Silent Spring<\/em> as an example — there were intentional misrepresentations of her motives and suggestions; there were slanders about her character and attempts to associate her with maligned ideologies; references to her being a fanatic with blood on her hands who wanted to return the world to the “dark ages;” and there were\/are vast misrepresentations of the effects of her work.<\/p>\nThat should all sound familiar. It’s the same playbook used to discredit those that speak about the grimy undersides supporting the glitzy modern world in any other field as well.<\/p>\n
To further highlight this I’ll provide a couple of money quotes below.<\/p>\n
The Cyanamid biochemist Robert White-Stevens stated: “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”<\/p>\n
The US Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson noted that she was “probably a communist,” because she was attractive but unmarried, and that should be kept in mind.<\/p>\n
There were of course numerous attacks on her credentials (if you can’t attack the message, then slander the messenger).<\/p>\n
There were numerous misrepresentations, the most notable of which perhaps being the claim that she was advocating for the wholesale ban of all pesticides — when she was simply noting that they were being used in dangerous and self-defeating ways (seemingly for profit motives and nothing else). Carson actually noted numerous times herself that widespread use would lead quickly to ineffectiveness (due to resistance amongst the pests in question).<\/p>\n
Those misrepresentations persist to this day, with many smears blaming her for the cause of “tens of millions” of people’s deaths.<\/p>\n
A particular good line comes to us from the “think tank” the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Which stated on its website: “Millions of people around the world suffer the painful and often deadly effects of malaria because one person sounded a false alarm. That person is Rachel Carson.”<\/p>\n
That line is supposed to reference the fact that many poor tropical countries ceased large-scale spraying of DDT in the 1970s and 1980s. In truth, the countries in question — mostly in South Asia — did so because DDT-resistance had become widespread amongst mosquitos. That being the case, why keep spraying? But then smears have never had much to do with truth, have they?<\/p>\n
That situation regarding the development of resistance is perhaps the most interesting thing here — as the reality is pesticide-resistance is now widespread amongst the pests that target common agricultural crops but very rare amongst beneficial insects, including pollinators.<\/p>\n
So the world of tomorrow will apparently be one of flies and mosquitoes, rather than of bees, birds, and butterflies<\/p>\n
“The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.” — John Keats<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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