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[···] 인간이 스스로에게 해를 끼치는 일을 하고 있는지도 모른다는 생각은 새롭고 겸허한 생각입니다. 특히 이것은 원자력 시대에 생겨난 생각입니다. 진보에 대한 자만심과 문명의 이기에 대한 자부심에도 불구하고, 우리가 우리 자신의 선을 위해서는 둔한 건 아닌지 의심이 듭니다. 걱정스럽지만 이것은 분명한 사실입니다. 인간의 두뇌의 놀라운 창조성에도 불구하고, 우리는 자연의 얼굴을 바꾸는 인간의 힘이 선을 위한 지혜와 다음 세대를 위한 막중한 책임과는 조화를 이루지 못했던 건 아닌지 이제야 궁금해 하기 시작했습니다.

환경과 인간의 관계는 아주 오랜 세월 동안 제 머릿속에서 가장 우위를 차지하고 있는 문제입니다. 우리의 행동을 이끄는 믿음과는 반대로, 인간은 세계와 떨어져서 살 수 없습니다. 우리는 복잡하고, 역동적인 물리적·화학적·생물적인 힘의 상호작용 한가운데에서, 환경과의 지속적이고 끊임없는 교류 속에서 살아갑니다. 저에게 주어진 '우리 환경의 오염'이라는 주제에 대해서 오늘 밤 제가 무엇을 가장 효과적으로 말할 수 있을까 많이 생각해 보았습니다. 안타깝게도 할 말이 너무나 많습니다. 유감스럽지만, 천지가 개벽한 이래 인간이 가장 난잡한 동물인 것은 틀림없습니다. 그렇지만 초기에는 이것이 별 문제가 아니었습니다. 상대적으로 인간의 수가 적었고, 집들도 흩어져 있었습니다. 또 산업이 발달하지도 않았습니다. 그렇지만 지금은 오염이 우리 사회의 가장 중요한 문제 증 하나입니다. 땅과 공기, 물을 더럽히는 갖가지 종류의 오염을 나열하며 이 시간을 보내고 싶지는 않습니다. 여기에 모이신 여러분은 학식있고 지적인 분들이시기에 이러한 모든 사실을 이미 알고 계실거라고 확신합니다. 대신에 저는 환경 오염에 대한 하나의 관점을 이야기하고 싶습니다. 이 위태로운 상황을 조절할 시작점으로서, 유용하고 필수적이라 생각하는 관점입니다. 제가 말씀드릴 모든 이야기의 저변에는 환경과 생물의 관계라는 개념이 깔려 있기 때문에 우선 이 행성의 초기 역사를 여러분께 상기시키면서 시작하고 싶습니다.

[···] 생태계에 정적인 것은 없습니다. 항상 무슨 일이 일어나지요. 생태계는 힘과 물질을 받고, 변형하고, 발산합니다. 생명체들은 정적인 균형보다는 동적인 균형을 유지합니다. 이것은 아주 상식적으로 들립니다. 하지만 현대적 삶의 방식이 만들어낸 엄청난 쓰레기 처리 문제에 직면할 때면, 우리는 이러한 사실을 잊어버립니다. 우리는 과학의 안내를 받는 사람이 아니라, 눈에만 안보이면 된다며 양탄자 밑으로 먼지를 쓸어 넣어 버리는 속담 속의 형편없는 살림꾼처럼 행동합니다. 우리는 해변에서 가져온 온갖 종류의 쓰레기를 시내에 갖다 버립니다. 우리는 수백만 개의 굴뚝과 쓰레기 소각장에서 배출되는 연기와 유독 가스를 대기로 내보냅니다. 대기가 그러한 것들을 수용할 만크 충분히 광활하다고 믿고, 또 그러기를 바라면서 말입니다. 이제는 심지어 바다까지 쓰레기장이 되어 버렸습니다. 온갖 종류의 쓰레기뿐만 아니라 원자력 시대의 산물인 독성 폐기물까지도 버리는 곳으로 말입니다. 게다가 사람들은 이렇게 해로운 물질을 자연에 갖다 버리는 것이 그저 단순한 행동, 그 이상이라는 사실을 모르고 일을 벌이고 있습니다. 그것이 이 복합적인 생태계의 본성을, 우리가 너무 늦어서야 예견하게 되는 그런 면에서 변화시키고 있습니다.

