tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/silent-spring-23832/articlesSilent Spring – The Conversation2022-11-01T16:22:21Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1916052022-11-01T16:22:21Z2022-11-01T16:22:21ZHow coal miners and factory workers helped found the environmental movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490060/original/file-20221017-16-bvqw75.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2738%2C1823&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A striking worker at a Fridays for Future march during COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Bystanders_%2851663123624%29.jpg">Fraser Hamilton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rachel Carson, a scientist and writer from rural Pennsylvania, published <a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx">Silent Spring</a> 60 years ago. Many credit this book, which meticulously documented the damage that DDT pesticides were inflicting on wildlife, farm animals and people as early as the 1950s, with launching the modern environmental movement. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/Bio.aspx">Carson</a> gathered stories from across the US to illuminate the dangers of indiscriminate pesticide use and the threats contaminated land posed to life. She would battle the chemical industry’s accusations of alarmism for the rest of her life. But Silent Spring struck a chord with a public increasingly sceptical of the ethics and efficacy of industrial society. </p>
<p>Carson’s criticism of the cosy relations between businesses and governments echoed the concept of <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/humanism/mills-c-wright/power-elite.htm">the power elite</a>, popularised by the New Left intellectual C. Wright Mills a few years earlier. In Mills’ assessment, American society was dominated by bureaucracies that included both big business but also organised labour. </p>
<p>Environmentalists who were inspired by Carson railed against these vested interests. They were dropouts and opponents of the established system, or at least outsiders to it. By 1990, Richard White, an American environmental historian, would <a href="https://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/sust-white.pdf">pose the question</a> “are you an environmentalist or do you work for a living?” White’s essay took aim at the environmental pretensions of white-collar professionals who pitted themselves against manual workers employed in polluting industries.</p>
<p>More recent scholarship has built on White’s insights, revealing the knowledge and respect for nature among such workers. Researchers have emphasised that it is these communities which have typically suffered most from pollution and industrial accidents. In <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520291348/the-myth-of-silent-spring">The Myth of Silent Spring</a>, social historian Chad Montrie told a story of the far more diverse coalitions which shaped American environmentalism.</p>
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<img alt="An early edition of Silent Spring alongside a written endoresement." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490593/original/file-20221019-11-srn6a2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490593/original/file-20221019-11-srn6a2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490593/original/file-20221019-11-srn6a2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490593/original/file-20221019-11-srn6a2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490593/original/file-20221019-11-srn6a2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490593/original/file-20221019-11-srn6a2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490593/original/file-20221019-11-srn6a2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Silent Spring enjoyed immediate commercial success upon publication in September 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring#/media/File:Silent_Spring_Book-of-the-Month-Club_edition.JPG">Wikipedia</a></span>
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<h2>Working-class environmentalism</h2>
<p>Montrie underlined the role of automotive, oil, chemical and mining trade unions in campaigning for environmental improvements from the beginning of the 1960s, when Carson’s book was making waves. The United Auto Workers supported campaigns for fresh air and clean water in American cities such as Detroit, Michigan while the United Farm Workers shared Carson’s opposition to the pesticides poisoning their members in the fields of California.</p>
<p>Montrie also highlighted the role of civil rights activists in shaping demands for environmental justice among poor and working-class black Americans. This inspired campaigns against lead poisoning in cities such as St Louis, Missouri and for cleaner air quality in Gary, Indiana. These groups worked with those who more closely resembled the received image of Carson-inspired environmentalists.</p>
<p>My ongoing research about community and workplace experiences of energy transitions in the UK has exposed something similar. I have recorded testimonies from middle-class environmentalists who joined protests such as Friends of the Earth’s 1971 <a href="https://friendsoftheearth.uk/who-we-are/our-history">campaign</a> against Schweppes’ policy of non-returnable bottles. Many of these people found their fellow campaigners on university campuses, in left-wing bookshops and wholefoods stores. These places became important recruiting grounds for the anti-nuclear movement too. Activists from this milieu organised demonstrations against the building of the <a href="https://www.robedwards.com/1994/03/when-scram-bega.html">Torness</a> nuclear power station in East Lothian, Scotland, during the late 1970s and early 1980s.</p>
<p>These were rarely concerns held by university graduates alone. The <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/scottish-anti-nuclear-power-campaign-torness-1977">Torness</a> campaign enjoyed support from farmers who aided activists occupying the power station site. They also provided the spectacle of a cavalcade of tractors driving through the centre of Edinburgh in support of the protest.</p>
<p>One example of working-class agitation for environmental action can be found in the records of the Scottish Trades Union Congress. At the union confederation’s 1972 annual meeting, W.B. Blairford of the electricians’ union moved an anti-pollution resolution which set an agenda for class-conscious environmentalism. He said that while environmentalism was seen as a “largely academic and middle-class trend”, it was “vital that the interests of the workers were fully represented in this important debate”. </p>
<p>He highlighted smelter workers suffering industrial illnesses, asbestos exposure among factory workers and the dangerous conditions coal miners endured, as well as contemporary studies on pollution near steelworks in Durham and cement factories in Hampshire to argue that “it was the workers who suffered most from pollution at home”. </p>
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<img alt="A black-and-white photo of coal miners in a queue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490598/original/file-20221019-24-hsh8kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490598/original/file-20221019-24-hsh8kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490598/original/file-20221019-24-hsh8kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490598/original/file-20221019-24-hsh8kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490598/original/file-20221019-24-hsh8kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490598/original/file-20221019-24-hsh8kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490598/original/file-20221019-24-hsh8kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Workers in polluting industries have led environmental reforms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/birmingham-alabama-coal-miners-were-unionized-242300698">Everett Collection/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>These sentiments were not confined to conference resolutions either. In one instance of industrial action that would affect the UK’s policy for nuclear waste storage, the National Union of Seamen <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-jim-slater-2316176.html">refused</a> to cooperate with dumping radioactive material at sea during the early 1980s.</p>
<h2>Extractors against extractivism</h2>
<p>These are formative trends in the modern environmentalism of anglophone societies and deindustrialisng economies. This makes sense in understanding a movement shaped by the popularity of Silent Spring. But it overlooks many of the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/uk/climate-change-and-disasters.html">communities</a> bearing the brunt of environmental crises like climate change. </p>
<p>A more <a href="https://thenewinquiry.com/gentle-protests-an-interview-with-andreas-malm/">combative</a> activism emerged in the activities of trade unionists and indigenous groups in Latin America. <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2021/03/31/book-review-resource-radicals-from-petro-nationalism-to-post-extractivism-in-ecuador-by-thea-riofrancos/">Ecuador</a> saw movements opposed to the oil industry develop broader criticisms of <em>extractivismo</em>: a rejection of any economic model predicated on extracting resources wrongfully acquired through colonialism. </p>
