parathion in 1959, the result was a “casualty list [including] some 65,000 red winged blackbirds and starlings” as well as a myriad of other creatures. By highlighting the sheer amount of casualties that occurred due to thoughtless destruction, Carson hopes that American society will be able to see dead creatures as innocent individuals rather than as a singular group. This shows the annihilation of animals seem even worse, causing society to open its eyes to a real and moral problem. Furthermore, Carson understands that people are more likely to pay attention to the problem if they understand that the problem affects not only animals but also people themselves. She mentions that in California, workers who were tending to orchards that had been treated with the same parathions “went into shock”