이렇게 앞을 내다보지 못하는 것이 가장 심각한 문제 중 하나입니다. 배리 코머너 씨는 지난 겨울 워싱턴에서 있었던 대기 오염 회의에서, 결과로 나타나기 전에는 사람들이 새로운 과학 기술과 관련된 어떠한 위험성에 대해서도 좀처럼 평가하지 않는다는 사실을 지적했습니다. 우리는 그 과학 기술이 경제계와 정치계에 충분히 헌신할 때까지 기다립니다. 그리고 결국에는 그것을 바꾸기 불가능한 시점에 도달합니다.

[···] 볼 수 있듯이, 우리는 오류 속에서 전체 문제에 접근하고 있습니다. 개척 시대에나 적절할 생각들을 너무 오래 고수하고 있는 것입니다. 우리가 부어넣는 무엇이든 수용할 만큼 강이나 공기, 바다가 방대하다는 생각은 더는 지속되지 않습니다. 얼마 전에 어느 농업 부서의 장이었던, 한 유능할 법한 과학자가 '오염물의 희석'에 대해 그럴듯하게 말하는 것을 들었습니다. 그는 '오염물의 희석'이라는 마법의 구절이 모든 문제에 해답이라도 제시한다는 듯이 그 말을 반복했습니다.

브라운 박사님께서도 오늘 말씀하시겠지만, 그 이유 중 하나는 전체적으로 현재 인구가 너무 많다는 것입니다. 우리가 내보내는 온갖 오염 물질의 양은 실로 막대합니다. 또 다른 이유는 오늘날의 오염 물질의 성분이 매우 위험하다는 점입니다. 그 물질들은 살아 있는 유기체의 생물학적 반응에 작용할 가능성이 매우 높습니다. 아주 중요한 또 다른 이유 하나는 오염 물질이 우리가 놓아둔 장소에 그대로 머무르지도, 내버렸던 형태 그대로 남아있지도 않는다는 점입니다.

[···] 현대 오염 문제의 가장 큰 골칫거리는 방사성 폐기물을 바다에 내버리는 것입니다. 핵분열의 부산물을 어떻게 처리할지 고민하던 사람들에게 그 방대하고 겉보기에 끝없는 바다는 매력적이었던 것입니다. 그렇게 해서 바다는 오염된 쓰레기들과 원자력 시대의 저준위 폐기물을 묻는 장소가 되었습니다. 이러한 행동의 안전성 여부를 결정하는 연구들은 대부분 행동이 취해지기 전이 아니라 그 다음에야 나왔습니다. 또한 폐기물의 운명에 대한 우리의 정밀한 지식을 앞질러 쓰레기가 버려지고 있습니다.

[···] 모든 것이 괜찮다고 되풀이하며 안심시키는 분위기 속에서 대중들의 지지는 거의 없습니다. 또한 이런 종류의 조사를 위한 자금도 거의 없습니다. 저는 대중들이 현대의 환경 속에 존재하는 그러한 위험들에 대한 사실을 듣기 바랍니다. 저는 대중들이 취해야 할 신중하고 필수적인 조치를 현명히 결정하기 바랍니다.

[···] 우리 세계에 오염을 일으키는 이 모든 문제들 위에는 도덕적 책임이라는 문제가 있습니다. 비단 우리 세대에 대한 책임 뿐만이 아닙니다. 미래 세대들에 대해서도 책임이 있습니다. 우리는 현재 살아있는 세대의 신체적 피해에 대해서는 걱정합니다. 그렇지만 위험은 태어나지 않은 세대들, 즉 오늘날의 결정을 내리는 데 어떠한 목소리도 낼 수 없는 세대들에게 훨씬 큽니다. 또한 그 사실 하나만으로도 우리의 책임은 막중해집니다.

