Rachel Carson Essays (Examples)

Kennedy announced the formation of a special government group to investigate the use and control of pesticides under the direction of the President's Science Advisory Committee (Rachel pp). The book caused a firestorm of public outrage and sold more than a quarter million copies by the end of 1962 (Rachel pp). United State Supreme Court Justice illiam Douglas called it "the most important chronicle of this century for the human race" and Loren Eisely of the University of Pennsylvania described it as a "devastating, heavily documented, relentless attack upon human carelessness, greed and irresponsibility"(Rachel pp). The fervor of the favorable reviews were matched by the intense attacks of the chemical industry and those it influenced, such as the president of the Montrose Chemical Corporation, the nation's largest producer of DDT, who asserted that Carson had written not "as a scientist but rather as a fanatic defender of the balance of…

As the eel gets closer to the ocean, the water of course becomes salty and there are new dangers (fishing nets) and unfamiliar eels in the water. But true to her style of providing readers with sidebar stories, the eel passes a clay cliff where "the first eels had come in from the sea eons ago" (p. 228). But Carson doesn't just stop there; there are "teeth, bones, and shells" and the "vertebrae of whales" visible on that clay cliff where a warm sea had "overlain all the coastal plain" millions of years ago. Bringing in geology and paleontology to make her story of birds and marine creatures is classic Carson, and it is what makes her among the most respected naturalist writers in American history.

orks Cited

Bratton, Susan Power. (2004). Thinking Like a Mackerel: Rachael Carson's Under the Sea-ind as a Source for a Trans-Ecotonal Sea Ethic. Ethics…

Silent Spring by Rachel arson
Rachel arson's Silent Spring was published in 1962, 8 years before the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency and more than 50 years before the writing of this essay. At that time, there was little common knowledge about the sometimes terrible effects of chemicals on the environment, plants, animals and humans. arson's unflinching, educated examination and explanation of these effects helped create a dramatic cultural movement that is far more knowledgeable and responsible about the environment and the role of human beings within it.

What lessons does arson extract from the stories about spraying for the gypsy moth and the fire ants?

arson places the chemical campaigns against the gypsy moth and fire ant in the context of a culture conditioned by: chemical industry greed, power and money; government officials' naive acceptance of the chemical industry's claims, issuance of propaganda, misuse of power and negligence;…

Silent Spring
achel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring is filled with a "hodgepodge of science and junk science," creating a "Disneyfied version of Eden," according to some modern reviewers (Tierney 2007). Such an embittered reaction to one of the most important works in ecology is unwarranted: especially in light of the fact that DDT is the chemical evil that Carson claims it to be and has been banned in most civilized nations. Pesticides promoted by agribusiness has created a litany of problems for human and animal populations, not to mention upsetting the chemical composition of local soils, contaminating drinking water supplies, and causing the creation of superbugs. Carson (1962) might not have gotten everything right in Silent Spring, but she sure comes close, capturing the essence of why agribusiness and the chemical industry conglomerates are failing to make the world a better place. Silent Spring has stood the test of…

Rachel Carson's claim "for time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time" (Carson 6) is meant to emphasize the fact that humanity has the tendency to ignore factors like the future and their general well-being. People in the contemporary society are obsessed with progress and some are willing to do everything in their power in order to make things happen faster. As a consequence, these individuals express little to no interest in the effects that their actions have on the natural world. Carson most probably wanted her readers to understand that it would be difficult and almost impossible for certain people to turn their attention away from progress as a result of acknowledging that their actions are going to have a negative impact on the environment.
hile time is one of the most important concepts today, people constantly feel that they have very little…

Johnny Carson's primacy in the history of television cannot be understated. Carson's thirty-year stint as the host of NBC's Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992 remains the measuring-stick against which success in the American media must be measured. As Bill Carter -- a New York Times journalist who wrote the substantial history of the machinations and fiascos that ensued when Carson announced his retirement, and the effort to replace Carson began -- states outright "Johnny Carson was the single biggest money generator in television history. He was also the greatest individual star the medium had ever created." (Carter 3). This is astonishing when we consider that Carson took no part in the synergistic strategies that we associate with television in 2012: he did not appear in films, or regularly promote himself elsewhere in the media, he published no memoirs (and indeed published nothing save two joke-books from the earliest years…

