Carson Silent Spring

After reading both Silent Spring and “A Fable for Tomorrow” by Rachel Carson in the Colloquium Reader, there were a couple different quotes that really stood out to me.  One of these quotes was “contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.” (p.153) I found this quote interesting because this was written 50 years ago when things weren’t as bad as they are today.  Today, there are factories all over the place contaminating our rivers and air and we are barely doing anything about it.  Even with state and federal agencies controlling this pollution, very little difference has been made.  We need to take a stand and fix this before it is too late.  Wouldn’t it be sad if your kids had a completely different view on the environment that you had growing up as a child.

Another quote that stood out to me was “no witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.” (p. 151)  In this quote, Carson is saying that the only person to blame for all the damage to earth is humans.  There is nothing else destroying this earth except for all of our nasty habits and addictions.  The only good part is that since we are the problem, we can also be the solution.  We know exactly what we are doing wrong, but no one is standing up to make a change.  As long as you do your part to help the environment, everything will turn around for the better in no time.

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/environment

The third quote that interested me from the reading was “man can hardly recognize the devils of his own creation” (p.154).  Carson points out here that even when we create something bad, we are to naïve to realize we have done something wrong.

http://arch1design.com/blog/latest_environmental_health_news/consumer-concerns-about-pesticides-in-food/

The last quote that really stood out to me from the reading is “how could intelligent being seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?” (p. 156).  In this quote, Carson is questioning the intelligence of humanity.  How could you endanger your own species knowingly and not do anything about it.  If we continue to do the same thing over and over again even though we know its wrong, Carson claims that we must lack intelligence.

http://www.davekrause.me/category/innovation/