[···] 사실상 생물학에서 가장 인상적인 현상 중 하나는 생물의 세계 전반에 걸쳐 유전 체계가 기본적으로 유사하다는 것입니다. 이것은 환경 오염과 그것이 생명체에게 주는 영향이라는 우리의 주제와 다시 한 번 연관됩니다. 우리 인간은 우리 자신도 피해를 입을 수 있다는 사실을 인정하는 것을 이상하리만치 꺼립니다. 예를 들어, 우리는 강으로 유입된 농약이 물고기 수천 마리를 죽일 수 있다는 것을 인정하면서도, 그 물을 마실지도 모를 인간에게 이 화학 물질이 피해를 줄 수 있다는 사실은 부인합니다. 새들이 전부 죽어나간다는 보도도 그런 일이 우리에게는 일어날 수 없다는 생각에 무시됩니다. 만일 우리가 이러한 관점을 논리적인 결론으로 이끌고 간다면, 이는 수백만의 실험실 동물들을 포함해, 모든 정밀한 실험들을 비웃는 것입니다. 그러나 저는 우리가 얼마나 자주 그렇게 생각하는지를 알고 놀랐습니다. 이런 안일한 생각은 직접적으로 언급되기도 하고, 공식적인 관점이나 결정에 대한, 또는 결단력 있는 조치가 없음에 대한 함축적 근거로 드러나기도 합니다. 이러한 태도를 가진 사람들이 오늘 밤 우리가 다루고 있는 주제의 깊은 중요성을 느낄 수 있을지 가끔씩은 궁금합니다. 이것은 우리의 과거를 거부하는 것과도 같습니다. 즉, 인간도 다른 모든 생물들처럼 환경의 힘에 영향을 받는 광대한 지구 생태계의 일부라는 사실을 받아들이지 못하고, 여전히 이에 대해 준비가 되지 않은 모습을 보이는 것입니다.

역사를 돌이켜 보면 저는 어떤 평행선을 발견합니다. 다윈이 진화 이론을 발표했을 때 이어졌던 소동을 생각해 보십시오. 사람들은 이전에 존재했던 생물들이 인간의 기원이라는, 그의 개념을 극단적으로 부정했습니다. 비단 대중들뿐만이 아니라 다윈의 과학 분야 동료들까지도 이를 부인했습니다. 긴 세월이 지나서야 이 개념은《종의 기원》에 정리되어 확고한 자리를 잡을 수 있었습니다. 오늘날, 교육 받은 사람이라면 아무도 진화라는 사실을 부정하지 않습니다. 그러나 아주 많은 사람들이 지극히 명백한 결과를 부인합니다. 즉, 우리와 진화라는 끈으로 연결된 다른 모든 수천 종의 생물을 지배하는 똑같은 환경으로부터 인간이 영향을 받는다는 것을 부인하는 것입니다.

사람들이 자신의 기원을, 그리고 모든 생물이 진화하고 공존하는 세계와의 관계를 인정하는 것을 질색하는 이유가 무엇인지, 인간 내부에 숨겨진 어떤 두려움과, 오랫동안 잊혀진 어떤 경험이 그렇게 만드는지 생각해 보는 것은 꽤 흥미로웠습니다. 마침내 빅토리아인들은 다윈의 개념에 대한 충격과 당황 때문에 스스로 후퇴하게 만들었던 두려움과 미신으로부터 해방되었습니다. 그리고 저는, 우리 역시 환경에 대한 우리의 진정한 관계를 받아들일 날이 오기를 고대하고 있습니다. 지적 해방이라는 분위기 속에서만 우리는 지금 우리 앞에 존재하는 문제들을 풀 수 있다고 믿습니다.

감사합니다.

레이첼 카슨 유고집《잃어버린 숲》(2004, 그물코) 발췌

Near a brook in south-east England, the bird-spotter JA Baker stumbled on a grim little scene in 1961. "A heron lay in frozen stubble. Its wings were stuck to the ground by frost. Its eyes were open and living, the rest of it was dead. As I approached, I could see its whole body craving into flight. But it could not fly. I gave it peace and saw the agonised sunlight of its eyes slowly heal with cloud."

The bird's plight was clearly unnatural. Nor was its fate unique. That year, large numbers of dead birds were found strewn across the countryside. On the royal estate in Sandringham, for example, the toll included thrushes, skylarks, moorhens, goldfinches, sparrowhawks, chaffinches, hooded crows, partridges, pheasants, and wood pigeons. Nationally, more than 6,000 dead birds were reported to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a massive leap on previous years. "We were inundated," says the RSPB's conservation director, Martin Harper.