Sea around Us
Rachel Carson was a scientist and author who took a topic which had hitherto been only of interest to fellow scientists and opened it up to the masses. During her lifetime, she took up many causes in support of wildlife and the protection of species and protecting the natural landscape from potential molestation from developers and others who would destroy indigenous habitats. Among her many missions was to make people aware of the hazards of certain chemicals on the environment, such as pesticides on vegetation. In Rachel Carson's book The Sea around Us, the author strives to explain the mysteries of the sea. She begins with a discussion of the world of water from before recorded history, all the way up to the book's present which was the early 1950s. Her essential thesis of the piece is that although science has allowed the people of the world…

Rachel Carson, she asserts that water is our most precious natural resource and goes on to state that "most of the earth's abundant water is not usable for agriculture, industry, or human consumption because of its heavy load of sea salts" (1) and therefore "in the midst of this plenty we are in want" (1).
Okay, so let's examine this particular argument; first she says that the earth's abundant water is not usable for consumption etc., due to the fact that the water contains a heavy load of sea salts. Really? Rachel offers no facts and no figures to back up her assertion, instead she implies that we are desperately in need of drinking water because most of the water is so heavily sedated with salt that it is undrinkable.

Even assuming that her assertion was true, the logical answer to the dilemma is that the water would have to…

With the advent of Colombo on the American soil, things began to change as Philip J. Deloria asserts in her book Playing Indian (1999): "[T]he self-defining pairing of American truth with American freedom rests on the ability to wield power against Indians... while simultaneously drawing power from them." This is also the basic idea of Shari M. Huhndorf's Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination. "As white Americans became disenchanted with how American society was developing, they began to reference Indian people and culture as an answer to such problems of a modernizing America as capitalistic greed; alienating, sedentary life-style of the office worker; imperialistic aggressiveness; and racial and gender challenges to white male hegemony" (Barak, 2005).
The Indians progress was challenged by the so-called American School of ethnology. Therein Christianity became a tool in the American colonial project. The development of an ideology based in religion was made…

ole of females in science [...] achel Carson and Barbara McClintock and compare each scientist to general principals characterizing the careers of women in science.
WOMEN IN SCIENCE

One becomes a scientist by viewing the world in a particular manner; scientists select for study those aspects of the world that are amenable to analysis by scientific methodology. A person acting as a scientist constructs a scientific domain out of the world when s/he adopts a scientific attitude (Grinnell 2).

Most scientists face obstacles at some point in their career. Their research does not produce the results they expected. They lose their funding and must move to another research location. Critics do not agree with their findings or methods. When the scientist is a woman, she often faces even greater obstacles than her male counterparts. achel Carson and Barbara McClintock are two such women scientists, who worked relentlessly toward their goals,…

After World War Two, Carson realized the extent to which the government was permitting the use of toxic chemicals and wrote a book to expose the practice. That book was called Silent Spring, and it "challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world."[footnoteef:8] Jensen includes an excerpt from Silent Spring to show that Carson was up against one of the most lucrative industries in the world, and that although her work is unfinished, Carson made a huge impact on raising awareness and eventually her work got DDT banned. [8: "The Life and Legacy of achel Carson," Accessed May 3, 2013, http://www.rachelcarson.org/Biography.aspx#.UYOWMCshKII]
Malcolm X's autobiography was arguably not a project undertaken as a form of muckraker journalism. The author started writing when he was in prison, and he comes to learn the power of the written word…

The Leblanc alkali production processes were especially pernicious, but they followed along the lines of previous industrial processes. In other words, the first British environmental legislation was a response not so much to a qualitative change in industrial processes and their environmental impact but more to a quantitative increase in sources of pollution that had up to that point been (if only barely) tolerable.
Legislation Arising From Public Anger

At the center of the first British environmental legislation was the Leblanc process, an industrial process that produced of soda ash (which is chemically sodium carbonate) that came into use in the first decades of the 19th century. Named after its inventor, Nicolas Leblanc, it replaced an older process in which soda ash had been produced from wood ash. However, as the availability of wood ash declined (because of deforestation, a process that was occuring both in Great Britain and across…