<p>This rejects the older socialist case for economic development through national ownership of oil and minerals, and finds common cause with campaigners in more recently formed groups like Extinction Rebellion. The fruitfulness of any potential collaboration is unknown. Extinction Rebellion has <a href="https://theconversation.com/extinction-rebellion-why-disavowing-politics-is-a-dead-end-for-climate-action-145479">rejected political alignments</a> before.</p>
<p>These debates and others like them will determine the future of environmentalism. Already, there are glimmers of what is possible. Visitors to Glasgow during the most recent UN climate change summit may have seen <a href="https://news.stv.tv/west-central/cleansing-workers-welcome-support-from-inspirational-greta-thunberg">Greta Thunberg</a> marching with striking refuse workers and campaigners from islands threatened with sea-level rise and landscapes scarred by oil and mineral extraction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191605/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ewan Gibbs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The green movement has more to thank workers in polluting industries than you might expect.Ewan Gibbs, Lecturer in Global Inequalities, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1922322022-10-11T12:20:17Z2022-10-11T12:20:17Z‘Silent Spring’ 60 years on: 4 essential reads on pesticides and the environment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489065/original/file-20221010-16-58644.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C0%2C5153%2C3470&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Spraying from either a ground-based vehicle or an airplane is a common method for applying pesticides.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/aerial-of-spray-application-in-green-agricultural-field-on-news-photo/687564922">Edwin Remsburg/VW Pics via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1962 environmental scientist Rachel Carson published “<a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx">Silent Spring</a>,” a bestselling book that asserted that overuse of pesticides was harming the environment and threatening human health. Carson did not call for banning DDT, the most widely used pesticide at that time, but she argued for using it and similar products much more selectively and paying attention to their effects on nontargeted species. </p>
<p>“Silent Spring” is widely viewed as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/how-silent-spring-ignited-the-environmental-movement.html">an inspiration for the modern environmental movement</a>. These articles from The Conversation’s archive spotlight ongoing questions about pesticides and their effects.</p>
<h2>1. Against absolutes</h2>
<p>Although the chemical industry attacked “Silent Spring” as <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/170448/on-a-farther-shore-by-william-souder/">anti-science and anti-progress</a>, Carson believed that chemicals had their place in agriculture. She “favored <a href="https://theconversation.com/would-rachel-carson-eat-organic-94967">a restrained use of pesticides, but not a complete elimination</a>, and did not oppose judicious use of manufactured fertilizers,” writes Harvard University sustainability scholar <a href="https://wcfia.harvard.edu/people/robert-l-paarlberg">Robert Paarlberg</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489066/original/file-20221010-12-j4yhcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman seated at a microphone delivers a statement to a Congressional committee." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489066/original/file-20221010-12-j4yhcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489066/original/file-20221010-12-j4yhcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489066/original/file-20221010-12-j4yhcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489066/original/file-20221010-12-j4yhcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489066/original/file-20221010-12-j4yhcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489066/original/file-20221010-12-j4yhcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489066/original/file-20221010-12-j4yhcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Activist and author Rachel Carson, whose book ‘Silent Spring’ triggered a reassessment of pesticide use, testifies before a Senate Government Operations Subcommittee in Washington, D.C., June 4, 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SilentSpringAuthorTestifies/7b45b46735fb4021b0c2e4c9f882fa34/photo">AP Photo/Charles Gorry</a></span>
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<p>This approach put Carson at odds with the fledgling organic movement, which totally rejected synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Early organic advocates claimed Carson as a supporter nonetheless, but Carson kept them at arm’s length. “The organic farming movement was suspect in Carson’s eyes because most of its early leaders were not scientists,” Paarlberg observes. </p>
<p>This divergence has echoes today in debates about whether organic production or steady improvements in conventional farming have more potential to feed a growing world population.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/would-rachel-carson-eat-organic-94967">Would Rachel Carson eat organic?</a>
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<h2>2. Concerned cropdusters</h2>
<p>Well before “Silent Spring” was published, a crop-dusting industry developed on the Great Plains in the years after World War II to apply newly commercialized pesticides. “Chemical companies made broad promises about these ‘miracle’ products, with little discussion of risks. But pilots and scientists took <a href="https://theconversation.com/farmers-and-cropdusting-pilots-on-the-great-plains-worried-about-pesticide-risks-before-silent-spring-91976">a much more cautious approach</a>,” recounts University of Nebraska-Kearney historian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=37kbK3MAAAAJ&hl=en">David Vail</a>. </p>
<p>As Vail’s research shows, many crop-dusting pilots and university agricultural scientists were well aware of how little they knew about how these new tools actually worked. They attended conferences, debated practices for applying pesticides and organized flight schools that taught agricultural science along with spraying techniques. When “Silent Spring” was published, many of these practitioners pushed back, arguing that they had developed strategies for managing pesticide risks.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Archival footage of crop-dusters spraying in California in the 1950s.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Today aerial spraying is still practiced on the Great Plains, but it’s also clear that insects and weeds rapidly evolve resistance to every new generation of pesticides, trapping farmers on what Vail calls “a chemical-pest treadmill.” Carson anticipated this effect in “Silent Spring,” and called for more research into alternative pest control methods – an approach that <a href="https://www.usda.gov/oce/pest/integrated-pest-management">has become mainstream today</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/farmers-and-cropdusting-pilots-on-the-great-plains-worried-about-pesticide-risks-before-silent-spring-91976">Farmers and cropdusting pilots on the Great Plains worried about pesticide risks before 'Silent Spring'</a>
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<h2>3. The osprey’s crash and recovery</h2>
<p>In “Silent Spring,” Carson described in detail how chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides persisted in the environment long after they were sprayed, rising through the food chain and building up in the bodies of predators. Populations of fish-eating <a href="https://raptor.umn.edu/about-raptors/learn-about-raptors">raptors</a>, such as bald eagles and ospreys, were ravaged by these chemicals, which thinned the shells of the birds’ eggs so that they broke in the nest before they could hatch. </p>
<p>“Up to 1950, ospreys were one of the most widespread and abundant hawks in North America,” writes Cornell University research associate <a href="https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/person/alan-poole/">Alan Poole</a>. “By the mid-1960s, the number of ospreys breeding along the Atlantic coast between New York City and Boston <a href="https://theconversation.com/ospreys-recovery-from-pollution-and-shooting-is-a-global-conservation-success-story-111907">had fallen by 90%</a>.”</p>
