[TheClimate.Vote] March 14, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sun Mar 14 11:39:01 EDT 2021
/*March 14, 2021*/
[NYTimes covers the coastal decisions]
*Tiny Town, Big Decision: What Are We Willing to Pay to Fight the Rising
Sea?*
On the Outer Banks, homeowners in Avon are confronting a tax increase of
almost 50 percent to protect their homes, the only road into town, and
perhaps the community’s very existence...
- -
“I’m telling my kids already,” Mr. Farrow said, “go somewheres else.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/14/climate/outer-banks-tax-climate-change.html
[Economic opinion in the Financial Express ]
*Climate crisis, economic growth and beyond*
Muhammad Mahmood | Published: March 13, 2021
[concludes - ]
As climate crisis gets worse, inequality rises, demographics shift,
technology continues to advance at breakneck speed. The ongoing debates
are now going to look at the dominance of GDP in economic thinking. In
fact, it is now well recognised that the central logic of the current
economic system under the spell of neo-liberalism as articulated in the
Washington Consensus and promoted by the two Bretton Woods institutions
that prioritise growth over human and ecological wellbeing ought to be
reversed.
And that will require to acknowledge the limitations of GDP by looking
at negative effects of economic growth on society such as environmental
degradation and rising income inequality. Therefore, the goal of an
economy is to be geared to sustainably improve human wellbeing and
quality of life that can be supported by the ecosystem. And that
involves developing an alternative national accounting system that goes
beyond GDP.
https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/views/climate-crisis-economic-growth-and-beyond-1615648072
[BBC says]
*Climate change: 'Forever plant' seagrass faces uncertain future*
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent
The green, underwater meadows of Posidonia seagrass that surround the
Balearic Islands are one of the world's most powerful, natural defences
against climate change.
A hectare of this ancient, delicate plant can soak up 15 times more
carbon dioxide every year than a similar sized piece of the Amazon
rainforest.
But this global treasure is now under extreme pressure from tourists,
from development and ironically from climate change....
- -
"The whole thing of planting seagrasses is that you have to do a massive
effort at the beginning to start the process. And then you just wait for
the plant itself to grow.
"If we are in a hurry, at human timescales, it's impossible.
"But if we don't mind, and we can wait for a few centuries, it will be
okay."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56378397
[Uh Oh...some history says it is not so pure]
*Climate Change's White Supremacy Problem*
Mar 12, 2021
Our Changing Climate
The climate movement's white supremacy problem, explained. Support this
channel directly by becoming a Patreon backer:
https://www.patreon.com/OurChangingCl...
In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I look at how
white supremacy pervades not only the history of environmentalism and
environmentalist leaders, but also how white supremacy now threatens the
climate change movement and climate action today. The forefathers of
environmentalism, conservation, and preservation like Gifford Pinchot,
John Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt all espoused white supremacist ideas that
were often intermeshed with their views of the natural world and
environmentalism. Later as authors like Paul Ehlrich stoked fears of
overpopulation, these racist sentiments were blended once again into
concerns about overpopulation. In short overpopulation and environmental
destruction as a result of overpopulation were wielded as racist and
white supremacist tools to oppress people of color, especially in the
majority world. Now, mass shooters and eco-fascists are harkening back
to the environmentalist, racist, white supremacist views of the past and
using climate change as a dangerous weapon and excuse to harm people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkhmP7yDWeY
[Warming waters unsuited]
*Evolution of 'twilight zone' ocean creatures linked to climate change*
Scientists warn of knock-on ecological impact if populations at bottom
of food chain are hurt by warming oceans.
11 March 2021
New research has revealed how creatures within the so-called twilight
zone of the ocean, extending from 200 to 1,000 metres below the surface,
have evolved as a result of climate change.
Led by scientists from Cardiff University, the study has been able to
track for the first time how the largest and least understood habitat on
Earth has developed as oceans have cooled over the past 15 million years...
- -
"Many of the strangest forms of life are found in the ocean depths
including comb jellies that look like alien spaceships and ugly
fang-tooth fish. But they are also vital for the ocean's food webs,"
said project leader Professor Paul Pearson.