These agents must sustain profitably and prove, economically and logistically why innovative "green" supply chains are realistically more effective than the status quo of historical procurement. Continuing education in both formal and informal fashions must be developed to increase the efficacy of the procurement agent, with regard to "green" purchasing. Changing both large and small organization patterns for procurement can eventually trickle down to even the most uncaring consumers, of which there is a dwindling number. Sroufe, provides a list of environmental performance indicators which have become increasingly important and recognizable issues in today's production society.
2006, p.15) ii) the business reasons for "greener purchasing"

There are literally hundreds of reasons for the development of sustainable business practices, not the least of which is ensuring the long-term existence of the business and production needs.

Among those that are most important are the following:

Sustainable production: Purchasing "green" enhances sustainable production…

Current events of the environmental ethics

Some of the major current events concerning the environmental ethics are the issue of global warming. One of the leading researchers (in the causes and effects of climate change; and in the field of allergies) in Europe has discovered that the burning of the fossil fuel that has increased over the recent past has resulted into the increase of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide facilitates the growth of the ragweed- an invasive plant- moreover; the hay fever is triggered of by this plant's pollen grains. Both early and long seasons of allergy are caused by the bloom of the birch trees as a result of the warmer temperatures (White, 1967).

Non-environmentally friendly behaviors currently such as the increased acts of war has not only affected the environment by impoverishing the natural resources but has also caused stress in…

Along with India, South Africa is perhaps the most prominent country using DDT that has large developed populations. Neither country has reported negative consequences, and many thousands of lives have been saved in both cases.
Ultimately, the use of DDT as a combatant against the spread of malaria has wide-ranging benefits that far outweigh the side effects. Carefully tracking the trajectory of DDT's history demonstrates that most developed nations, including the U.S., took advantage of DDT's benefits during the Global Malaria Eradication Campaign in the 1960s to eliminate the threat of malaria entirely. Their subsequent ban of DDT and the imposition of economic restrictions by the United Nations upon countries still using DDT represent a selective memory at best. The actions of developed nations regarding DDT could also be considered a hypocritical thought process.

egardless, malaria continues to pose a substantial threat to many countries, mostly in Africa. Only closed-mindedness…

Aldo Leopold and Environmental History
In answering the question of whether the United States has improved on environmental policy since the 1930s, the cyclical nature of the political system must be considered. A generational reform cycle occurs every 30-40 years, such as the Progressive Era of 1900-20, the New Deal of the 1930s and the New Frontier and Great Society of the 1960s and early-1970s. All of the progress that the United States has made in conservation, wilderness preservation and other environmental issues has happened in these reform eras. Barack Obama represents yet another reform cycle and his environmental record is better by far than any other president over the last forty years, although much of what he attempted to accomplish has been blocked by the Republicans and the corporate interests that fund them. In conservative eras like the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s and 1990s, almost nothing worthwhile happens with…

143).
Moreover, the global neglect of women (in terms of science) is reflected in the fact that women have been excluded as experimental subjects in drug research, Rosser continues. Certainly pregnant women have been excluded from experiments with pesticides and radioactive materials, but beyond that Rosser explains that "…these drugs and materials are then used without ever having been tested on women" (1991, p. 143). And yet notwithstanding their exclusion from testing, women's research has led to a vast resource of knowledge vis-a-vis the natural environment.

To wit, Rachel Carson correctly extrapolated the deadly effects on the environment due to agricultural pesticides (DDT in particular), and in fact changed the way the government approached pesticides (1991, p. 144). Indeed, Carson's books ("Silent Spring," "Under the Sea-Wind," and others) had an enormous impact on the nation's grasp of environmental dangers and led eventually to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency…

To a great degree individual environmentalists, and especially martyrs, those who have lost their lives or liberty are seen by those in the most radical circles as defining members of their group. It is also clear that for the most part individuals in the movement are not recognized as such, excluding public figures such as former vice president Al Gore, who just received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change ("Al Gore" 21) or the frequent Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, an ardent environmentalist.
Hentoff 19)

orks Cited

Al Gore." estern Mail (Cardiff, ales) 13 Feb. 2007: 21.