<p>Bans on DDT and other highly persistent pesticides opened the door to recovery. But by the 1970s, many former osprey nesting sites had been developed. To compensate, concerned naturalists built nesting poles along shorelines. Ospreys also learned to colonize light posts, cell towers and other human-made structures.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Wildlife monitors band young ospreys in New York City’s Jamaica Bay to monitor their lives and movements.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Today, “Along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, nearly 20,000 ospreys now arrive to nest each spring – the largest concentration of breeding pairs in the world. Two-thirds of them nest on buoys and channel markers maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard, who have become de facto osprey guardians,” writes Poole. “To have robust numbers of this species back again is a reward for all who value wild animals, and a reminder of how nature can rebound if we address the key threats.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ospreys-recovery-from-pollution-and-shooting-is-a-global-conservation-success-story-111907">Ospreys' recovery from pollution and shooting is a global conservation success story</a>
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<h2>4. New concerns</h2>
<p>Pesticide application techniques have become much more targeted in the 60 years since “Silent Spring” was published. One prominent example: crop seeds coated with neonicotinoids, the world’s most widely used class of insecticides. Coating the seeds makes it possible to introduce pesticides into the environment at the point where they are needed, without spraying a drop. </p>
<p>But a growing body of research indicates that even though coated seeds are highly targeted, much of their pesticide load washes off into nearby streams and lakes. “Studies show that neonicotinoids are <a href="https://theconversation.com/farmers-are-overusing-insecticide-coated-seeds-with-mounting-harmful-effects-on-nature-176109">poisoning and killing aquatic invertebrates</a> that are vital food sources for fish, birds and other wildlife,” writes Penn State entomologist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AAdZM1UAAAAJ&hl=en">John Tooker</a>.</p>
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<p>In multiple studies, Tooker and colleagues have found that using coated seeds reduces populations of beneficial insects that prey on crop-destroying pests like slugs. </p>
<p>“As I see it, neonicotinoids can provide good value in controlling critical pest species, particularly in vegetable and fruit production, and managing invasive species like the spotted lanternfly. However, I believe the time has come to rein in their use as seed coatings in field crops like corn and soybeans, where they are providing little benefit and where the scale of their use is causing the most critical environmental problems,” Tooker writes.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/farmers-are-overusing-insecticide-coated-seeds-with-mounting-harmful-effects-on-nature-176109">Farmers are overusing insecticide-coated seeds, with mounting harmful effects on nature</a>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archive.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Published in 1962, ‘Silent Spring’ called attention to collateral damage from widespread use of synthetic pesticides. Many problems the book anticipated persist today in new forms.Jennifer Weeks, Senior Environment + Cities Editor, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1358852020-04-19T12:17:40Z2020-04-19T12:17:40ZEarth Day at 50: A look to the past offers hope for the planet’s future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327722/original/file-20200414-117593-1jdpic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=95%2C50%2C2943%2C2023&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A crowd observes the world's first Earth Day on April 23, 1970, in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, on April 22, 1970, millions of people took to the streets in cities and towns across the United States, <a href="https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2020/">giving voice to an emerging consciousness of humanity’s impact on Earth</a>. Protesters shut down 5th Avenue in New York City, students in Boston staged a “die-in” at Logan airport and demonstrators in Chicago called for an end to the internal combustion engine. </p>
<p><em>CBS News</em> anchor Walter Cronkite hosted a half-hour Earth Day special, calling for the public to heed “the unanimous voice of the scientists warning that halfway measures and business as usual cannot possibly pull us back from the edge of the precipice.” </p>
<p>Today, Cronkite’s words are eerily familiar. Warnings of impending ecological crises are now commonplace. But are we prepared to heed the warnings? In 1970, the answer was yes. The same might just be true, once again, in 2020. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">CBS News Earth Day special report, part 1, from April 22, 1970.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The road to Earth Day</h2>
<p>In 1970, the world was reaching the end of a post-war economic boom, associated with a rapid expansion of industry and manufacturing. “Better living through chemistry,” was radically changing the daily lives of many of the world’s inhabitants. Pesticides like <a href="https://jmvh.org/article/ddt-and-silent-spring-fifty-years-after/">DDT had saved thousands from malaria and other insect-borne diseases</a>, while <a href="https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/cfcs-ozone.html">chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had expanded safe and reliable refrigeration around the world</a>.</p>
<p>But dark clouds loomed on the horizon. As the air, water and land became increasingly choked with industrial wastes, Rachel Carson’s 1962 book <em>Silent Spring</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/how-silent-spring-ignited-the-environmental-movement.html">sounded a clear warning about the poisonous effects of DDT and other synthetic compounds across the food chain</a>. </p>
<p>Increasing ecological awareness was <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/0422/Earth-Day-How-the-antiwar-movement-inspired-world-s-largest-green-campaign">fuelled by the social unrest of the civil rights and anti-war movements</a>. The youth of the day created a counter-culture that openly questioned their parents’ notions of progress.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators hold a mock funeral at Logan International Airport in Boston to protest the airport’s pollution, expansion and the coming of supersonic jets, on April 22, 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>First steps</h2>
<p>The first Earth Day helped catalyze more than two decades of sweeping legislative changes, first at national levels, and then through multilateral institutions seeking to tackle global environmental problems. </p>
<p>The 1987 Montreal Protocol and 1992 Rio Earth Summit produced framework agreements to <a href="https://www.state.gov/key-topics-office-of-environmental-quality-and-transboundary-issues/the-montreal-protocol-on-substances-that-deplete-the-ozone-layer/">limit the accumulation of ozone-destroying CFCs</a>, protect <a href="https://www.cbd.int/rio/">global biodiversity and mitigate human impacts on the climate system</a>. These agreements sought to balance economic growth with ecological and social justice.</p>
<p>Within a few years of the Rio Earth Summit, other powerful forces of globalization began to emerge. In 1995, the <a href="https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/history_e/history_e.htm">World Trade Organization was created</a>, ushering in a new economic order that has exerted a profound impact on planet Earth and its inhabitants. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau chats with former prime minister Brian Mulroney following Mulroney’s speech at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ron Poling</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since the mid-1990s, rapid expansion of trade in the new digital economy has stimulated development in some of the world’s poorest countries, <a href="https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/publications_e/wto_wbjointpublication_e.htm">lifting millions out of poverty</a>, but also <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/article/globalization-and-inequality">greatly increasing income inequality</a>. At the same time, globalization has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-016-9769-8">expanded the ecological footprint of the world’s wealthiest countries</a> over supply chains stretching across the planet. </p>
<p>Today, 25 years into our new globalized era, we must reckon with the unintended consequences of progress, much as we did in 1970. Between 1945 and 1970, and again from 1995 to 2020, our societies have transformed through geopolitical shifts, economic expansion and technological developments. </p>
<p>While the specifics are different, there can be no doubt that both periods left a strong imprint on planet Earth. But are we ready to tackle profound challenge of redefining our relationship with Earth? </p>
<h2>The ties that bind us</h2>