"Deep-living fish account for a billion tonnes of biomass and are a
major food source for whales and dolphins and also large diving fish
like tuna and swordfish," Professor Pearson added.
If changes to the ocean temperature impacted that stage of the
food-chain it could reverberate through the entire planet's ecosystem.
https://news.sky.com/story/evolution-of-twilight-zone-ocean-creatures-linked-to-climate-change-12242588
[fire harvest from Oregon Public Broadcasting]
*Post-wildfire logging is moving fast, raising environmental concerns*
March 12, 2021
Special rules for logging after wildfire allow more trees to be cut
faster with fewer restrictions...
Federal rules make it easier to log after wildfire through “categorical
exclusions” that speed up the environmental review process for salvage
logging with the goal of reducing safety risks and allowing burned
timber to be sold before it rots.
Cady said that makes it harder for groups like Cascadia Wildlands to
challenge post-wildfire logging proposals on U.S. Forest Service and
Bureau of Land Management land.
“It’s hard to challenge because they just happen fast and you can’t
organize a lawsuit,” he said. “You have no idea it’s happening until
it’s too late. There’s 15 days notice prior to implementation.”
Plus, many of the burned areas are closed to the public, so it’s hard to
verify whether the trees are so badly burned they really need to be logged.
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/12/oregon-wildfires-2020-logging-rules-environmental-problems/
[opinionated, difficult rant]
*This is How Our Civilization is Self-Destructing*
The Real Economics of Our Civilization Say It’s Going to Implode
Umair Haque - Mar 7., 2021
It should be plain to see to anyone remotely sane or thoughtful that our
civilisation has reached a crisis point. We face a solid three to four
decades of escalating catastrophe now. The 2030s, when climate change
becomes severe, tearing apart economic and geoplanetary stability,
megafires and megafloods and mega hurricanes and drought and famine and
shortage become grim daily realities. The 2040s, when mass extinction
rips apart the basic systems of our civilisation, from food to water to
air to medicine. And the 2050s, the decade of the Long Goodbye, when the
final collapse of ecologies leaves a dead planet in its wake, soil
turned to dust, oceans to acid, harvests fallow, rivers run dry.
That’s the trajectory we’re on now. And while we’re making minor league
attempts to change it — decarbonizing our economies at a nonexistent
pace, for example — we don’t quite seem to understand the scale of
apocalypse that is now upon us. And that’s because we don’t have the
mental tools, the concepts, the frameworks. We’re trapped mentally — and
socially — in industrial age ideas of productivity, efficiency, and so on.
What we don’t have, but we need, are measures of how positive and
negative our civilisation really is. In the biggest possible sense. Life
and death. I call one of those the Thanatos Factor. It’s named after
Freud’s “Thanatos,” or death drive. It asks the question: how
destructive is our civilization, really? How much death, despair, and
ruin does it cause, for each life it creates?
Have you ever wondered how destructive our civilisation really is? By
now, I’m sure you have — even if your mind tries to run away, because
it’s a profoundly uncomfortable thought. Maybe you saw pictures of
animals burning to death in megafires. Maybe you saw photos of scarred
forests, or polluted rivers. Maybe you’ve read about the extinction of
the bees and insects and fish. Maybe you live in a place that’s been
toxified, physically, or a country that’s been poisoned, politically and
socially and economically. All that is Thanatos. We don’t add it up. We
think of these things as disconnected. But they are the same thing,
really — ruin, death, destruction — and we should add them up. What
happens when we do?
Don’t worry about the precise, exact math — that’s for future
generations of economists. Right now we are just going to think about
this question, conceptually, philosophically. It’s a big question, a
difficult question. But if we don’t wrestle with it — then the path we
are on, the path of runaway catastrophe, remains the only path there is.
One way to think about Thanatos is that over the last five decades, the
human population has roughly doubled, from four billion to eight
billion. But at the same time, there’s been a mass extinction of every
other kind of life. Four billion humans were created. But to create
them, it required our civilisation to kill off trillions of beings,
animals, fish, trees, insects, and so on. That’s a massively, massively
negative Thanatos.