The UK was not alone. For years, reports in the US indicated that numbers of birds, including America's national bird, the bald eagle, were dropping alarmingly. Ornithologists also noted eggs were often not being laid while many that were laid did not hatch. Something was happening to the birds of the western world.

Several causes were proposed – poisons, viruses or other disease agents – but no one had a definitive answer or seemed sure of the cause – with one exception: the biologist Rachel Carson. For most of 1961, she had locked herself in her cottage in Colesville, Maryland, to complete her book, Silent Spring. It would provide an unequivocal identification of the bird killers. Powerful synthetic insecticides such as DDT were poisoning food chains, from insects upwards.

"Sprays, dusts and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests and homes – non-selective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the 'good' and the 'bad', to still the song of the birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film and to linger on in the soil – all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects," she wrote. One or two authors had previously suggested modern pesticides posed dangers. None wrote with the eloquence of Carson.

Serialised in the New Yorker during the summer of 1962, Silent Spring was published that September. It remains one of the most effective denunciations of industrial malpractice ever written and is widely credited with triggering popular ecological awareness in the US and Europe. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace trace their origins directly to Silent Spring. "In the 60s, we were only just waking up to the power that we had to damage the natural world," says Jonathon Porritt, a former director of Friends of the Earth. "Rachel Carson was the first to give voice to that concern in way that came through loud and clear to society." Or as Doris Lessing put it: "Carson was the originator of ecological concerns."

We have much to thank Carson for: a powerful green movement, an awareness that we cannot punish our wildlife indiscriminately and an understanding of the fragility of nature's food chain. But is the environment in better shape today? Have we saved the planet? Or is it in greater peril than ever? Fifty years after Silent Spring was published, as the world warms, sea levels rise and coral reefs crumble, these questions have acquired a new and urgent relevance.

Rachel Carson possessed a rare combination of gifts. She was a brilliant marine biologist and a superb writer whose prose was exquisite in its precision and lyricism. In 1952, she won a US National Book award for The Sea Around Us. Yet her most famous work, Silent Spring, is surprisingly difficult to get through. "It is dense and technical and not a book for the beach," says ornithologist Conor Mark Jameson, author of Silent Spring Revisited, a re-examination of Carson's legacy. "By current standards of science writing, it is awkward stuff."

Literary fashions have changed, of course, though other, intriguing factors give Silent Spring a strange resonance to modern ears. In particular, Carson's relentless style is striking and unexpected, filled as it is with tales of pesticide misuse that often show little variation in tone or detail. There is the slaughter at Clear Lake, California, of grebes and gulls, poisoned by a pesticide used merely to eradicate a harmless gnat. There are the cases of aerial spraying of DDT – to eliminate gypsy moths and fire ants – which wiped out blackbirds and meadowlarks. There are the links between pesticides and genetic damage in humans. And the list goes on. Were she not such a gifted writer, the effect could have been soporific.

Her remorseless approach was deliberate, however. Carson was trying to do more than end an iniquitous practice. She had decided to write "a book calling into question the paradigm of scientific progress that defined postwar American culture," says her biographer Mark Hamilton Lytle. She was amassing her evidence, in short.

It was a brave effort. Even legitimate criticism of government policy was a risky act in the US then. "Science and technology and those who worked in these fields were revered as the saviours of the free world and the trustees of prosperity," says another biographer, Linda Lear. "In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson exposes these experts to public scrutiny and makes it clear that at best they had not done their homework and at worst they had withheld the truth."

From this perspective, the book is not just an ecological alarm call. It is an assault on the paternalism of postwar science, though to be fair to its practitioners, many provided background material and checks of Carson's manuscripts in anticipation of the expected furious response of US industry.

And America's chemical giants did not disappoint. They tried to sue her, the New Yorker and her publisher, Houghton Mifflin. When this approach failed, they launched a $250,000 publicity campaign to rubbish Carson and her science. She was derided for being hysterical and unscientific and for being an unmarried woman. "She was an alarmist, they claimed," Lear states. "She kept cats and loved birds. Even a former US secretary of agriculture was known to wonder in public 'why a spinster with no children was so interested in genetics'. Her unpardonable offence was that she had overstepped her place as a woman."