<p>Ignorance is no longer an excuse for inaction; a half century of science has provided <a href="https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0193">clear evidence of the ongoing deterioration of Earth’s biophysical systems</a>. What we lack is determination and courage in the face of powerful oppositional forces. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rachel Carson stands in her library in Silver Spring, MD., holding her book ‘Silent Spring.’ She wanted to bring to public attention information that pesticides were destroying wildlife and endangering mankind.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much as Carson did in the 1960s, we still struggle against vested economic and political interests intent on maintaining the status quo. We must also recognize that the problems are now embedded deeply into the fabric of societies; tackling climate change, for example, requires nothing short of <a href="https://www.unsdsn.org/climate-and-energy">re-imagining the global energy sector</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-year-of-resistance-how-youth-protests-shaped-the-discussion-on-climate-change-129036">A year of resistance: How youth protests shaped the discussion on climate change</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We face a daunting task, but there are signs of hope, particularly as we see a resurgence of youth movements willing to challenge our notions of progress. The first Earth Day protesters were overwhelmingly young; they didn’t have a Greta Thunberg, but they did strike from school. And just as their message caught the attention of Walter Cronkite, at least some adults are listening now. </p>
<h2>Disruption and new opportunities</h2>
<p>What will it take to move us from listening to action? </p>
<p>Perhaps the current COVID-19 pandemic could provide a trigger. Our relentless drive to move goods and people across the planet has been hijacked by a microscopic bundle of protein and RNA, inflicting significant human suffering and damage on the global economy. </p>
<p>The pandemic is, no doubt, a global health catastrophe. But the disruption of the status quo also presents an opportunity to question our core values and to re-examine our relationships with each other and with Earth’s natural systems. For COVID-19, as with our most complex environmental challenges, any <a href="https://www.un.org/pga/73/2019/02/11/world-government-summit-climate-change-forum-climate-action-in-a-multilateral-skeptic-world/">viable solutions will require co-operation rather than isolation across borders</a>. </p>
<p>The pandemic also demonstrates how societies can mobilize rapidly in the face of existential threats. While our current emergency response to COVID-19 has been reactive, rather than proactive, perhaps it need not have been entirely so — <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lessons-from-past-outbreaks-could-help-fight-the-coronavirus-pandemic1/">why did we not learn from SARS, MERS, H1N1 and other global respiratory virus outbreaks</a>? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People gather before participating in a student-led Climate March in Vancouver in October 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Must we also wait for more dire impacts of climate change before taking action? Now is the time to mitigate environmental threats through proactive measures, developing the societal tools to maximize human well-being in a rapidly changing world. </p>
<p>The economic pain inflicted by COVID-19 should not limit our ability to take bold action. The environmental triumphs of the 1970s and 1980s occurred against a backdrop of significant <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23607032">economic uncertainty after the post-war boom</a>. </p>
<p>When the current crisis passes, as it surely will, we must seize the opportunity to re-imagine, and to create, a <a href="https://medium.com/@green_stimulus_now/a-green-stimulus-to-rebuild-our-economy-1e7030a1d9ee">different kind of future</a>, much as the original Earth Day protesters did on April 22, 1970.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135885/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philippe Tortell receives funding from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada</span></em></p>When the current crisis passes, we must seize the opportunity to re-imagine, and to create, a different kind of future.Philippe Tortell, Professor and Head, Dept. of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/949672018-05-24T10:27:54Z2018-05-24T10:27:54ZWould Rachel Carson eat organic?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220170/original/file-20180523-51115-wrcj29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Silent Spring' author Rachel Carson testifies before a Senate Government Operations Subcommittee in Washington, D.C. on June 4, 1963. Carson urged Congress to curb the sale of chemical pesticides and aerial spraying. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Dist-of-Columbi-/ab06074202e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/99/0">AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rachel Carson, who launched the modern environmental movement with her 1962 book “<a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx">Silent Spring</a>,” was a highly private person. But on one occasion she allowed an interviewer to ask, “What do you eat?” Her sardonic answer: “Chlorinated hydrocarbons like everyone else.” </p>
<p>Carson was referring to a family of chemicals used for insect control that included DDT, the principal target of her book. Even though Carson tragically died of cancer just 18 months after publication of “Silent Spring,” her best-seller had powerful and lasting effects. Congress moved to create a new federal Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and two years later that agency banned DDT for agricultural use. </p>
<p>Did “Silent Spring” also launch our modern organic farming movement, as many organic <a href="http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/04/17/if-youve-eaten-organic-apple-week-thank-rachel-carson">advocates</a> and <a href="https://www.genatural.com/about/celebrating-rachel-carson/">businesses</a> often suggest? Actually, no. That movement began in Austria in 1924, led by a mystic philosopher named <a href="https://modernfarmer.com/2013/05/mystic-liver-inside-the-world-of-biodynamic-farming/">Rudolf Steiner</a>. Organic farmers use no synthetic chemicals at all, but Carson found this approach needlessly strict. In my research, I learned that she favored a restrained use of pesticides, but not a complete elimination, and did not oppose judicious use of manufactured fertilizers – which are prohibited in organic farming.</p>
<p>As a scholar focusing on food and agricultural policy, I respect Carson’s careful distinctions regarding agricultural chemicals. By not making these distinctions, I believe the organic farming movement has constrained its own potential not just to expand, but also to benefit the environment.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SeJNRaE11A0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">At a time when public faith in science and technology was high, Rachel Carson called for caution.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An arms-length relationship</h2>
<p>When “Silent Spring” became a sensational best-seller, advocates for organic farming were torn at first over how to respond. The leader of America’s organic farming movement at the time was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._I._Rodale">J. I. Rodale</a>, publisher of a magazine he had founded, called Organic Farming and Gardening. Rodale was jealous of Carson for having made such a splash criticizing DDT in 1962, since he had made roughly the same case 20 years earlier in the second issue of his magazine, but to little notice. He also <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/30002401_The_land_in_trust_a_social_history_of_the_organic_farming_movement">chided Carson</a> for not taking on chemical fertilizers as well as pesticides.</p>
<p>Rodale’s son Robert, who was editing the magazine in 1962, shared his father’s view that Carson was not fully on board with strict organic rules, but couldn’t resist trying to depict her as a supporter. He called her book a “masterpiece” and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244013494861">described her</a> as presenting “the organic point of view.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"362558314854354946"}"></div></p>
<p>Carson, however, intentionally distanced herself from the organic community. She refused to speak before organic groups, and on one occasion even <a href="http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1526404569828%7E321">canceled out</a> of an event after learning J. I. Rodale had been booked on the same panel without her approval. Carson considered Rodale, who had no scientific training and very few scientific instincts, to be “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0upePAioevgC&pg=PT45&lpg=PT45&dq=carson+considered+rodale+an+eccentric&source=bl&ots=S21PSOk88x&sig=FNgl8m6MZoRuoKZUBGLJRlRSLLE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiM9rS4nIjbAhUqhuAKHTnTD1AQ6AEIRTAE#v=onepage&q=carson%20considered%20rodale%20an%20eccentric&f=false">an eccentric</a>.” </p>