Another way to think about Thanatos is in terms of how many lives we
still enslave, in order to slaiughter. I mean, of course, animals. In
terms of biomass, farm animals now vastly outstrip wild animals by
orders of magnitude — meaning there are billions more lives that are
simply enslaved and destroyed by our industrialised systems for food,
medicine, and agriculture. That, too, is a massively negative Thanatos,
at least if you believe that animals deserve to live with a little
dignity, too, not just caged and slaughtered.
Here’s a startling statistic. In terms of matter, biomass, 36% are
human, 60% are livestock, and just 4% are wild. That means that 36% of
the biomass on earth — us — is killing another 60%. And just 4% is
allowed to live free. Is it any wonder there’s a mass extinction going on?
There, we could even begin to quantify Thanatos — it’s 36 minus 60 plus
4, which is negative 20%. In terms of mammal biomass, Thanatos is
negative 20% — meaning that we destroy 20% more mammalian life than we
create. Any wonder our planet is dying?
And we treat mammals relatively well. We at least feed them and house
them, before we slaughter them or test our drugs on them and so on. The
rest of life? The oceans and rivers and mountains and forests? We don’t
care for them at all. Following that logic, Thanatos for non-mammalian
life, which is the rest of life on earth, insects, fish, trees, and so
on, should be far more negative than minus 20%. And it should be even
worse than that for abiotic matter — soil, oceans, and so on, matter
that supports life, but we don’t consider alive.
And that’s exactly what the evidence shows. There’s a mass extinction
ripping through the natural world, the first artificial, human-made one,
and it gets worse the further away from mammalian life you get. Insects,
fish, bees — bang! Being killed off at startling rates. Then there’s the
desertification of topsoil, the erosion of water tables, the pollution
of the oceans, the drying of rivers, and so forth — all accelerating.
This is another kind of extinction, the death of ecologies, not just
species. Do you see how, well, frightening all this is when you really
think about it?
Let me connect all those dots. Thanatos is a very serious and very real
problem for our civilisation. It destroys vastly, vastly more life than
it creates. How much more? For mammalian life, roughly 20% or so. For
non-mammalian life, the number is harder to estimate, but we know it’s
far, far worse — probably in the hundreds. And for abiotic matter, stuff
we need to live that isn’t considered alive — water, air, soil — it’s
even worse than that.
Our level of Thanatos is off the charts.
And that’s just to everyone and everything else. What about to ourselves?
Thanatos, too, can and should measure our own self-destruction. How
might we do that? Pretty simply. Norway is one of the world’s happiest
countries — and it has one of the world’s highest life expectancies, at
82.6 years. America has the 40th, at 78.5 — and is way less happy than
Norway. Norway’s happiness comes in at about 7.5 out of 10, and
America’s closer to 6.5. That means that annually, there are 33 million
life-years of a whole point of happiness lost in America. No wonder
America’s plunged into hate, violence, brutality, and cruelty — despair
makes people lose their minds, as trauma’s fight/flight/freeze response
kicks in.
I know this is all abstract and challenging. Take your time and chew on
these ideas.
What I think is badly, badly wrong in our civilisation is the way that
we conceptualise and think about the world. We do it in an economistic
way — we look at “costs” and “benefits.” But costs and benefits were a
calculus created for the industrial revolution — not the world of today,
of climate change, mass extinction, ecological collapse. Using an
obsolete paradigm doesn’t seem to be getting us very far.
Our statistics and measures are all badly outdated. GDP doesn’t even
measure carbon emissions. Carbon emissions, meanwhile, don’t really
measure how much they affect life. And so on. The result is that
economists and pundits look at obsolete data, like GDP and “profits” and
“incomes” which don’t carry much information anymore, and tend to think
that things are doing OK. In other words, they have a massive optimism
bias, commit a fallacy of thinking positively, because they are not
looking at numbers that represent truth very well anymore. Sure, GDP is
rising, but only at the cost of everything that matters anymore, from
democracy to sanity to the planet to life on it. We don’t measure all
that stuff, but we should.
Why? Not just to play intellectual games. But to create the jobs and
industries and careers of the future. If we had working measures of say,
sanity, democracy, life, the planet’s health, and so on, then we could
create industries and jobs to manage them. That’s happening, albeit far
too slowly. We need whole careers like “planetary economics managers”
and “human impact developers” and “ecology designers” and “systemwide
potential engineers” and so on. I know those are cheesy titles — they’re
cheesy precisely because we’re doing so badly inventing them that they
still sound like science fiction mostly.