Carson was now suffering from breast cancer and the effects of her radiotherapy. Yet she fought back. At the Women's National Press Club, she denounced the links that had been established between science and industry. "When a scientific organisation speaks," she asked, "whose voice do we hear – that of science or of the sustaining industry?" The question remains as pertinent today as it did in 1962.

The furore had one beneficial effect for Carson. Sales of Silent Spring soared, reaching a million by her death in April 1964. Pressed for his views on it, President John F Kennedy admitted an interest and later instructed his science advisory committee to investigate her claims. Its report vindicated Carson. Widespread use of pesticides was allowing poisons to build up in the food chain, posing a real risk to humans. Ten years and two presidents later, the production of DDT and its use in agriculture was banned in the US. Britain officially banned its use some years later.

Carson's opponents have long memories, however. Websites, many established by rightwing institutions backed by US industry, claim that she was a mass murderer who killed more people than the Nazis, for example. The DDT ban was responsible, these sites argue, for the deaths of countless Africans from malaria that would have been controlled had the west not stopped making the pesticide.

The claims are rejected by science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway. DDT was banned not just because it was accumulating in the food chain but because mosquitoes were developing resistance to it, they state. Nevertheless, groups still blame Carson for the current blight of malaria.

US climate scientist Michael E Mann offers another explanation for this perverse belief. "Those who oppose the environment movement have developed a special strategy: 'Whenever you get the chance: attack the icon.' Then you can say the whole cause must be tainted because you have thrown so much mud at the figurehead," says Mann, himself a victim of internet vilification over his climate research. "Rachel Carson is certainly an icon. Hence her treatment. Her story has so many resonances."

In fact, Carson's warnings are still highly relevant, both in terms of the specific threat posed by DDT and its sister chemicals and to the general ecological dangers facing humanity. "The seas are now witnessing the land horrors she described in Silent Spring," says oceanographer Callum Roberts, of York University. "The seas are the ultimate sinks. Chemicals get washed out of the soil and into streams and rivers. They should settle on the sea bed and stay there. However, fishing has become so intense, with boats dredging up scallops and bottom-welling fish all the time, that we are constantly ploughing up these toxins, including DDT, and stirring them back into the water."

Roberts points to the bottlenose dolphins of Sarasota Bay, Florida, as typical victims. "When a mother dolphin has her first offspring, she transfers a huge part of her body's burden of chemicals, including toxins, to her first-born. As a result, 70% of first-born calves die within a year."

Nor have matters improved on land. Neonicotinoids, insecticides used in seed dressing, have been linked to colony collapse disorder in honeybees, a condition that saw 800,000 hives wiped out in the US in 2007 alone, while vultures in Asia have been wiped out by the chemical diclofenac used on farms. As Carson wrote: "Chemical war is never won and all life is caught in its violent crossfire."

It is a lesson that seems to have been lost over the decades, however. "Carson believed we had to have a balance between ourselves and nature but the urge to have a macho-domination of the planet seems just as strong as it was in 1962," says Porritt. "We have made much less progress than we hoped for then."

Jameson agrees. "Was she right? Emphatically so. Was she heeded? Well, over DDT, she was. But her broad message, that we need to act in moderation and achieve a balance with nature, has still not been fully grasped."

Martin Harper of the RSPB is also cautious. "It took 10 years to get DDT banned after its effects had been demonstrated. And similarly today, when warned about a chemical's danger, governments wait until research results are unequivocal. Then they suggest industry takes voluntary action. Only when that fails does it issue a ban, years too late."

Rachel Carson's legacy is therefore difficult to assess. More than any other individual, she helped raise awareness about humanity's potential to wreak havoc on nature and we should be grateful. But it is equally clear that the planet is in a far worse state today than it was in 1962. The population has risen from 3.1 billion to 6.9 billion, seas are being drained of fish, wild places destroyed and wildlife devastated.

"I think she would have been horrified about the state of the planet today," Porritt admits. "Silent Spring outlined a clear and important message: that everything in nature is related to everything else. Yet we have not taken that idea on board or fully appreciated its significance. In that sense, we have let her down."

Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s landmark warning about the indiscriminate use of pesticides, turns 50 this month. By extension, that puts the environmental movement also at the half-century mark—along with the bitter, divisive argument we continue to have over both the book and the movement it spawned. The terms of that argument, which emerged in the brutal reaction to Silent Spring from those who saw it not as a warning but as a threat, haven’t changed much. And they leave us with a vexing question: Why do we fight? How is it that the environment we all share is the subject of partisan debate? After all, the right and the left inhabit the same planet, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.

Carson’s book was controversial before it even was a book. In June 1962, three long excerpts were published by The New Yorker magazine. They alarmed the public, which deluged the Department of Agriculture and other agencies with demands for action, and outraged the chemical industry and its allies in government. In late August 1962, after he was asked about pesticides at a press conference, President Kennedy ordered his science adviser to form a commission to investigate the problems brought to light, the president said, by “Miss Carson’s book.” A month later, when Silent Spring was published, the outlines of the fight over pesticides had hardened. Armed with a substantial war chest—Carson’s publisher heard it was $250,000—pesticide makers launched an attack aimed at discrediting Silent Spring and destroying its author.

The offensive included a widely distributed parody of Carson’s famous opening chapter about a town where no birds sang, and countless fact-sheets extolling the benefits of pesticides to human health and food production. Silent Spring was described as one-sided and unbalanced to any media that would listen. Some did. Time magazine called the book “hysterical” and “patently unsound.”

Carson’s critics pushed her to the left end of the political spectrum, to a remote corner of the freaky fringe that at the time included organic farmers, food faddists, and anti-fluoridationists. One pesticide maker, which threatened to sue if Silent Spring was published, was more explicit: Carson, the company claimed, was in league with “sinister parties” whose goal was to undermine American agriculture and free enterprise in order to further the interests of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. The word Communist—in 1962 the most potent of insults—wasn’t used, but it was understood. Silent Spring, said its more ardent detractors, was un-American.

And there the two sides sit 50 years later. On one side of the environmental debate are the perceived soft-hearted scientists and those who would preserve the natural order; on the other are the hard pragmatists of industry and their friends in high places, the massed might of the establishment. Substitute climate change for pesticides, and the argument plays out the same now as it did a half-century ago. President Kennedy’s scientific commission would ultimately affirm Carson’s claims about pesticides, but then as now, nobody ever really gives an inch.

Carson was also accused of having written a book that, though it claimed to be concerned with human health, would instead contribute directly to death and disease on a massive scale by stopping the use of the insecticide DDT in the fight against malaria. One irate letter to The New Yorker complained that Carson’s “mischief” would make it impossible to raise the funds needed to continue the effort to eradicate malaria, and its author wondered if the magazine’s legendary standards for accuracy and fairness had fallen. Apparently unaware of the distinction between science authors and nudists, the letter writer referred to Carson as a “naturist.”

The claim that Rachel Carson is responsible for the devastations of malaria, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, has gained renewed traction in recent years. The American Enterprise Institute and other free-market conservatives have defended the safety and efficacy of DDT—and the claim of Carson’s “guilt” in the deaths of millions of Africans is routinely parroted by people who are clueless about the content of Silent Spring or the sources of the attacks now made against it. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a limited-government, free-enterprise think tank, maintains the website rachelwaswrong.org, which details Carson’s complicity in the continuing plague of malaria. In 2004, the late writer Michael Crichton offered a bite-sized and easy-to-remember indictment of Carson’s crime: “Banning DDT,” Crichton wrote, “killed more people than Hitler.” This was dialogue in a novel, but in interviews Crichton made it clear this was what he believed.

Rachel Carson, who stoically weathered misinformation campaigns against her before her death from breast cancer in 1964, would find the current situation all-too predictable. As she said once in a speech after the release of Silent Spring, many people who have not read the book nonetheless “disapprove of it heartily.”

Rachel Carson never called for the banning of pesticides. She made this clear in every public pronouncement, repeated it in an hourlong television documentary about Silent Spring, and even testified to that effect before the U.S. Senate. Carson never denied that there were beneficial uses of pesticides, notably in combatting human diseases transmitted by insects, where she said they had not only been proven effective but were morally “necessary.”