<p>This he was. Rodale had once <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/119007/bizarre-life-and-death-mr-organic">raised doubts</a> about the value of the Salk polio vaccine, pushing for a dietary cure instead, and had argued that drinking artificially softened water would cause cancer. When researching her book, Carson did correspond with some followers of Rudolf Steiner, who shared incriminating evidence they had gathered on DDT, but <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244013494861">she did not acknowledge their help in her book</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220180/original/file-20180523-117628-ds1fy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220180/original/file-20180523-117628-ds1fy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220180/original/file-20180523-117628-ds1fy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220180/original/file-20180523-117628-ds1fy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220180/original/file-20180523-117628-ds1fy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220180/original/file-20180523-117628-ds1fy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220180/original/file-20180523-117628-ds1fy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220180/original/file-20180523-117628-ds1fy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/82315/janfeb17_feature_greene_fig05.png?v=42767">USDA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Synthetic fertilizer boosts food production</h2>
<p>The organic farming movement was suspect in Carson’s eyes because most of its early leaders were not scientists. Steiner, the first prominent advocate for renouncing manufactured nitrogen fertilizers, was a mystic who believed in human reincarnation, the lost world of Atlantis, and <a href="https://steiner.presswarehouse.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=21420">an earlier lost continent named Lemuria</a>.</p>
<p>Carson, who earned a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University, disliked the nonscientific absolutes embraced by the organic movement. Instead she favored the central tenet of toxicology: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison">It is the dose that makes the poison</a>. In “Silent Spring” she framed her position on pesticides this way: “The ultimate answer is to use less toxic chemicals so that the public hazard from their misuse is greatly reduced.” When Carson testified to Congress in 1963, she <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/how-silent-spring-ignited-the-environmental-movement.html">said</a>, “I think chemicals do have a place.” </p>
<p>Carson rejected the organic proscription against synthetic nitrogen fertilizer for good reason. Interdisciplinary scholar <a href="http://vaclavsmil.com/">Vaclav Smil</a> of the University of Manitoba has estimated that without nitrogen fertilizer, 40 percent of the increase in food production achieved in the 20th century <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/business/worldbusiness/30fertilizer.html">could never have taken place</a>. Smil also has shown that for at least a third of humanity in the world’s most populous countries, the use of nitrogen fertilizer <a href="https://doi.org/10.1579/0044-7447-31.2.126">made the difference</a> between an adequate diet and malnutrition. </p>
<p>Farming without nitrogen fertilizer, using things like composted animal manure instead, makes growing food far more expensive. This is one of the reasons why organic salad mix costs on average <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2016/may/investigating-retail-price-premiums-for-organic-foods/">60 percent more than a conventionally grown mix</a>; organic milk, 72 percent more; and organic eggs, 82 percent more. These high prices, in turn, explain why organic food sales make up only <a href="https://www.foodmanufacturing.com/news/2017/05/robust-organic-sector-stays-upward-climb-posts-new-records-us-sales">5.3 percent of total food sales</a> in the United States today, and why certified organic cropland makes up less than <a href="https://ota.com/sites/default/files/indexed_files/StateOfOrganicIndustry_0.pdf.">1 percent of total cropland</a> </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220182/original/file-20180523-51115-rewev5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220182/original/file-20180523-51115-rewev5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220182/original/file-20180523-51115-rewev5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220182/original/file-20180523-51115-rewev5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220182/original/file-20180523-51115-rewev5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220182/original/file-20180523-51115-rewev5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220182/original/file-20180523-51115-rewev5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220182/original/file-20180523-51115-rewev5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/82316/janfeb17_feature_greene_fig06.png?v=42767">USDA</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Environmental progress without organic</h2>
<p>Despite the small size of the organic sector, pesticide and fertilizer use have long since stopped growing in the United States, even as crop production has continued to increase. Total insecticide use peaked in <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2014/june/pesticide-use-peaked-in-1981-then-trended-downward-driven-by-technological-innovations-and-other-factors/">1972</a> and has fallen by 82 percent since then. Fertilizer use initially peaked in <a href="https://cfpub.epa.gov/roe/indicator_pdf.cfm?i=55">1981</a>, and applications have remained essentially flat for more than three decades now, even as total crop production <a href="https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-America/Crop-production-index">has grown by 44 percent</a>. Our stunted organic sector did not bring us these benefits. When it comes to reduced insecticide use, the credit goes to Rachel Carson. </p>
<p>To be sure, farm fertilizer runoff is a serious threat to water quality today. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported in 2017 that the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River had grown to cover an area of 8,776 square miles, the <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/gulf-mexico-hypoxia-water-quality-dead-zone/">largest ever recorded in 32 years of monitoring</a>. But I believe the solution has to come from continued improvements in conventional farming, such as planting more buffer strips between fields and waterways to trap chemical runoff. Most commercial farmers will not accept the unrealistic organic approach of switching to zero use of manufactured fertilizers. </p>
<p>Scaling up organic production could actually harm the environment, since it would require so much more land per bushel of production. USDA survey data in 2014 revealed that output per acre on organic farms was on average only <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161673">80 percent of conventional yields</a>. This means that if the United States had raised all of its crops organically in 2014, we would have had to cultivate an additional 109 million acres of land – an area equal to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensavage/2015/10/09/the-organic-farming-yield-gap/#68b1760b5e0e">all parkland and wildland area in the lower 48 states combined</a>. The result would be a different kind of silent spring, caused not by chemicals but by needless destruction of wildlife habitat.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Paarlberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Did Rachel Carson catalyze the organic farming movement, as many advocates claim? Or would she reject their ban on synthetic fertilizer and see organic as an inefficient way to feed the world?Robert Paarlberg, Adjunct Professor of Public Policy, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/809552017-07-25T04:06:44Z2017-07-25T04:06:44ZOn the origins of environmental bullshit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179388/original/file-20170724-29742-97dbbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children play in the DDT fog left by the 'fog truck' in a New Jersey neighbourhood. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Silk/LIFE 1948</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em> </p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I grew up in the Long Island suburbs of New York and have vivid memories of running behind the “fog trucks”. These trucks went through the neighbourhoods spraying DDT for mosquito control until it was banned in 1972. </p>
<p>I didn’t know it until much later, but that experience, and exposure, was extended due to the pesticide industry’s lies and tactics – what is now labelled “post-truth”.</p>
<p>Rachel Carson published <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring">Silent Spring</a> in 1962. It was a beautifully written, if distressing, bit of what we today call “research translation”. The “silent spring” was the impact of DDT as songbird species were killed off. </p>