All that is a little bit about why Thanatos matters. We can’t go on as a
civilisation anymore. Blindly. Pretending that we aren’t getting it
badly wrong, as the world around us begins to collapse — simply because
our obsolete paradigms and numbers don’t capture that truth, because
they were never meant to. We can’t stay this blind for much longer. We
have maybe a few years left, at best, and the longer we stay blind, even
now, all that will happen is that we will be all that much more shocked
when the now inevitable dislocations of climate change, mass extinction,
and ecological collapse thunder down on us. Covid is just a tiny, tiny
hint of all that.
So you tell me. How destructive do you think our civilisation really is?
When I make even back of the envelope attempts to calculate this number
I call Thanatos — life, happiness, possibility, over death, despair, and
ruin — I shudder. We’re used to glorifying our civilisation as the
smartest and most inventive and richest in history. But it’s also the
most destructive, violent, and ruinous.
We have to change that, my friends. Now. In these next few years. Or
else our civilisation does not have a future.
If Thanatos is negative — if a civilisation creates more death, despair,
ruin than life — then a civilisation is too destructive to survive. If
it’s positive, on the other hand — if a civilisation creates more life,
happiness, and possibility than death, despair, and ruin — then it might
just make it.
Umair
March 2021
https://eand.co/this-is-how-our-civilization-is-self-destructing-63ffeaeb24f5
[changes in climate bring changes in current weather]
*Severe weather could put more than 20 million Americans at risk*
By Renee Duff, AccuWeather meteorologist & Maura Kelly, AccuWeather
meteorologist
Millions will be under the threat of severe weather this weekend as a
battle between winter and spring will take place on the Plains. A clash
between warm and cold air, not uncommon for the month of March, will
create the conditions needed for thunderstorms to turn severe through
the weekend and even into the beginning of next week.
The same storm system that is forecast to dump feet of snow over
portions of the Rocky Mountains this weekend will also set the stage for
severe weather in the central and southern Plains.
"As the storm pivots eastward, it will draw warm, moist air northward
from the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, dry and cooler air from the
desert Southwest will shift eastward," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist
Alex Sosnowski said.
These opposite air masses colliding together will provide the necessary
fuel for widespread thunderstorm development. When adding in very strong
winds high up in the atmosphere, that provides a recipe for potent
thunderstorms that can turn damaging...
- -
AccuWeather On-Air Meteorologist Brittany Boyer warned that a moderate
risk for strong wind and hail with a slight risk for flooding and
tornadoes will continue into early Saturday morning.
However, forecasters say a much broader and more populous area could be
at risk for dangerous weather on Saturday and Sunday, with over 20
million Americans in the threat zone, including the bigger cities of
Oklahoma City, Dallas and Little Rock, Arkansas.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/severe-weather/severe-weather-could-put-more-than-20-million-americans-at-risk/914227
[media lesson]
*Meet the Climate Change Activists of TikTok*
A crop of eco-creators is bent on educating their followers about the
looming global disaster. Can their message translate into action?
EMMA PATTEE - 3.11.2021
- -
In the TikTok video, Levanti, superimposed over an image of Earth on
fire, says, “Hey, stop scrolling. Our planet is fucking dying.” It’s
gotten over 314,000 views and been shared nearly 14,000 times. There are
over 5,000 comments, some of which are heartbreaking: “I am 13, does
that mean my future children will suffer.” “It’s sad that younger people
have to suffer because of this.”
Levanti says that it distressed him to read the comments, especially the
ones from younger users. “There are young kids on this app that won’t be
able to experience this planet in the way I have, and I am only 24, so
I’ve barely experienced it.”...
- -
“If you paint it as a terrible tragedy, people either turn away from it
or internalize it and feel despair and then disengage.” A study
published in 2019 in the journal Frontiers in Communication revealed
that dire climate change content can lead to fatalism and inaction...
