Yesterday Google disdained offering a special banner for Memorial Day. Today they compound this insult with a banner marking the birthday of Rachel Carson, author of the deeply wrong Silent Spring. Few books since Das Kapital have done more damage to humans—especially poor children in Africa—than Silent Spring, and yet she—and her dreadful book—continues to be honored by the Left. (We gave Carson a posthumous Green Weenie Award back in 2012.)
This makes it a good occasion to bring to your attention once again the Cato Institute book The False Crises of Rachel Carson: Silent Spring at 50, edited by Roger Meiners, Pierre Desrochers, and Andrew Morriss. It includes essays from 10 authors in various fields, all to the conclusion that “some of her major arguments rested on what can only be described as deliberate ignorance. . . Much of what was presented as certainty then was slanted; today we know much of it is simply wrong.”
Or, if you want a really good short smackdown, go back and find New York Times’ editorial writer Tina Rosenberg’s 2004 Times Magazine article in which she delivers the harsh conclusion that “DDT killed bald eagles because of its persistence in the environment. Silent Spring is now killing African children because of its persistence in the public mind.” Yes—those words came from a New York Times editorial writer.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.