Silent Spring

1. Silent Spring Braunwarth Grossmont College

2. Sections • Context • Political Analysis and Examples • Missing Political Critique • Political Impacts • Alienation from the Natural World • Are One With the World

3. Context: Mastery over the Environment • Silent Spring help change the attitude of what is “normal” • Called into question a major item of faith in the 20th century: • The authority of scientific experts • Amazing changes in ability to manipulate the environment in the post-war world: • The Atom, Agriculture, Medicine, Household appliances, etc. • Miraculous power to make a happier, healthier, wealthier society • “Live Better Through Chemicals”

4. Context: Mastery over the Environment • Experts were shocked. Thought were doing well; • feeding the world on the one hand and silencing dissent and nonconformity on the other. • Carson felt experts trusted their own too greatly • Were part of a vast complex of private and public interests designed to increase profits for chemical manufacturers and agribusiness

5. Context: Mastery over the Environment • Bill McKibben: “What Silent Spring did, was to cause people to start questioning, for the first time, and in a big way, whether modernity was quite as shiny as they’d assumed. Or whether there were deep hazards hidden right in the middle of the huge industrial enterprise.” • “It wasn’t just DDT that people were reacting to. It was the idea that things were not what they seemed, that they often came with a shadow attached. That’s a notion that’s grown”

6. Context: Mastery over the Environment • “The modern world,” Carson wrote in 1963, “worships the gods of speed and quantity, and of the quick and easy profit, and out of this idolatry monstrous evils have arisen. … As for the general public, the vast majority rest secure in a childlike faith that ‘someone’ is looking after things – a faith unbroken until some public-spirited person, with patient scholarship and steadfast courage, presents facts that can no longer be ignored.”

7. Context: Mastery over the Environment • She was also writing against the grain of an orthodoxy rooted in the earliest days of the scientific revolution: that man (and of course this meant the male of our species) was properly the center and the master of all things, and that scientific history was primarily the story of his domination -- ultimately, it was hoped, to a nearly absolute state. • When a woman dared to challenge this orthodoxy, one of its prominent defenders, Robert White Stevens, replied in terms that now sound not only arrogant but as quaint as the flat-earth theory: "The crux, the fulcrum over which the argument chiefly rests, is that Miss Carson maintains that the balance of nature is a major force in the survival of man, whereas the modern chemist, the modern biologist and scientist, believes that man is steadily controlling nature."

8. Context: Mastery over the Environment • Still a cultural divide • Between pesticide-production and agricultural community on the one side • And the public health community on the other • Come from different backgrounds, go to different colleges, and have different viewpoints • Separated by gulf of suspicion and enmity • Hard to change a system in which production and profit are tied to pollution • Need a formal, ongoing dialogue between those who produce our food and those who protect our health

9. II. Political Analysis of and Examples from Silent Spring • Tragedy of the Commons • Classical Liberal Critique • Collective Action Problem • Interest Groups • Iron Triangle • Logic of Collective Action

10. Classical Liberal Tradition • Emphasis on the Individual who is rational, asocial, alienated from traditions and natural place in the world • Self-Interested and Competitive • Locke and his State of Nature • Are we really that rational? • Does our short-term Self-Interest trump our long-term concerns for others? • Can we even recognize the long-term impacts of our actions?

11. Tragedy of the Commons • Garrett Hardin, published 1968 • Explored the concept of the environment as a common area • Subject to misuse in the absence of regulation

12. Tragedy of the Commons

13. The Tragedy of the Commons • The individually rational exploitation of shared resources to the detriment of the needs or interests of the community is known as the tragedy of the commons • Even if people realize that everyone would benefit from preserving the shared resource (enlightened self interest), individuals will overexploit the commons if they believe others will cheat or take advantage of the group. • Exploitation becomes the rational choice.

14. The Tragedy of the Commons • The solutions for the tragedy of the commons all involve collective actions • Individuals must be compelled to act in the best interest of all even at an individual cost to themselves • Government policing and enforcement of laws make it rational for individuals to act in the collective best interest • This allows us to pursue goals that cannot be attained spontaneously and would be impossible for any one individual to realize

15. Collective Action Problem • Freedom to be free of weeds and bugs • Freedom of private industry to bring a product to market for which there is a demand • But, people also want freedom to be free of chemicals • Where is the appropriate balance?