Many TikTok creators believe that the algorithm promotes “doom and
gloom” content, which in turn encourages the creator to focus on that
type of content. For example, Levanti’ video telling us to stop
scrolling because the world is ending got over 300,000 views, but a
video about greenhouse gas emissions has only been viewed 1,000 times.
Abbie Richards, who is working on a master’s degree in climate change
disinformation and social media and is also one of the creators behind
the collaborative TikTok account Eco_Tok (responsible for the greenhouse
gas emissions video), says plenty of accounts just focus on doom and
gloom scenarios in order to appease the algorithm. “What gets the
strongest emotional response is going to go viral. Our videos about
green premiums don’t tap into that lizard brain.” Richards says that
Eco_Tok, on the other hand, focuses on fact-based education. “We try to
avoid click baiting and meaningless climate change content.”
Another result of unvetted climate change information is a misguided
focus on individual actions, such as using lower-wattage light bulbs or
metal straws. “One of the dangers of this kind of unvetted information
is that people can be led into low-impact behaviors that are not going
to move the needle enough,” said Brick. Leah Thomas, the creator of
Intersectional Environmentalist, disagrees. “There's too much
gatekeeping of activism and what it could look like. Let the kids pop
lock and drop it for the planet on TikTok.” She says she’s seen
firsthand the impact of bringing attention to climate change. “Awareness
leads to empowerment and knowledge, which leads to real action.”
Many TikTok creators believe that the algorithm promotes “doom and
gloom” content, which in turn encourages the creator to focus on that
type of content. For example, Levanti’ video telling us to stop
scrolling because the world is ending got over 300,000 views, but a
video about greenhouse gas emissions has only been viewed 1,000 times.
Abbie Richards, who is working on a master’s degree in climate change
disinformation and social media and is also one of the creators behind
the collaborative TikTok account Eco_Tok (responsible for the greenhouse
gas emissions video), says plenty of accounts just focus on doom and
gloom scenarios in order to appease the algorithm. “What gets the
strongest emotional response is going to go viral. Our videos about
green premiums don’t tap into that lizard brain.” Richards says that
Eco_Tok, on the other hand, focuses on fact-based education. “We try to
avoid click baiting and meaningless climate change content.”
Another result of unvetted climate change information is a misguided
focus on individual actions, such as using lower-wattage light bulbs or
metal straws. “One of the dangers of this kind of unvetted information
is that people can be led into low-impact behaviors that are not going
to move the needle enough,” said Brick. Leah Thomas, the creator of
Intersectional Environmentalist, disagrees. “There's too much
gatekeeping of activism and what it could look like. Let the kids pop
lock and drop it for the planet on TikTok.” She says she’s seen
firsthand the impact of bringing attention to climate change. “Awareness
leads to empowerment and knowledge, which leads to real action.”
But for the people who actually matter in this situation, the ones who
are going to live out the results of our climate action or inaction,
TikTok is not separate from the real world. And in their real world,
millions of young people are watching a polar bear struggle to hold on
to rapidly melting ice. They’re leaving crying-face emojis and talking
about how scared they are. They’re sending 6.3 million letters to block
oil exploration in the Arctic. They’re spending hours making a video
about the Carbon Fee and Dividend program. They’re getting invited to
chat live on Instagram with the White House’s deputy climate adviser. As
Thomas so aptly puts it: “I think there's too much focus and criticism
of children and teens using social media to build awareness for issues
online and not enough focus on adults fixing the problem they caused.”
Perhaps instead of me questioning whether this is a good use of their
time, they should be asking me if writing this article is a good use of
my time. I’ll be lucky if this article is read by 20,000 people. That’s
just 7 percent of the people who viewed Louis Levante’s video.
https://www.wired.com/story/climate-change-tiktok-science-communication/
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - March 14, 1964 *
Writer and biologist Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book "Silent Spring"
galvanized a generation to take environmental concerns seriously, passes
away at 56.
Rachel Carson Dies of Cancer; 'Silent Spring' Author Was 56
By JONATHAN NORTON LEONARD
Rachel Carson, the biologist and writer on nature and science,
whose book “Silent Spring” touched off a major controversy on
the effects of pesticides, died yesterday in her home in Silver
Spring, Md. She was 56 years old.