Baird, Stephen L. "Climate Change: A Runaway Train?. The Human Species Has Reshaped Earth's Landscapes on an Ever-Larger and Lasting Scale." The Technology Teacher 66.4 (2006): 14.

Environmentalism." The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th ed. 2004.

Crichton, Michael. "Environmentalism as Religion Run Amok." USA Today (Society for the Advancement of…

behaviors inherent in e-tailing (in business-to-Consumer relationships / communications). Note the communications medium in which each behavior occurs.
Explain how each medium enables e-commerce.

E-tailing is the business of electronic retailing or retailing over the Internet (*). There are three types of e-tailing behavior: independent, intervening variables, and dependent variables.

Independent:

The independent retailer will want to know two variables of the people who generally resort to e-commerce. These are: (a) personal characteristics and (b) environmental characteristics. The retailer will want to know the buying habits of the consumers in order to target a given market. These demographics include age, gender, marital status, occupation and income.

The retailer, too, will want to know the environmental variables, namely background variables of what or who influence the consumer; where the consumer shops; what the consumer would like to buy and so forth. This is so in order that the retailer would know…

The feedstocks that are considered include going back on coal Gasification, and coal liquefaction, stranded natural gas and oil which was heavy and available from the 'oil shale' or 'tar sands', and biomass. Because of its eco friendly nature and sustainability biomass is to be considered as the better alternative. There are some technical barriers that have to be overcome in using biomass as alternate feedstock. Governments are now considering the aspects of power generation and production of transportation fuels. The know-how for the chemical industry is yet to be developed fully and this can be using feedstock alternatives to petroleum and using sustainable manufacturing practices. (McFarlane, 2006)
It is also argued that the resources and environmental pressures spring from the throughput of materials in the economy. That is determined by total output. Now total output could be considered again in the denomination of population and per capita output, and…

The 1980s (the period when onald eagan was the U.S. President) witnessed a series of government measures targeting environmental regulations. This resulted in public outrage against the anti-environmental policies of the government leading to a renewed interest in nature clubs and groups and the formation of radical groups who led strong movements to protect the environment. (vii) the post- eagan resurgence (1990s onwards) - President Bush and President Clinton did not take the radical stance of their predecessor. However, President George W. Bush has taken many measures which have weakened the environmental movement instead of strengthening it. This includes opposing curbs on greenhouse emissions via the Kyoto Protocol, supporting oil drilling in the ANW or Arctic National Wildlife ange, weakening clean air standards and lifting the ban on logging in forests.
3) How does economics determine the public's opinion regarding environmental issues? Discuss the values of the dominant social paradigm…

From an environmental perspective this work demonstrates the fact that the growth of this movement has been reinvigorated as a result of the fact that many have come to understand how dangerous many of the chemicals used in commercial agriculture are to the earth and the body. "The last few years have seen the issues of BSE, genetically modified foods, hormone disruption and antibiotic resistance come to the fore and there is a greater recognition that what we eat is vitally important to our health." She notes that many of the pesticides and herbicides we have used in the past have been a destructive force and are no longer even considered safe, but were deemed so prior to the modern research that has more scientifically established their unwanted and pollutant effects on both the body and earth.
Organic Food Benefits. Nutiva. Organic Food Association. 2003. http://www.nutiva.com/nutrition/organic.php.

This informative article demonstrates…

Maine: Amenities & Competitiveness
A Comparative View of Scarborough: Amenities & Competitiveness

The town of Scarborough is located in Cumberland County on the southern coast of Maine. The town is a coastal resort area. It is located about 7 miles south of Portland. Scarborough is part of the Portland -- South Portland -- Biddeford metropolitan area (About our town, n.d.). With a resident population of just under twenty thousand, Scarborough is the tenth largest city in Maine and the third largest in Cumberland County (American fact finder, 2012).