<p>Carson tried to expose the chemical industry’s disinformation. For doing so, she was roundly and untruthfully attacked as a communist and an opponent of progress. Silent Spring was one of the most popular and vetted overviews of environmental science of all time. Yet lies and bullshit prevented a decent policy response for a decade.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X4nTCGUjfGA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Back in the day DDT was used with nearly no restrictions. From American Experience/PBS.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And the lies won’t go away. In 2007, one of the think-tanks responsible for climate science misinformation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, <a href="https://cei.org/content/rethinking-rachel-carson-legacy">began reiterating</a> one of the main refuted claims about Carson. She was said to be responsible for millions of deaths due to the ban on DDT to control mosquitoes that spread malaria.</p>
<p>The reality is that while DDT was banned for agriculture in the US – and spraying on kids in suburban neighbourhoods – it was never banned for anti-malarial use. Even now. But the political right and the dirtiest chemical industry players in all of industrial capitalism have long painted environmentalists as killers – of people, progress and jobs.</p>
<p>It’s a carefully manufactured campaign of lies and disinformation. As a result, many people believe Carson is a flat-out mass murderer – not a hero who beautifully blended care for human health and nonhuman nature in one of the most <a href="https://theconversation.com/50th-anniversary-of-silent-spring-synthetic-chemicals-cause-the-decline-of-bees-6599">important and challenging books</a> of the 20th century.</p>
<h2>Lies and smears have a long history</h2>
<p>This anti-environmentalist tactic of countering critiques of industrial impacts on the planet with lies, obfuscation and defamation has a long history. It goes back at least to establishment attacks on the US municipal housekeeping movement in the progressive era of the late 19th and early 20th century. </p>
<p>The urban environmental movement probably began in the 1880s with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Health_Protective_Association">Ladies Health Protective Association</a> in New York, the <a href="http://www.nypap.org/preservation-history/city-beautiful-movement/">City Beautiful movement</a>, <a href="https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/when-the-white-wings-cleaned-up-new-york/">Waring’s White Wings city cleaners</a>, and more. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179541/original/file-20170724-28293-100phjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This 1913 municipal housekeeping poster shows many home duties related to government, but the movement’s members were smeared as unworthy women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14595707898/in/photolist-nPgLg4-ePj6sJ-eP7Gwn-ejfwjN-ej9Mna-ejfw3m-ej9MLB-ej9MTM-owibDN-ejfwqw-eP7Gfp-8f2zkg-jokS3X-ePj6XW-eP7GoF-ejfwtJ-jokQjg-b6Qx4X-3jVx3d-AbbEC8-oy3nmP-oeHTrF-ovLbgD-owfUB4-oeLPsb-oddr9x-ovFPaC-ovKfoK-ows1Zj-ow2ATo-tnqtHy-tDz2PP-rYEZRM-rYngn1">Internet Archive Book Images/flickr</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=0ALrHHbsoHcC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=municipal+housekeeping&source=bl&ots=a07rFgxNMS&sig=dqKkuyuClVRr6_WCnR17qh-XOwY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAsd7Yi6PVAhUGspQKHRBuCI4Q6AEIZDAL#v=onepage&q=municipal%20housekeeping&f=false">Municipal housekeeping</a> in particular was primarily a women’s movement to clean up cities. This eventually led to the development of formal offices of public health and public planning in local governments. </p>
<p>The opposition – from meatpackers to fertiliser makers to the waste industry – labelled these women bad housekeepers. They argued that the only reason women wanted to “mother” and keep house in the community was because they were so bad at such things at home – that municipal housekeeping was only a movement against domestic housekeeping. </p>
<p>In other words, they were not real women and were unconcerned with anyone but themselves.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the polluting industries were at the heart of such bullshit attacks. And in both this example from the early 20th century and the Carson example from the 1960s, industry used a very gendered attack as part of the post-truth campaign.</p>
<p>The theme of industrial lies covering environmental damage continued in the 1980s in the Pacific Northwest timber wars. Once again, environmentalists were scapegoated for the loss of timber jobs.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179546/original/file-20170725-23039-w6cb33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Efforts to protect the spotted owl were blamed for the loss of jobs due to timber industry automation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfsregion5/3699675982">USFS/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>These job losses were primarily due to automation. But the controversy over the endangered spotted owl allowed the timber industry to create another narrative – that environmentalists cared about birds more than jobs, that they wouldn’t be happy until the economy was devastated, and that all of the changes that harmed timber workers were due to environmental regulation – not the industry itself.</p>
<p>The attack on science ramped up then as well. When scientists declared that each pair of owls needed a certain exclusive range, and so protecting them from extinction would entail preserving whole forests, the industry-captured Forest Service simply shrank the recommendation. </p>
<p>The very real environmental science was dismissed. Subsequent policy was based in fantasy, wishful thinking and the lies of the industry. The <a href="https://islandpress.org/book/the-wisdom-of-the-spotted-owl">timber wars</a> were another example of science on the one hand and industry lies – supported by government – on the other.</p>
<p>The history of climate change denialism since the 1980s has really been the culmination of the attack on environmental science. </p>
<p>It has been based on the production of lies developed by the fossil fuel industry through industry-funded conservative think-tanks, laundered through conservative foundations, spun and repeated by right-wing media outlets, and adopted as ideology by the Republican Party. Its representatives are supported by even more industry and conservative funding of elections, or face opposition from others if they don’t comply.</p>
<p>This is, as <a href="http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199566600.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199566600-e-10">Riley Dunlap and Aaron McCright</a> have written, a well-funded, highly complex and relatively co-ordinated denial machine. It includes “contrarian scientists, fossil fuel corporations, conservative think tanks, and various front groups”, along with “amateur climate bloggers … public relations firms, astroturf groups, conservative media and pundits, and conservative politicians”.</p>
<p>The goal is simple and clear: no regulation on industry, and what environmental sociologist Robert Brulle calls the “<a href="https://drexel.edu/%7E/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20-%20Climatic%20Change.ashx">institutionalisation of delay</a>” on climate policy. The tools are simple as well: lies, obfuscation, defamation and the creation of an image of scientific uncertainty. </p>
<p>What is the current <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/115th-congress-climate-denier-caucus-65fb825b3963">state of affairs</a> after 30 years of this climate denial machine? </p>
<p>In the US, at least 180 congressional members and senators are declared climate deniers. They’ve received more than US$82 million in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry and its partners.</p>
<p>This is a long, complicated and well-trod story told, among others, by Naomi Oreskes in <a href="http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/">Merchants of Doubt</a>, and by Michael Mann in <a href="http://www.michaelmann.net/books/madhouse-effect">The Madhouse Effect</a>. It has been going on a long time. </p>
<p>The history is important, as a problematic front-page story in The New York Times, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-leaders-climate-change.html">How GOP Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science</a>, illustrates. The report includes an explanatory sentence that is jaw-dropping for its misunderstanding and reshaping of the issue:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Republican Party’s fast journey from debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the Antarctic shelf, favouring extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric over co-operation and conciliation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So it was “big political money” – not the industry, not the Koch brothers’ campaign, not an all-out effort to shift public opinion, just “political money”. Democratic hubris becomes a central reason for Republicans believing in fake science. The argument is that this was a reaction to President Barack Obama’s regulatory approach in his second term, as if denialism didn’t exist before 2012. </p>
