The Silent Spring
In mid-March spring finally sprang into action here in The Midlands of England, daffodils poked their weary heads out of the ground, the days were finally longer than the nights, my thermals were relegated back into the wardrobe & the grass cutting equipment finished its winter sojourn in the shed...all was well in the world...but not quite, something was missing, that something was the dawn chorus, a solitary blackbird greeting the rising sun didn't count.
Hence this review is of Rachel Carlsons "Silent Spring".
Rachel was a marine biologist & author who, alarmed by pesticide (DDT*) use post WW2 (when the dangers were already known), tried to arouse the interest of magazine editors with articles she had written, rebuked at every turn this book is the result. In short, she surmises that killing insects will disrupt the food chain & the result will be a dawn without the chorus, a "Silent Spring".
However, Rachels work is much more than that, weaving the subjects of chemistry, biology, geology & ecology into a narrative that is informative, even if occasionaly melancholy.
Although the research in this book is over 65 years old, a lot of it still holds true today & is I think prophetic, a Foxy rating of "very recommended" read it in full (in pdf form) at the following link; https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/More_Books_and_Reports/Silent_Spring-Rachel_Carson-1962.pdf
*Jim West shows DDT to be a contributary factor in "polio" read his work at this link; https://harvoa.org/
Right on.
Strangely, the insects and birds around here are coming back with a roar this spring! Surprised me. I live in Western WA, near the Puget Sound, across the water from Seattle. So wonderful to see spiders again, and bird song is again to be heard, even if it's a smaller chorus than years ago. It's bigger than it was last year! Noticeably bigger. Ironic, since I am being cooked rather quickly by means of my neighbor's vast antennae array for his ham radio... I tried to warn him, even for his own sake, but he cannot abide the idea, and refuses to consider it, even though it's well-documented as a contributor to cancer and early death. Bloody hell, as your peeps would say. I want to move away from him, as soon as I'm ABLE.
I hope we can soon address the EMF issues... I think it's beginning to be talked about a lot more these days, I hope so!!
And... from what I've read, "POLIO" is actually poisoning... by DDT, and by it's supposed "cure," the vaccine! Perhaps other nasty toxins can also cause this problem, but it's a clear correlation with the DDT AND the vaccine for polio. Surprise!
Many thanks for the pdf link, I am not aware of a copy in our household unless my wife has a copy. Our bird life in Sussex is pretty good at the moment.