Rachel Carson

When Rachel Carson published her ground breaking work on the dangers of pesticides in 1962, Silent Spring, she was accused of being an “hysterical woman”, a fanatic follower of the “cult of nature” and a “communist”. What could engender such shrill verdicts from some of the most powerful media outlets in the world?
She had shed a glaring light onto a pervasive feature of industrial life that was as deadly as it was profitable: the manufacturing of chemicals to control the natural environment.

After world war II, these chemical poisons, derivatives of chemical warfare, were manufactured by powerful pertro-chemical industries like Monsanto and Montrose.
According to John Robbins, “Monsanto tried to destroy [Carson]. They mounted a tremendous advertising campaign to discredit her and invalidate her work. They wanted to ruin her in every possible way they could."

Carson was undeterred. In Silent Spring, she wrote "We allow the chemical death rain to fall as though there were no alternative, whereas in fact there are many, and our ingenuity could soon discover many more if given opportunity."
Carson's underlying philosophy was that humans are interdependent with nature. She argued that industrial activity was causing permanent damage to the Earth's ecosystems.

Ten years later, in 1972, DDT, one of the most dangerous pesticides from that post-war era, was finally banned, largely a result of Carson’s ground breaking work. Yet many poisons as dangerous or even more insidious are still used today.
Carson died in 1964, paradoxically from cancer that she fought, even as her ground breaking work was being published. Many say that she is the true mother of the modern environmental movement today.