<p>And then there’s the idea that this is a bipartisan problem – of extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric – rather than one the anti-environmental right created.</p>
<p>Brulle took to Twitter to criticise the story – primarily the <a href="https://twitter.com/RBrulle/status/871078004142821376">short timeframe</a>. Clearly, climate obfuscation doesn’t start in 2008, when The New York Times story starts. The climate change denial machine has been up and running since at least 1988, 20 years longer than the story suggests. </p>
<p>Brulle was also livid that a story on the social aspects of climate discourse <a href="https://twitter.com/RBrulle/status/871147077732098048">did not cite a single expert</a>. This was despite there being hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and books on the denial machine.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"871078004142821376"}"></div></p>
<p>So even the major media refuse to clearly expose the undermining of real environmental science, and the creation of lies and bribes to distort public policymaking. But this work is out there. It’s really the thorough work done on the climate denial machine that lays out the methodology of the development of environmental distortions, lies and post-truth discourse.</p>
<p>And, again, this is the core example of the evolution of environmental bullshit: a long history of industry creation of lies; conservative funding of think-tanks, front groups and the echo chamber; the development of an ideological imperative of denialism; and then the necessity of completely groundless bullshit to shore up the lies. It’s all there.</p>
<p>This methodology has clearly been used here in Australia. <a href="http://www.readfearn.com/">Graham Redfearn</a>, writing for the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/">desmog blog</a> and The Guardian, has done amazing and thorough work on the denial machines in the US and Australia – and their links. In Australia, a clear link exists between climate denialism and the coal industry. </p>
<p>Many on the right, including the current and past prime ministers, parrot the lies and PR language of the industry – energy poverty, coal is cheap, clean coal is possible, 10,000 jobs, etc. It’s a tale as old as tobacco, lead, timber wars and DDT. It’s as old as industries that know their products do public harm, but lie to keep them in use.</p>
<p>The point here is simply to acknowledge what many have argued about the whole idea of “post-truth” – it’s not anything new, but just more of the same. </p>
<p>Environmentalists have long seen the propagation of lies, piles of bullshit, the dismissal of science, and the creation of mythologies as a consistent core of corporate misbehaviour – and, unfortunately, conservative ideology.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other pieces in the post-truth series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">here</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series is a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80955/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Schlosberg has received funding from the Australian Research Council for work on climate change and just adaptation. </span></em></p>The undermining of environmental science, and the creation of lies and bribes to distort public policymaking, is as old as industries that know their products do harm, but lie to keep them in use.David Schlosberg, Professor of Environmental Politics and Co-Director Sydney Environment Institute, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/728952017-02-21T13:25:43Z2017-02-21T13:25:43ZThe forgotten story of how a toxic spill and a book launched Britain’s environmental movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157491/original/image-20170220-15892-scv8xl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/red-black-white-danger-chemical-spill-449468767">Kim Britten/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today we take for granted an awareness of environmental matters, but this was not always the case. It could be said that in Britain there was a moment when that environmental consciousness arrived. When in 1963 some farm animals in the parish of Smarden in Kent became sick and died, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=82SoCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT111&lpg=PT111&dq=smarden+incident+rentokil&source=bl&ots=nvNwgloIgW&sig=3pwWRzkYfvNHurYZFskCucLECZA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHvISzjZ_SAhViGZoKHRKhDbgQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=smarden%20incident%20rentokil&f=false">suspicions fell on a nearby pesticide factory</a> run by a division of Rentokil Laboratories. The events that followed amounted to one of the first environmental scandals in contemporary British history – one that would galvanise the environmental movement.</p>
<p>It became clear that the factory, a large shed in the middle of farmland, was manufacturing toxic chemicals and that a leak of one of these, fluoroacetamide, led to Britain’s first documented livestock mass poisoning. The incident might have passed by as only a historical footnote, but instead the Smarden leak quickly became a national concern with international implications, and has <a href="http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2017/02/09/rsnr.2016.0040">cast a long shadow across the approach to intensive agriculture</a> in the UK in the years since.</p>
<p>Part of why this incident had such major repercussions is due to timing, coming as it did at the same time as American writer Rachel Carson’s <a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx">Silent Spring</a> was first published in the UK. Seen as the first polemic of the environmental movement, Carson’s book was a significant catalyst to the emergence of modern environmentalism on both sides of the Atlantic.</p>
<h2>An ecological narrative arrives</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157492/original/image-20170220-15927-10y43tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157492/original/image-20170220-15927-10y43tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157492/original/image-20170220-15927-10y43tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157492/original/image-20170220-15927-10y43tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157492/original/image-20170220-15927-10y43tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157492/original/image-20170220-15927-10y43tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157492/original/image-20170220-15927-10y43tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157492/original/image-20170220-15927-10y43tf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SilentSpring.jpg">Houghton Mifflin Company</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Local veterinarian Douglas Good had unique knowledge of fluoride poisoning having worked with a leading expert in South Africa and on cases of animals affected by industrial fluoride poisoning in England. Taking his cue from Carson, Good disseminated what he called a “<a href="https://fluorideinformationaustralia.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/fluoro-pesticides-the-smarden-1080-1081-poisoning-pdf.pdf">short story</a>” about the incident to the press, putting across <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1964/feb/03/contaminated-land-smarden">the Smarden incident</a> as not simply a local industrial waste spill, but as deadly evidence of the pervasiveness of toxic pesticides in the environment. Acknowledging his inspiration, Good concluded his narrative by declaring that the “subject of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring had become a reality here in the heart of the Garden of England”.</p>
<p>The media placed the Smarden incident within a Carson-inspired ecological critique of the dangers of an intensive, industrial approach to agriculture. Good, like Carson, was a trained scientist. Like her, he raised concerns about technocracy – governmental administration underpinned by scientific and technological expertise. As the Smarden incident unfolded, it highlighted the risks and hazards which accompanied the government’s commitment to industrial development. Tensions arose between veterinarians, government scientists, local government, media, and business interests.</p>
<h2>A chemical double agent</h2>
