Rachel Louise Carson

(May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose influential book Silent Spring (1962) and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award,^[2] recognition as a gifted writer and financial security. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths. Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially some problems she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was the book Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides. It also inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.^[3] Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter.

Carson bequeathed her manuscripts and papers to Yale University to take advantage of the new state-of-the-art preservations facilities of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her longtime agent and literary executor Marie Rodell spent nearly two years organizing and cataloging Carson's papers and correspondence, distributing all the letters to their senders so that only what each correspondent approved would be submitted to the archive.^[85]

In 1965, Rodell arranged for the publication of an essay Carson had intended to expand into a book: The Sense of Wonder. The essay, which was combined with photographs by Charles Pratt and others, exhorts parents to help their children experience the "...lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world ... available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea, and sky and their amazing life."^[86]

In addition to the letters in Always Rachel, in 1998, a volume of Carson's previously unpublished work was published as Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, edited by Linda Lear. All of Carson's books remain in print.^[86]

Grassroots environmentalism and the EPAEdit

Carson's work had a powerful impact on the environmental movement. Silent Spring, in particular, was a rallying point for the fledgling social movement in the 1960s. According to environmental engineer and Carson scholar H. Patricia Hynes, "Silent Spring altered the balance of power in the world. No one since would be able to sell pollution as the necessary underside of progress so easily or uncritically."^[87] Carson's work, and the activism it inspired, are at least partly responsible for the deep ecology movement and the overall strength of the grassroots environmental movement since the 1960s. It was also influential on the rise of ecofeminism and on many feminist scientists.^[88]

While there remains no evidence that Carson was openly a women's rights activist, her work and its subsequent criticisms have left an iconic legacy for the ecofeminist movement.^[8] Attacks on Carson's credibility included criticism of her credentials in which she was labeled an "amateur." It was said that her writing was too "emotional."^[8] Ecofeminist scholars argue that not only was the dissenting rhetoric gendered to paint Carson as hysterical but was done because her arguments challenged the capitalist production of large agri-business corporations.^[8] Others, such as Yaakov Garb, suggest that in addition to not being a women's rights activist, Carson also had no anti-capitalist agenda and that such attacks were unwarranted.^[8] Additionally, the way photos of Carson were used to portray her are often questioned because of few representations of her engaging in work typical of a scientist, but instead of her leisure activities.^[8]

Carson's most direct legacy in the environmental movement was the campaign to ban DDT in the United States (and related efforts to ban or limit its use throughout the world). Though environmental concerns about DDT had been considered by government agencies as early as Carson's testimony before the President's Science Advisory Committee, the 1967 formation of the Environmental Defense Fund was the first significant milestone in the campaign against DDT. The organization brought lawsuits against the government to "establish a citizen's right to a clean environment," and the arguments employed against DDT largely mirrored Carson's. By 1972, the Environmental Defense Fund and other activist groups had succeeded in securing a phase-out of DDT use in the United States (except in emergency cases).^[89]

The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the Nixon Administration in 1970 addressed another concern that Carson had brought to light. Until then, the same agency (the USDA) was responsible both for regulating pesticides and promoting the concerns of the agriculture industry; Carson saw this as a conflict of interest since the agency was not responsible for effects on wildlife or other environmental concerns beyond farm policy. Fifteen years after its creation, one journalist described the EPA as "the extended shadow of Silent Spring." Much of the agency's early work, such as enforcing the 1972 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, was directly related to Carson's work.^[90]

In the 1980s, the policies of the Reagan Administration emphasized economic growth, rolling back many of the environmental policies adopted in response to Carson and her work.^[91]

Posthumous honorsEdit

The Rachel Carson Bridge in Pittsburgh, mid-1999

Various groups ranging from government institutions to environmental and conservation organizations to scholarly societies have celebrated Carson's life and work since her death. Perhaps most significantly, on June 9, 1980, Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. A 17¢ Great Americans series postage stamp was issued in her honor the following year; several other countries have since issued Carson postage as well.^[92] In 1973, Carson was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.^[93]

The University of California, Santa Cruz, named one of its colleges (formerly known as College Eight) Rachel Carson College in 2016.^[94] Rachel Carson College is the first college at the University to bear a woman's name.

Munich's Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society was founded in 2009. An international, interdisciplinary center for research and education in the environmental humanities and social sciences, it was established as a joint initiative of Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and the Deutsches Museum, with the support of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Carson's birthplace and childhood home in Springdale, Pennsylvania, now known as the Rachel Carson Homestead, became a National Register of Historic Places site and the nonprofit Rachel Carson Homestead Association was created in 1975 to manage it.^[95] Her home in Colesville, Maryland where she wrote Silent Spring was named a National Historic Landmark in 1991.^[96] Near Pittsburgh, a 35.7 miles (57 km) hiking trail, called the Rachel Carson Trail and maintained by the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy, was dedicated to Carson in 1975.^[97] A Pittsburgh bridge was also renamed in Carson's honor as the Rachel Carson Bridge.^[98] The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection State Office Building in Harrisburg is named in her honor. Elementary schools in Gaithersburg, Montgomery County, Maryland,^[99] Sammamish, Washington^[100] and San Jose, California^[101] were named in her honor, as were middle schools in Beaverton, Oregon^[102] and Herndon, Virginia^[103] (Rachel Carson Middle School), and a high school in Brooklyn, New York.^[104]

The statue of Rachel Carson in Woods Hole, May 2016

Two research vessels have sailed in the United States bearing the name R/V Rachel Carson. One is on the west coast, owned by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI),^[105] and the other is on the east coast, operated by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Another vessel of the name, now scrapped, was a former naval vessel obtained and converted by the United States EPA. It operated on the Great Lakes. The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary also operates a mooring buoy maintenance vessel named the Rachel Carson.^[106]

The ceremonial auditorium on the third floor of EPA headquarters, the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building, is named after Rachel Carson. The Rachel Carson Room is close to the EPA Administrator's office. It has been the site of numerous important announcements, including the Clean Air Interstate Rule.^[107]

A number of conservation areas have been named for Carson as well. Between 1964 and 1990, 650 acres (263 ha) near Brookeville in Montgomery County, Maryland were acquired and set aside as the Rachel Carson Conservation Park, administered by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.^[108] In 1969, the Coastal Maine National Wildlife Refuge became the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge; expansions will bring the size of the refuge to about 9,125 acres (3,693 ha).^[109] In 1985, North Carolina renamed one of its estuarine reserves in honor of Carson, in Beaufort.^[110][111]

Carson is also a frequent namesake for prizes awarded by philanthropic, educational and scholarly institutions. The Rachel Carson Prize, founded in Stavanger, Norway in 1991, is awarded to women who have made a contribution in the field of environmental protection.^[112] The American Society for Environmental History has awarded the Rachel Carson Prize for Best Dissertation since 1993.^[113] Since 1998, the Society for Social Studies of Science has awarded an annual Rachel Carson Book Prize for "a book length work of social or political relevance in the area of science and technology studies."^[114] The Society of Environmental Journalists gives an annual award and two honourable mentions for books on environmental issues in Carson's name, such as was awarded to Joe Roman's Listed: Dispatches from America's Endangered Species Act^[115] in 2012.^[116] The Sierra Club and its foundation recognize donors who have provided for the club in their estate plans as the Rachel Carson Society.^[117]