16. Collective Action Problem • The problem is that there is a disconnect between the short-term rational motivation of the individual and the long-term interests of the community? P. 127 • Need to move the decision point from the individual to the community • How is this done? • Exhortation will only work in a small group with small costs • Public Policy with enforcement is usually necessary • Education with good communication is needed p. 152

17. Iron/Cozy Triangle • A close relationship among special interests, congressional committees, and the bureaucracy • This community can have very extensive collective power if all 3 sides of the triangle want the same thing • Are relatively impervious to interference from Congress as a whole, the White House, or the Public

18. Iron Triangle • What are the three poles of the triangle in Silent Spring? • What is the check on an iron triangle? • An informed and active citizenry • How does Silent Spring help bring this about?

19. Iron Triangle • Obviously, a sensible approach to pesticide use has to balance dangers and benefits and take economic factors into account. • But we also have to take the heavy weight of special interests off the scale and out of the equation. The standards have to be clear and demanding, and the testing has to be thorough and honest.

20. Logic of Collective Action • What’s the concern in Madison’s Federalist #10? • Traditional concern in a democracy is the Tyranny of the Majority • What happens when the benefits of organization are concentrated in a small group and the costs are diffused over everyone else? • The small group will often get its way at the expense of the majority

21. Logic of Collective Action • She notes how • “funds for chemical control came in never-ending streams, while the biologists ... who attempted to measure the damage to wildlife had to operate on a financial shoestring.“ p 92 • But doesn’t say why • Similarly money for constructive research p. 152

22. III. Missing Economic and Political Argument • Carson presents a biological and ecological argument (balance of nature/ecological web of life) • Why? • What are the political and economic conclusions stemming from this work that are not addressed by Carson? • What would have been the response to her book had she been more overtly political?

23. Missing Economic and Political Argument • Carson downplayed political implications of her account • Repeatedly explains why spraying is not only harmful to humans and wildlife, but unjustified even in terms of biological effectiveness or economic payoff to farmers

24. Missing Economic and Political Argument • She seems to feel that by presenting the facts, the public response will be obvious • Is this likely to be the case? • What factors are going to attenuate such a response by the public? • Logic of collective action?

25. Missing Economic and Political Argument • Carson's reticence in talking about the political and economic forces encouraging heedless pesticide use disabled her capacity to talk about fundamental social interventions as part of a solution. • Her proposals gravitate toward the only resources left to her: respect for the balance of nature and ecological interconnectedness. • This is to be achieved through attitudinal reform and the technologies of biological control.

26. Missing Economic and Political Argument • Her call for new attitudes consists of a reasonable even inspiring repudiation of human arrogance in favor of an attitude of cautious "guidance," reasonable "accommodation," sensitive "management," and an ethic of "sharing" rather than "brute force." • These are valuable orientations in themselves, but their mildness and abstraction bespeak the book's missing politics. • But the book did have widespread effect

27. Missing Economic and Political Argument • Silent Spring not only attacked the integrity of the chemical industry, but also challenged the credibility of the government. • The general public knew only of the benefits of using chemical pesticides and trusted the government that these chemicals were safe to use. • However, the issues that Miss Carson raised made people more aware of the pesticide spraying that was going on in their neighborhoods.

28. IV. Political Impact • Criticized as hysterical, unscientific, cultish, communist • Kennedy had a government panel look into claims made which they then substantiated • Repeated environmental crises in the ‘60s • Santa Barbara oil well blowout • Cuyahoga River fire in Cleveland • Astonishing success of first Earth Day in 1970 • Kept Environmental issues in the news

29. Political Impact • After the publication of Silent Spring, communities began to organize into groups to voice their concern to the government about pesticide spraying. • In fact, many argue that Silent Spring was instrumental in launching the American and global environmental movements as well as the notion that we possess a fundamental right to a clean environment. • Several environmental interest groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Wilderness Society, and the Environmental Defense Fund were formed after the publication of Silent Spring.

30. Political Impacts • Silent Spring was published when the country was on the cusp of extraordinary social change • Robust economy allowed for direction of energy outward • Toward advancing social goals and building the Great Society

31. Political Impact • Nixon Administration established the EPA in 1970 • Authority to set tolerances for chemical residues • 1972 responsibility for pesticide regulation (was in the Dept. of Agriculture) • Mandated protection of public and environmental health • Ceased licensing DDT in 1972 • Also Chlordane, Heptachlor, Dieldrin, Aldrin, Endrin • With the creation of the EPA came the passage of several pieces of environmental legislation including • the Clean Air Act, • the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, • and the Safe Drinking Water Act. • 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act • Silent Spring’s greatest legal vindication

32. Political Impact: DDT • 1971: Claim that banning DDT would cause collapse of worldwide antimalarial campaign • WHO insisted that DDT was the only cost-effective means to control malarial mosquitoes • However, by early 1970s mosquitoes were acquiring resistance to DDT due to its overuse in agriculture • WHO ceased using DDT, but not because of Silent Spring

33. Political Impact: DDT • 2007: Claim is still made about DDT and malarial infections • Not intended to rehabilitate DDT, • But to make the argument that government regulation is always bad and to undermine public confidence in governmental regulation. • Similar methods have been developed to spread doubt about science and regulation in connection with smoking, acid rain, ozone depletion, and global warming.