Her death was reported in New York by Marie Rodell, her literary
agent. Miss Rodell said that Miss Carson had had cancer “for
some years,” and that she had been aware of her illness.
With the publication of “Silent Spring” in 1962, Rachel Louise
Carson, the essence of gentle scholarship, set off a nationally
publicized struggle between the proponents and opponents of the
widespread use of poisonous chemicals to kill insects. Miss
Carson was an opponent.
Some of miss Carson’s critics, admiringly and some not so
admiringly, compared her to Carrie Nation, the hatchet-wielding
temperance advocate.
This comparison was rejected quietly by Miss Carson, who in her
very mild but firm manner refused to accept the identification
of an emotional crusader.
Miss Carson’s position, as a biologist, was simply that she was
a natural scientist in search of truth and that the
indiscriminate use of poisonous chemical sprays called for
public awareness of what was going on.
She emphasized that she was not opposed to the use of poisonous
chemical sprays--only their “indiscriminate use,” and, at a time
when their potential was not truly known.
Quoting Jean Rostand, the French writer and biologist, she said:
“The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.”
On April 3, 1963, the Columbia Broadcasting System’s television
series “C.B.S. Reports” presented the program “The Silent Spring
of Rachel Carson.” In it, Miss Carson said:
“It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that
the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether
it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only
when in full possession of the facts.
“We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven’t become
mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a
vast and incredible universe. Man’s attitude toward nature is
today critically important simply because we have now acquired a
fateful power to alter and destroy nature.
But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is
inevitably a war against himself. The rains have become an
instrument to bring down from the atmosphere the deadly products
of atomic explosions. Water, which is probably our most
important natural resource, is now used and re-used with
incredible recklessness.
“Now, I truly believe, that we in this generation, must come to
terms with nature, and I think we’re challenged as mankind has
never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our
mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”
3 Earlier Works
Miss Carson, thanks to her remarkable knack for taking dull
scientific facts and translating them into poetical and lyrical
prose that enchanted the lay public, had a substantial public
image before she rocked the American public and much of the
world with “Silent Spring.”
This was established by three books, “Under the Sea Wind,” “The
Sea Around Us,” and “The Edge of the Sea.” “The Sea Around Us”
moved quickly into the national best-seller lists, where it
remained for 86 weeks, 39 of them in first place. By 1962, it
had been published in 30 languages.
“Silent Spring,” four-and-a-half years in preparation and
published in September of 1962, hit the affluent chemical
industry and the general public with the devastating effect of a
Biblical plague of locusts. The title came from an apocalyptic
opening chapter, which pictured how an entire area could be
destroyed by indiscriminate spraying.
Legislative bodies ranging from New England town meetings to the
Congress joined in the discussion. President Kennedy, asked
about the pesticide problem during a press conference, announced
that Federal agencies were taking a closer look at the problem
because of the public’s concern.
The essence of the debate was : Are pesticides publicly
dangerous or aren’t they?
They Should Be Called Biocide
Miss Carson’s position had been summarized this way:
“Chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of
radiation in changing the very nature of the world--the very
nature of life.
“Since the mid-nineteen forties, over 200 basic chemicals have
been created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents and
other organisms described in the modern vernacular as pests, and
they are sold under several thousand different brand names.
“The 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 birds and the leaping of fish in
the streams--to coat the leaves with a deadly film and to linger
on in soil--all this, though the intended target may be only a
few weeds or insects.
“Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of
poison on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for
all life? They should not be called ‘insecticides’ but ‘biocides.’”
The chemical industry was quick to dispute this.
Dr. Robert White-Stevens, a spokesman for the industry, said:
“The major claims of Miss Rachel Carson’s book, ‘Silent Spring,’
are gross distortions of the actual facts, completely
unsupported by scientific, experimental evidence, and general
practical experience in the field. Her suggestion that
pesticides are in fact biocides destroying all life is obviously
absurd in the light of the fact that without selective
biologicals these compounds would be completely useless.
“The real threat, then, to the survival of man is not chemical
but biological, in the shape of hordes of insects that can
denude our forests, sweep over our crop lands, ravage our food
supply and leave in their wake a train of destitution and
hunger, conveying to an undernourished population the major
diseases scourges of mankind.”