“It is not my contention,” Carson wrote in Silent Spring, “that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm. We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge.”

Many agreed. Editorializing shortly after The New Yorker articles appeared, the New York Times wrote that Carson had struck the right balance: “Miss Carson does not argue that chemical pesticides must never be used,” the Times said, “but she warns of the dangers of misuse and overuse by a public that has become mesmerized by the notion that chemists are the possessors of divine wisdom and that nothing but benefits can emerge from their test tubes.”

Carson did not seek to end the use of pesticides—only their heedless overuse at a time when it was all but impossible to escape exposure to them. Aerial insecticide spraying campaigns over forests, cities, and suburbs; the routine application of insecticides to crops by farmers at concentrations far above what was considered “safe;” and the residential use of insecticides in everything from shelf paper to aerosol “bombs” had contaminated the landscape in exactly the same manner as the fallout from the then-pervasive testing of nuclear weapons—a connection Carson made explicit in Silent Spring.

“In this now universal contamination of the environment,” Carson wrote, “chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world—the very nature of its life.”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute—to its credit—acknowledges that Carson did not call for the banning of pesticides in Silent Spring. But they claim Carson’s caveat about their value in fighting disease was so overwhelmed by her general disapproval of their use that “negative publicity” around Silent Spring  halted the use of DDT against malaria, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, where some 90 percent of the world’s malaria cases occur.

It’s true that Carson found little good to say about DDT or any of its toxic cousins—the chlorinated aromatic hydrocarbon insecticides developed in the years after World War II and after the Swiss chemist Paul Muller had won a Nobel Prize for discovering DDT. But it’s a stretch to see how the mood surrounding Silent Spring was the prime cause of DDT’s exit from the fight against malaria. And, as the New York Times and other publications proved, it was understood by anyone who took time to read Silent Spring that Carson was not an absolutist seeking to stop all pesticide use.

DDT had been effective against malaria in Europe, in Northern Africa, in parts of India and southern Asia, and even in the southern United States, where the disease was already being routed by other means. But these were mostly developed areas. Using DDT in places like sub-Saharan Africa, with its remote and hard-to-reach villages, had long been considered problematic. It was an old story and one still repeated: Africa was everybody’s lowest priority.

And in any case, the World Health Organization had begun to question its malaria-eradication program even before Silent Spring was published. One object lesson was that the heavy use of DDT in many parts of the world was producing new strains of mosquitoes resistant to the insecticide. Much as it can happen with antibiotics, the use of an environmental poison clears susceptible organisms from the ecosystem and allows those with immunity to take over. The WHO also faced declining interest in the disease among scientists and sharp reductions in funding from the international community.

When the recently created Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT for most domestic uses in 1972, this ruling had no force in other parts of the world and the insecticide remained part of the international anti-malaria arsenal. The United States continued to manufacture and export DDT until the mid-1980s, and it has always been available from pesticide makers in other countries.

One result is that DDT is still with us—globally adrift in the atmosphere from spraying operations in various parts of the world, and also from its continuing volatilization from soils in which it has lain dormant for decades. The threat of DDT to wildlife—as a deadly neurotoxin in many species and a destroyer of reproductive capabilities in others—has never been in doubt. Carson’s claims in Silent Spring about DDT’s connection to human cancer and other disorders have not been completely resolved. The National Toxicology Program lists DDT as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” The same holds for two of its common break-down products, DDD and DDE, which are also suspected of causing developmental problems in humans.

These are cloudy but worrisome presumptions. DDT is stored in fat tissues—including ours—and that storage amplifies with repeated exposures over time, as well as through food chains, with unpredictable consequences. We walk around with our personal body-burden of DDT, a poison we still consume both from its decades-old residuals and its ongoing uses. If Rachel Carson hoped to end the use of DDT and our exposure to it, she did a lousy job.

In 2006, the World Health Organization announced a renewed commitment to fighting malaria with DDT, mainly in Africa—where the WHO had never lifted its approval for this purpose. The move was backed by environmental groups, as it surely would have been by Rachel Carson had she been with us still.