Rachel
Carson was a scientist, ecologist and writer who is regarded by many as the mother
of the environmental movement. In 1992, a panel chose her last book, Silent
Spring as the most influential book of the past 50 years - it had awakened
many to environmental concerns and helped inspire the creation of the Environmental
Protection Agency. An earlier book, The Sea Around Us, remained on the
best seller list every week for seven years, allowing Rachel Carson to leave her
job as editor-in-chief of publications for the US Fish & Wildlife Service and
devote herself to writing full-time. When birds began dying in a friend's bird
sanctuary, Rachel Carson began studying the effects of pesticides on the environment.
This became her passion and greatest concern and the topic of her epic, Silent
Spring. She wrote about the interconnectedness and interdependence of all
life, and the damage that humans were doing to the Earth's ecosystem. She showed
that using pesticides like DDT to kill insects introduced poisons into the food
chain, which could have far-reaching consequences for the whole ecosystem, including
humans. She urged the use of more natural organic pesticides that cause less harm
to the environment. Although her life was lost to cancer at much too young an
age, it has not silenced her voice - a global army of environmentalists were inspired
to carry on the call for more sustainable environmental practices.