34. Contemporary Environmental Debate • We live in a different time • Hard to think about your future when you’re struggling to hold on to your house and keeping your family afloat • Van Jones “green jobs czar” pushed out of Obama White House by right-wing smear campaign • Try to teach people that efforts to combat climate change can benefit the economy

35. Contemporary Environmental Debate • Same corporate interests that operate the denial machine • Trying to sell the notion that addressing climate change will hit citizens in the pocketbook • Language: “Unnecessary environmental regulations, mean less income for families struggling to survive and educate their children.” • In times of economic turmoil, can be a pernicious and successful strategy

36. Contemporary Environmental Debate • For the most part, hardliners within the pesticide industry have succeeded in delaying the implementation of protective measures called for in Silent Spring. • It is astonishing to see the cosseting this industry has been accorded in Congress over the years. • The statute that regulates pesticides, fungicides, and rodenticides sets far looser standards than those that regulate food and drugs, and Congress intentionally made them more difficult to enforce. • In setting safe levels of a pesticide, the government takes into account not only its toxicity but also the economic benefit it provides. This dubious process pits increased agricultural production (which might be obtained otherwise) against potential increases in cancer and neurological disease. • Moreover, the process for removing a hazardous pesticide from the market generally takes five to ten years. New pesticides, even if they are very toxic, can win approval if they work just marginally better than existing ones.

37. Contemporary Environmental Debate • The present system is a Faustian bargain - we get short-term gain at the expense of long-term tragedy. And there is reason to believe that the short term can be very short indeed. • Many pesticides do not cause the total number of pests to decline; they may do so at first, but the pests eventually adapt by mutation and the chemicals become useless. • We examine each pesticide in isolation, but scientists generally have not yet researched combinations, which are the potentially far more perilous reality encountered in our fields and pastures and streams. • Essentially, what we have inherited is a system of laws and loopholes, deadlines and delays, facades that barely disguise a wholesale failure of policy.

38. Contemporary Environmental Debate • The world today is awash in a sea of chemicals never before seen in nature (BPA, endocrine disrupters, etc.). • No one really knows the long-term effects of these substances, individually or in unpredictable combination, either on human health or on the health of the ecosystems upon which we, and all life, depend. • The chemicals are not the same as the ones Carson indicted in Silent Spring, yet they are produced, sold, and used on an unsuspecting public by the same interconnected complex of profit-driven companies and government authorities. • Carson’s words in her “Fable for Tomorrow” still apply, as if we lived in the future that she imagined: “No witchcraft, no enemy action” had produced our “stricken world. The people had done it themselves” (Carson 1962, 3).

39. V. Alienation from the Natural World • We have developed an elaborate society but it is hubris to ignore our fundamental ties to the planet 140 • We are products of the planet and can’t exist elsewhere • We are fundamentally dependent on everything outside of ourselves • We think we are separate because we walk around in separate bags of skin but everything is interdependent • Ecology: the relations of living things to each other

40. Alienation from the Natural World • Is this recognized by your “wired” generation? • Nature-Deficit Disorder (Louv) • What’s the Danger? • Environmental, but what else? • Mental, physical, and spiritual health • What about aesthetics? • What’s the importance of carving out a non-economically productive part of life?

41. VI. We Are of This World • Planet has peopled • Can’t discuss outside of context of others • Organism-Environment • We are dependent on everything around us • Illusion because of separate bags of skin • Enlightenment – at one with everything • Carson: Humans are part of the environment • Fighting nature is like fighting ourselves

42. Are One with the World • Traditionally think of selves as separate • Separate bags of skin-encapsulated egos • Confront external world of which we are the independent observer that is foreign to us • Really, external world is just as much you as anything inside the skin • Do not come into the world, come out of it (flower, fruit) • We are expression of nature • What is You, and everyone else, is the world itself • P. 72

43. Are One with the World • Self and Other are inseparable • Like front and back of a coin, mutually necessary • Can insides exist apart from outsides? • Defined as a stranger, not a symptom of the earth • World outside is unfeeling, fully automatic, and stupid which we must dominate and fight

44. Are One with the World • We are the little curly cues out on the edge of the Big Bang • When did you begin? Gleam in Father’s eye? Conception? • Began with dawn of creation • You are the God Shiva who dances the world • You are the Works