Carson's Silent Spring by Seager Joni

Author:Seager, Joni.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441128997
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2014-07-07T04:00:00+00:00

For further discussion/exploration

•Find out if your state or city uses pesticides to clear vegetation on highway roadsides, railway beds, and utility rights of way. When was that decision made, who are the decision-makers, and what public review of the policy is included (if any)?

•Make an inventory of pesticides that are in your home.

•In her arguments against pesticides, Carson names specific chemicals, but she doesn’t name the names of any pesticide manufacturers. Do you think she should have? Would her arguments be strengthened or weakened if she had done so?

•If Carson were writing today, what environmental problem do you think she would identify as the most important? Would it still be pesticides?

•The banning of pesticides such as chlordane and DDT by the EPA, and their inclusion on the Stockholm Conventions’ list of the ‘dirty dozen’ POPs seems to vindicate Carson. But most of these were not banned in the United States until 20–30 years after Silent Spring. Why did it take so long to act on what Carson and her scientific colleagues knew in the 1960s to be extremely dangerous chemicals? Do you think that local, national or international regulatory agencies should—or could—act any faster on dangers discovered today?

•Some critics say that bee die-offs are not due to pesticides. What alternative explanations are being offered? What do you think of the evidence for the various explanations?

•Why do you think the US government has not ratified the Stockholm Convention? What does the US government say about why it hasn’t?

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