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William Nierenberg
Rachel Carson was a science writer and marine biologist who rose to international prominence for exposing the environmental dangers of pesticides like DDT in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Oreskes and Conway call her “an American hero” because her work contributed to the U.S. government’s decision to ban DDT. But decades after her death, the “merchants of doubt” (politically influential scientists who downplayed environmental issues) began calling her a mass murderer, all based on the scientifically dubious assumption that DDT would have eradicated malaria. Her work represents an important pivot in the environmentalist movement from mostly aesthetic concerns—like preserving natural land—to policy concerns like regulating toxic industrial substances to prevent ecological damage. And the campaign against her demonstrates how contrarians reject all regulation, despite its scientific effectiveness, based on the ideology of free market fundamentalism.
Rachel Carson Quotes in Merchants of Doubt
The Merchants of Doubt quotes below are all either spoken by Rachel Carson or refer to Rachel Carson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 7
Quotes
Sometimes reopening an old debate can serve present purposes. […] In the demonizing of Rachel Carson, free marketeers realized that if you could convince people that an example of successful government regulation wasn’t, in fact, successful—that it was actually a mistake—you could strengthen the argument against regulation in general.
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The Kennedy PSAC report, Use of Pesticides: A Report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, is notable in hindsight as much for what it did not do as for what it did. The scientists did not claim that the hazards of persistent pesticides were “proven,” “demonstrated,” “certain,” or even well understood; they simply concluded that the weight of evidence was sufficient to warrant policy action to control DDT.
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Both science and democracy worked as they were supposed to.
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So Sri Lanka didn’t stop using DDT because of what the United States did, or for any other reason. DDT stopped working, but they kept using it anyway. We can surmise why: since DDT had appeared to work at first, officials were reluctant to give it up, even as malaria became resurgent. It took a long time for people to admit defeat—to accept that tiny mosquitoes were in their own way stronger than us. As a WHO committee concluded in 1976, “It is finally becoming acknowledged that resistance is probably the biggest single obstacle in the struggle against vector-borne disease and is mainly responsible for preventing successful malaria eradication in many countries.”
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Accepting that by-products of industrial civilization were irreparably damaging the global environment was to accept the reality of market failure. It was to acknowledge the limits of free market capitalism.
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Get the entire Merchants of Doubt LitChart as a printable PDF.
Rachel Carson Quotes in Merchants of Doubt
The Merchants of Doubt quotes below are all either spoken by Rachel Carson or refer to Rachel Carson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 7
Quotes
Sometimes reopening an old debate can serve present purposes. […] In the demonizing of Rachel Carson, free marketeers realized that if you could convince people that an example of successful government regulation wasn’t, in fact, successful—that it was actually a mistake—you could strengthen the argument against regulation in general.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The Kennedy PSAC report, Use of Pesticides: A Report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, is notable in hindsight as much for what it did not do as for what it did. The scientists did not claim that the hazards of persistent pesticides were “proven,” “demonstrated,” “certain,” or even well understood; they simply concluded that the weight of evidence was sufficient to warrant policy action to control DDT.
[…]
Both science and democracy worked as they were supposed to.
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
So Sri Lanka didn’t stop using DDT because of what the United States did, or for any other reason. DDT stopped working, but they kept using it anyway. We can surmise why: since DDT had appeared to work at first, officials were reluctant to give it up, even as malaria became resurgent. It took a long time for people to admit defeat—to accept that tiny mosquitoes were in their own way stronger than us. As a WHO committee concluded in 1976, “It is finally becoming acknowledged that resistance is probably the biggest single obstacle in the struggle against vector-borne disease and is mainly responsible for preventing successful malaria eradication in many countries.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Accepting that by-products of industrial civilization were irreparably damaging the global environment was to accept the reality of market failure. It was to acknowledge the limits of free market capitalism.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