The Monsanto company, one of the nation’s largest chemical
concerns, used parody as a weapon in the counterattack against
Miss Carson. Without mentioning her book, the company adopted
her poetic style in an article labeled “The Desolate Year,”
which began: “Quietly, then, the desolate year began. . .” and
wove its own apocalyptic word picture--but one that showed
insects stripping the countryside and winning.
As the chemical industry continued to make her a target for
criticism, Miss Carson remained calm.
“We must have insect control,” she reiterated. “I do not favor
turning nature over to insects. I favor the sparing, selective
and intelligent use of chemicals. It is the indiscriminate,
blanket spraying that I oppose.”
Actually, chemical pest control has been practiced to some
extent for centuries. However it was not until 1942 that DDT, a
synthetic compound, was introduced in the wake of experiments
that included those with poison gas. Its long-term poisonous
potency was augmented by its ability to kill some insects upon
contact and without being ingested. This opened a new era in
pest control and led to the development of additional new
synthetic poisons far more effective even than DDT.
As the pesticide controversy grew into a national quarrel,
support was quick in going to the side of Miss Carson.
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, an ardent naturalist,
declared, “We need a Bill of Rights against the 20th century
poisoners of the human race.”
Earlier, an editorial in The New York Times had said:
“If her series [then running in part in The New Yorker
publication of the book] helps arouse public concern to immunize
Government agencies against the blandishments of the hucksters
and enforces adequate controls, the author will be as deserving
of the Noble Prize as was the inventor of DDT.”
Presidential Report
In May 1963, after a long study, President Kennedy’s Science
Advisory committee, issued its pesticide report.
It stressed that pesticides must be used to maintain the quality
of the nation’s food and health, but it warned against their
indiscriminate use. It called for more research into potential
health hazards in the interim, urged more judicious care in the
use of pesticides in homes and in the field.
The committee chairman, Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner, said the
uncontrolled use of poisonous chemicals, including pesticides,
was “potentially a much greater hazard” than radioactive fallout.
Miss Carson appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce,
which was hearing testimony on the Chemical Pesticides
Coordination Act, and a bill that would require labels to tell
how to avert damage to fish and wildlife.
“I suggest,” she said, “that the report by the President’s
Science Advisors has created a climate in which creation of a
Pesticide Commission within the Executive Department might be
considered.”
One of the sparks that caused Miss Carson to undertake the task
of writing the book (whose documentation alone fills a list of
55 pages of sources), was a letter she had received from old
friends, Stuart and Olga Huckins. It told of the destruction
that aerial spraying had caused to their two-acre private
sanctuary at Powder Point in Duxbury, Mass.
Miss Carson, convinced that she must write about the situation
and particularly about the effects of spraying on ecological
factors, found an interested listener in Paul Brooks, editor in
chief of the Houghton-Mifflin Company, the Boston publishing
house that had brought out “The Edge of the Sea.”
As to her own writing habits, Miss Carson once wrote for 20th
Century Authors:
“I write slowly, often in longhand, had with frequent revision.
Being sensitive to interruption, I writer most freely at night.
“As a writer, my interest is divided between the presentation of
facts and the interpretation of their significance, with
emphasis, I think toward the latter.”
“Silent Spring” became a best seller even before its publication
date because its release date was broken. It also became a best
seller in England after its publication there in March, 1963.
One of Miss Carson’s greatest fans, according to her agent,
Marie Rodell, was her mother. Miss Rodell recalled that the
mother, who died of pneumonia and a heart ailment in 1960, had
sat in the family car in 1952 writing letters while Miss Carson
and Miss Rodell explored the sea’s edge near Boothbay Harbor. To
passers-by the mother would say, pointing, “That’s my daughter,
Rachel Carson. She wrote “The Sea Around Us.”
People remembered Miss Carson for her shyness and reserve as
well as for her writing and scholarship. And so when she
received a telephone call after the publication of “The Sea
Around Us,” asking her to speak in the Astor Hotel at a
luncheon, she asked Miss Rodell what she should do.
The agent counseled her to concentrate on writing. Miss Carson
nodded in agreement, went to the phone, and shortly came back
and said somewhat helplessly: “I said I’d do it.”
