reading log: silent spring

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 author: Joe Carstairs
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+## 2026-04-22
+
+### @{silent-spring}
+
+Her big idea: don't trust the USDA or the chemical companies, they are at best
+negligent and at worst lying. Insecticides and herbicides are poison. It is
+madness to try and control 'pests' by pouring poison over everything.
+
+Her brief first chapter is the most dramatic. She tells a fictionalised story of
+a town in the rural US where a grim spectre passes over, killing fish, birds,
+livestock, and then humans. They have poisoned themselves: some white dust still
+lingers on the gable ends.
+
+She hammers home the point that so-called 'pesticides' are in fact poison. They
+were developed in WW2 for use as chemical weapons to be used directly against
+humans; when alkyls were first discovered, they were kept secret by the Nazi
+government, recognising its potential application as a chemical weapon, and it
+is now sprayed in fields. She tells dramatic stories of poisonings of livestock,
+wild fish, birds, and humans. One story of a child who went out to play in a
+barn his father had just sprayed with alkyls, and ended up killed by poisoning.
+This theme runs through just about every chapter, a constant stream of
+horrifying stories of poisonings of humans and other creatures. Parathion kills
+hundreds yearly around the world, poisoning victims are dangerous to the
+physicians who treat them and the laundresses who wash their clothes.
+
+The chemical threat is as serious as the nuclear threat. The first chemical
+named is not a pesticide, but Strontium 90. Chemicals cause cancer, like
+radiation. (Chps 2, 14)
+
+There is a constant stream of new chemicals, far outstripping the capacity of
+nature to adapt to them or of biologists to understand them. (Chp 2)
+
+It is the first time in history that life is actively shaping its environment
+rather than adapting to its environment. (Chp 2)
+
+It is an escalating arms-race against insects who quickly develop resistance
+(Chps 2, 15).
+
+Chemical companies and the USDA lie to us or are negligently ignorant. This is
+because of their profit motive and because they pay for so much of the science.
+They label poisons as 'safe' when they are in fact poisonous. They call poison
+'insecticide' and 'herbicide' and 'pesticide' to obscure how dangerous it is to
+diverse kinds of life, including humans, not just insects, herbs, and pets. They
+exaggerate the threats, ignore the alternative solutions, exaggerate the
+effectiveness of their chemicals and deny the harms. They don't consult with
+people or even inform them, who end up poisoned without their consent. Brave
+individuals like Joseph Sweeney of Toledo, Ohio, have to fight the epistemic
+weight of respectable scientific institutions like universities, the USDA and
+the chemical companies. Some states such as Alabama and Florida are beginning to
+see through the deception. (Chps 2, 3, 8, 10, 15)
+
+There are better ways of pest control: removing infected elm trees promptly,
+flooding mosquito populations with sterile males, poisoning individual fire ant
+mounds locally rather than spraying whole countrysides. European foresters plant
+ant mounds and use birdboxes to encourage woodpeckers, encourage a diverse range
+of natural controls in balance. Chemicals destroy natural controls and thus make
+the problems worse. (Chps 8, 10, 15, 16)
+
+The Afterword was very interesting. In the view of Linda Lear, the effect of
+Silent Spring was to not only bring about regulation, but end an era of
+unquestioning trust in government agencies and chemical companies. She exposed
+that they hadn't done their homework or had lied. In a Cold War context,
+questioning the techno-scientific-industrial authorities could be perceived as
+traitorous. Chemical companies fought hard against her, sued the publishers to
+try and prevent it being published, then spent $¼ million on an aggressive
+publicity campaign against her. She was attacked for being 'emotional', an
+'hysterical woman,' her acclaimed novels cited as evidence that she couldn't be
+a real scientist, her literary style as evidence that she wasn't writing real
+science, real science is technical jargon buried in lab reports which can only
+be understood by specialists, if it's comprehensible to the public it must be
+unscientific. She had no PhD, no institution, no network of scientific
+colleagues to back her up, but still, the smear campaign failed. In a speech to
+the Women's National Press Club, she said that science was being compromised 'to
+serve the gods of profit and production.'
+
+Her big move is from lies to truth. From the way things aren't to the way things
+are. I didn't feel there was much mythical language going on. There is shock
+horror motivating action, though, including horrible futures that are starting
+now. It still feels like it places hope in the system somewhere: the solution is
+government regulation. Its effectiveness gives one pause for thought: perhaps
+horror can be an effective motivator for political action.
+
 ## 2026-04-21
 
 ### @{thompson-revelation}