In his
tribute to the late Pete Seeger, David Suzuki says both he and Seeger were inspired by junk science:
... Like me, he was inspired by Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring to become a strong defender of the environment as well as human rights. In both social justice and environmental causes ...
He also admits to making mistakes:
... Like all of us who devote our lives to trying to make the world better,
Seeger made mistakes along the way. But he was willing to admit when he
was wrong and to change his views. [I'd be interested to know which errors he's admitted to].
... and in closing he likens Seeger (and by extension, himself) to Nelson Mandela (we mighta' known):
... Like Nelson Mandela ... Pete Seeger was a great communicator for whom principles mattered more than anything else....
After a time working for better labour relations, Seeger joined the CPUSA sometime around 1940. Nothing unusual here, except that he joined after thousands of Americans left, because of the Hitler-Stalin pact, He faithfully followed the Stalinist line through pretzel like twists between 1939-41. At the height of the Korean war, Seeger and the Weavers were still spouting the party line. With American casualties of 35,500 their lack of radio play (black list) was pretty much self inflicted.
ReplyDeleteSeeger eventually left the party, but if took till 1985 for him to admit some of the methods may have been excessive. He still admired the ideals of communism, but not there actual implication.
Better late than never, but he was about 45 years too late.
Have heard the criticism against Silent Spring, but it was mostly from industry spokespeople. Also, Carson never actually advocated directly for banning DDT, and was already being phased out because of insect resistance.
ReplyDeleteCarson herself recognized this:
" No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story—the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting ...
What is the measure of this setback? The list of resistant species now includes practically all of the insect groups of medical importance ... Malaria programs are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes ...
Practical advice should be "Spray as little as you possibly can" rather than "Spray to the limit of your capacity" ..., Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible."
I'm all for attacking junk science, this isn't really it.
Also, now that I'm reading more about it, apparently DDT for mosquito control was never actually banned at all, it was simply abandoned because of resistance. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, where it was banned for agricultural use, contained an exemption for DDT for malaria control. . .
ReplyDeleteIt's weird though, Forbes is usually okay with their fact checking, this wasn't even an obscure detail.
Well, Fred, what you say about Carson and DDT may have some truth to it but her book was loaded with unscientific, apocalyptic hysteria that resembles the junk rhetoric surrounding today's global warming "science". She may have been an effective literary artist but much her science was junk.
ReplyDeleteThis was recognized in her own day by more thoughtful (and more competent) scientists. For example Dr. I.L. Baldwin in his 1962 review of Carson's book:
... This “Fable for Tomorrow,” as she called it, set the tone for the hodgepodge of science and junk science in the rest of the book. Nature was good; traditional agriculture was all right; modern pesticides were an unprecedented evil. It was a Disneyfied version of Eden.
... Ms. Carson didn’t urge an outright ban on DDT, but she tried to downplay its effectiveness against malaria and refused to acknowledge what it had accomplished. As Dr. Baldwin wrote, “No estimates are made of the countless lives that have been saved because of the destruction of insect vectors of disease.” He predicted correctly that people in poor countries would suffer from hunger and disease if they were denied the pesticides that had enabled wealthy nations to increase food production and eliminate scourges.
Again though, the substance of this critique surrounds how people are suffering because of being denied pesticides, and DDT wasn't banned for malaria use.
ReplyDeleteIn general Baldwin seems to take issue with the caution that Carson advocates regarding pesticide use. The discussion is almost polemical though, with Baldwin categorizing caution as fear mongering. Baldwin wasn't exactly a dispassionate third party with nothing invested in the debate either, he was, after all, the director of the US Biological Warfare Labs.
Again, critiquing junk science is good, but I can't stand the cognitive bias in discussions like this-- blanket condemnations of nuanced scholarship (i.e. with correct/incorrect observations, like any science) just makes the person issuing the condemnation look like an ideologue, rather than a rational/balanced/whatever individual.
Baldwin takes issue with Carson's junk science, apocalyptic rhetoric and blanket condemnation of pesticides.
ReplyDeleteIn other words he thinks she's "an ideologue rather than a rational/balanced/whatever individual."
Right, and we find ideologue's problematic to discuss things with, since everything is black and white.
ReplyDeleteThey often see the world in ways that preclude them from finding ideas of value in theses they disagree with, or from finding problems with those they on the whole agree with.