There were 1,500 persons at the luncheon, Miss Carson was
“scared to death,” but she plunged into the talk and acquitted
herself. As part of her program she played a recording of the
sounds of underseas, including the clicking of shrimp and the
squeeks of dolphins and whales. With the ice broken as a public
speaker, Miss Carson continued with others sporadically.
Did Research by Herself
Miss Carson had some preliminary help in researching “Silent
Spring” but soon found that she could go faster by doing the
work herself because she could skim past so much that she
already knew.
Miss Carson had few materialistic leanings. When she found “The
Sea Around Us” was a great financial success, her first
extravagance was the purchase of a very fine binocular-
microscope, which she had always wanted. Her second luxury was
the summer cottage on the Maine coast.
Her agent said that Miss Carson’s work was her hobby but that
she was very fond of her flower garden at Silver Spring, Md.,
where she also loved to watch the birds that came to visit.
Miss Carson had two favorite birds, a member of the thrush
family called the veery, and the tern, a small, black-capped
gull-like bird with swallow like forked tails.
She once told an interviewer that she was enchanted by the
“hunting, mystical call” of the veery, which is found in moist
woods and bottomlands from Newfoundland to southern Manitoba,
and in mountains to northern Georgia.
In manner, Miss Carson was a small, solemn-looking woman with
the steady forthright gaze of a type that is sometimes common to
thoughtful children who prefer to listen rather than to talk She
was politely friendly but reserved and was not given to quick
smiles or to encouraging conversation even with her fans.
The most recent flare-up in the continuing pesticide controversy
occurred early this month when the Public Health Service
announced that the periodic huge-scale deaths of fish on the
lower Mississippi River had been traced over the last four years
to toxic ingredients in three kinds of pesticides. Some persons
believed that the pesticides drained into the river form
neighboring farm lands.
A hearing by the Agriculture Department of the Public Health
service’s charges ended a week ago with a spokesman for one of
the pesticide manufacturers saying that any judgment should be
delayed until more information was obtained.
Miss Carson was born May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pa., the
daughter of Robert Warden Carson and the former Maria McLean.
She was brought up in Springdale and in nearby Parnassus.
She owed her love of nature in large measure to her mother, who
once wrote in The Saturday Review of Literature, that she had
taught her daughter “as a tiny child joy in the out-of-doors and
the lore of birds, insects, and residents of streams and ponds.”
She was a rather solitary child. She never married.
After being graduated from Parnassus High School, she enrolled
in the Pennsylvania College for Women at Pittsburgh with the
intention of making a career of writing. First she specialized
in English composition. Later biology fascinated her and she
switched to that field, going on to graduate work at Johns
Hopkins University.
She then taught for seven consecutive sessions at the Johns
Hopkins Summer School. In 1931 she became a member of the
zoology staff of the University of Maryland. She remained five
years. Her Master of Arts degree was conferred by Johns Hopkins
in 1932.
Meanwhile, a childhood curiosity about the sea stayed with her.
She absorbed all that she could read about the biology of the
sea and she undertook post-graduate work at the Marine
Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass, at Cape Cod.
In 1936 she was offered a position as aquatic biologist with the
Bureau of Fisheries in Washington. She continued with the bureau
and its successor, the Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1937, an
article, “Undersea,” in Atlantic led to her first book, “Under
the Sea Wind,” in 1941, and this was followed by her appointment
as editor in chief of the Fish and Wildlife Service--blending
her two worlds: biology and writing.
“The Sea Around Us,” published in 1951, made her world famous,
and she received numerous honors. They included the Gold Medal
of the New York Zoological Society, the John Burroughs Medal,
the Gold Medal of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia and
the National Book Award.
Meanwhile, in 1952, she resigned from her government post to
continue her writing. She was no armchair naturalist To gain
experience the hard way, she once sailed in a fishing trawler to
the rugged Georges Banks off the Massachusetts coast. “The Edge
of the Sea” was published in 1955, and before long she was at
work researching material for “Silent Spring.”
Miss Carson leaves a brother, Robert M. Carson, and an adopted
son, Roger Christie, who was her grandnephew.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/05/reviews/carson-obit.html
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