Comparative Fiscal Analysis of Scarborough, Maine

"The settlement of Scarborough was one of the earliest made on the New England coast. The town was incorporated in 1658 and was named for Scarborough, England. It included the lands of Black Point, Blue Point, and Stratton's Island and extended back eight miles from the sea. These boundaries have changed almost every century" (About our…

omen to History
omen have contributed to the history of the world from the beginning of time. Their stories are found in legends, myths, and history books. Queens, martyrs, saints, and female warriors, usually referred to as Amazon omen, writers, artists, and political and social heroes dot our human history. By 1865, women moved into the public arena, as moral reform became the business of women, as they fought for immigrant settlement housing, fought and struggled for the right to earn living wages, and stood up to the threats of the lynch mobs. The years beginning in 1865 is known as the Civil ar era and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It was a time of great changes, especially for African-American women such as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. omen of all races had to fight for equal rights, even the right to vote (http://women.eb.com/women/nineteenth09.html).omenhave indeed 'come a long…

Progressivism began as a social movement and evolved into a political movement, according to materials published by George Washington University (www.gwu.edu). Early in the social movement progressives were concerned about poverty, racism, greed and "class warfare," and they believed that those problems could be best addressed through education, a safer environment, and a workplace that was fair and safe (www.gwu.edu). Who were those considered to be progressives? The George Washington University narrative explains that they live "mostly in the cities," they had graduated from colleges and universities, and their beliefs included the belief that "…government could be a tool for change" -- and among the most vocal and visible social reformers / progressives were Jane Addams and journalists Jacob Riis and Ida Tarbel (www.gwu.edu).
Progressive journalists wrote investigative pieces that exposed "the evils of corporate greed" and they presented a balanced view of immigration and ethnicities, all the time "…urging…

The Fun Principle stated that as "we take the fun out of physical activities, we take the kids out of them" (Martens, 1996, p. 306). Martens said that learning should be enjoyable and that when winning is pursued in the extreme, it produces behaviors that destroy children's self-worth and rob them of fun. However, adults frequently violate this principle by over organizing, constantly instructing and evaluating, over drilling and routinizing the learning of skills, replacing unstructured play with calisthenics, and using physical activity as a form of punishment. Martens noted that the irony in youth sports is that "we turn young people off of the very thing we want to turn them on to" (p. 309). If lifelong participation in physical activity is the goal, then the emphasis should shift from the outcome to the quality of experiences, according to Martens. (Brady, 2004, p. 48)

Differences in Youth Who Withdraw…

Ecological Conscience
Mother of Life: Developing an Ecological Conscience

The greatest assignment and commitment for the world in the 21st century is to ensure that we re-discover the lost connection we have with nature. We have to see ourselves as biological beings and as part of the intricate web of life .we also have to understand more fully compared to any generation before us how we came about along with other living creators out of the universe fabric and to know that we are supposed to remain woven into that same fabric as long as we are here on earth in a bond which is inseparable since it is who we are.in short this implies that we have to nurture in all the diverse cultures that exist in our world a shift of consciousness is held in one eternal and fundamental reality which is that humanity and nature can never…

In many ways, the Vietnam ar represented the height of Cold ar tensions in much the same way that the decade was giving way to an inevitable breaking point in environmental negligence. Though the years which would follow would see a gradual intensification of environmental protection laws, these have by and large been nullified by the impact of that for which Abbey offers the most criticism. ith both Vietnam and the destruction of many of America's richest points of flora and fauna diversity being the products of our ongoing 'evolution' toward technological, industrial and commercial advance, Abbey is persuasive in drawing a sympathetic mistrust of modernity from the reader. Ultimately, it produces a sense of loss for ildland Recreation opportunities while simultaneously reinforcing the primal importance of such experiences.
In this way, Desert Solitaire stands in 20th century environmental history as a guide to alternative living. hile he is unflinching…

Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization" by Jared Diamond.
With a BA from Harvard University and PhD from Cambridge University, as well as a vast amount of works published, professor Diamond uses his extensive knowledge as well as his equally extensive field work and research to put on the table what he found disturbing about the fall by self-destruction of ancient civilizations, among which, he focuses on that of the Mayas.

The author opens his essay with Percy Shelly's poem, Ozymandias, using poetry to appeal to the reader's sensibilities. By creating a sad, hopeless atmosphere, he is setting the tone in anticipation of the rest of the essay. His choice for the poem of an incurable romantic as Shelley, may seem odd for the opening of an essay about the environment. However, it strikes several cords and thus opens the reader's heart instead of just one's mind. This…