Colby College pays tribute to ecological pioneer Carson

WATERVILLE – Rachel Carson is viewed as the inspiration for the environmental movement, and Colby College students and faculty paid tribute to her accomplishments this weekend in recognition of the 100th anniversary of her birth.

A noted scientist long before the publishing of her groundbreaking work, “Silent Spring,” in 1962, Carson, who conducted a portion of her research among the tide pools off Boothbay Harbor, became an international sensation with the release of “Silent Spring.”

Her findings exposed the world to the dangers of synthetic pesticides and set in motion the movement to create the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and many of the early environmental laws.

Sponsored by Colby’s Department of Environmental Studies, the Carson centennial tribute featured talks; workshops for children on food, wetland animals and birds; and outdoor activities.

There were sessions on alternatives to toxic chemicals found in homes, humans, foods and lawns. Pre-schoolers, elementary and high school students and members of the community attended.

The tribute began Friday with the one-woman play, “A Sense of Wonder,” based on the life and works of Carson, featured an organic lunch Saturday and concluded with a concert by noted Maine folk singer Gordon Bok, who performed tunes from his compact disc “Songs for the Earth: A Tribute to Rachel Carson.”

In her keynote address, Carson scholar Meril Hazlett of the Land Institute of Salinas, Kan., described Carson as “pretty much the patron saint of the environmental movement.”

She said Carson popularized the theory that the interconnected web of life was being harmed by the effects of toxic chemicals. She said Carson drew on the research of many scientists to create “Silent Spring” and was vilified by many for her theories.

“She questioned the fictitious idea that humans were separated and superior to nature and was the catalyst for an ecological revolution that made a turning point in Western thought,” Hazlett said. “Many disagreed with her, and she suffered many attacks on her credibility. … But the ripple of her thinking spread pretty far.”

Although Carson was branded as a reactionary by many, Hazlett said, she actually had a strong Christian upbringing and was torn between her creationism beliefs and her acceptance of evolution.

Born 100 years ago this month, Carson was raised on a small farm in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny River Valley. Her rural landscape was undergoing change almost daily as the industrial might of America grew up all around her.

Carson studied to be a scientist, but women of that era had few opportunities. She took a job as a federal fisheries biologist and began to write of the sea. She published several books on the ecology of the sea before turning her gaze on pesticides.

Hazlett said Carson was in the process of writing a book on evolution in the late 1950s when she set it aside to begin work on what would become “Silent Spring.”

Evolution shaped Carson’s thinking, Hazlett said, but she also believed that both evolution and creationism provided a valuable perspective on the origins of life.

“She had a choice of whether or not to look away or whether or not to take action,” Hazlett said. “She chose to confront, and that catapulted her into controversy. … ‘I may not like what I see,’ Carson wrote a friend in 1958, ‘but does no good to ignore it.'”

“Silent Spring” was serialized in The New Yorker a few months before its publication in the fall of 1962, and Carson’s thesis immediately “set off a firestorm,” Hazlett said.

Carson was fighting breast cancer at the time and would succumb to the disease in fewer than two years. Hazlett said Carson awakened the scientific community to the dangers of the modern world and suffered greatly for it.

“She was portrayed as extreme, but in fact she was moderate,” Hazlett said. “She was a remarkable woman, remarkably complex in many ways. She struggled against poverty, sexism and her own thinking. She recognized that science was a moving target that’s always going to be shifting. In a very complex world, Rachel Carson found a solid place to stand.”