<p>While the use of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/poison-biochemistry/Types-of-poison">inorganic poisons</a> as pesticides stretches back to antiquity, large-scale use of organic pesticides is a 20th-century phenomenon. <a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/fluoroacetamide#section=Top">Fluoroacetamide</a> is a toxic organic pesticide with nefarious origins. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157143/original/image-20170216-12956-9fwyuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157143/original/image-20170216-12956-9fwyuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157143/original/image-20170216-12956-9fwyuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157143/original/image-20170216-12956-9fwyuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157143/original/image-20170216-12956-9fwyuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157143/original/image-20170216-12956-9fwyuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157143/original/image-20170216-12956-9fwyuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157143/original/image-20170216-12956-9fwyuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A cartoon that appeared in Punch on February 12, 1964).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Punch</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The two world wars fostered a massive growth of the chemical industry, and fluoroacetamide was a pesticide that arose from the search for lethal chemical weapons. After the war it was approved for use as a poison for use against rodents and insects – it was not uncommon for the science, technology, institutions, and language of chemical warfare to be redirected to the problem of agricultural pest control during peacetime. But by the time of the Smarden incident in the early 1960s, the origin of these chemicals was seen as damning evidence of the perniciousness of the military-industrial complex and its impact on the environment.</p>
<p>Another case of fluoroacetamide poisonings, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, came to light in September 1963, in which contaminated pet food resulted in the <a href="http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1417754">death of 75 to 100 dogs and cats</a> – effectively shifting fears from remote farmers’ fields into people’s homes. When the cows, dogs and guinea pigs used as subjects to test the extent of the environmental damage died, <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1964/feb/11/fluoroacetamide#column_339">those fears grew</a>.</p>
<p>The government was consistently reluctant to inform the public about the strong circumstantial evidence of fluoroactemide poisoning. Declaring it a one-off industrial accident, the government avoided discussion of the actual widespread use of these chemicals as pesticides. But the death of further animals and a suspected case of human poisoning forced the government’s hand: on February 7, 1964, <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1964/feb/03/contaminated-land-smarden">fluoroacetamide was banned as an insecticide</a>. The government announced that 1,800 tonnes of polluted soil from the factory site would be removed and dumped at sea. Even so, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food did not permit farmers to use land around the site of the spill until March 1965, when government scientists found no traces of fluoroacetamide.</p>
<h2>A persistent memory</h2>
<p>Much like persistent pesticides, the Smarden incident lingered in people’s memories as a cautionary tale about science, government, and the industrialisation of agriculture. These memories resurfaced when in 1985 farmers at Smarden discovered the <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn111-brain-disease-drives-cows-wild/">first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy</a> (BSE) in Kent and a number of further cases followed. Twelve years later, a perceived cluster of cases of new <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs180/en/">variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease</a> (vCJD) in the Smarden area led to speculation that this human form of BSE was caused by <a href="http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/factory/ALL/374/">excessive exposure to pesticides</a>. Reports in the press suggested that the residents of Smarden suspected the incident had been some sort of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/cjd-deaths-leave-questions-over-clusters-1243834.html">government-controlled experiment and subsequent cover-up</a> which had produced BSE. While vCJD was subsequently tied to the practice of feeding cows meal containing <a href="https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/bse-the-role-of-the-infectious-chemical/1013124.article">infected cows’ meat, bone and brain matter</a>, these environmental controversies ultimately made disputes among experts publicly visible, and this caused a significant change in the public’s perceptions of science.</p>
<p>Smarden and its legacy drove the emergence of modern environmentalism in Britain, through a confluence of a concern for public health and animal welfare, the desire to conserve the countryside, and an emergent ecological approach – such as advanced by the Soil Association, founded in 1946. It also revealed the tension caused by conflicts between what we would now call environmentalism and scientific expertise in a modern world that now routinely deploys potentially life and planet-threatening technology. New activist movements have helped make contested expertise publicly visible, and this has contributed to an erosion of trust in traditional professions and in public authorities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Clark received funding from the Carnegie Trust.</span></em></p>The Smarden incident and the arrival of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the UK lead people to a new view of the environment.John Clark, Senior Lecturer in History, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/675762016-10-25T08:25:27Z2016-10-25T08:25:27ZThe Moth Snowstorm: an environmental call to arms as powerful as Silent Spring<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142944/original/image-20161024-28376-iw4k6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">http://www.wegotogether.info/#wegotitle</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are few more pressing 21st-century issues than the threat to the world’s natural environment. Yet how can we halt the loss of wildlife across the Earth? How can we balance economic development and population growth against ecological concerns? In <a href="http://www.nyrb.com/products/the-moth-snowstorm?variant=17705164359">The Moth Snowstorm</a>, one of Britain’s leading environmental writers, the journalist Michael McCarthy, presents a timely reminder of the state of the destruction of the natural world. </p>
<p>The Moth Snowstorm has just been published in the US – and it is worth remembering the impact <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring">Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring</a> had on its release back in 1962. Carson’s book opened our eyes to the damage that agrochemicals such as DDT, dieldrin and aldrin were inflicting on wildlife populations. In the US, public outrage following Carson’s work directly influenced the banning of DDT in 1972.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142948/original/image-20161024-28423-1z0q9xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142948/original/image-20161024-28423-1z0q9xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142948/original/image-20161024-28423-1z0q9xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142948/original/image-20161024-28423-1z0q9xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142948/original/image-20161024-28423-1z0q9xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142948/original/image-20161024-28423-1z0q9xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142948/original/image-20161024-28423-1z0q9xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142948/original/image-20161024-28423-1z0q9xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Silent Spring had a massive impact in 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Environment & Society Portal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Britain, nature writing has seen a dramatic surge in interest in recent years – Nielsen Bookscan indicates <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/30/in-stressed-times-we-can-take-comfort-in-wildlife-why-nature-writing-is-exploding">that sales figures</a> in the category “animal and wildlife” rose from 426,630 books in 2012 to 663,575 books in 2015. </p>
<p>Poignant memoir often now serves to ground tales of the natural world. Recent successes such as Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s Life and Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun have all offered vital and often visceral insights into the author’s personal lives and battles. </p>
<h2>The great thinning</h2>
<p>In The Moth Snowstorm, McCarthy gives an equally affecting private backdrop to individualise his tale. He dedicates the book to the memory of his mother Norah and frames the work around his mother’s mental breakdown in the early 1950s when McCarthy and his brother John were young boys. At the time, McCarthy found solace in nature. He still does. </p>
<p>But the wildlife population of Britain has halved in his lifetime, he tells us: “This was the great thinning”. We need such statistics to see the extent of ecological destruction wrought through the second half of the 20th century. Yet as <em>Homo sapiens</em> – “Earth’s problem child” – we so often seem to sit apparently impotent and useless in our response.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142945/original/image-20161024-28423-1y05mri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142945/original/image-20161024-28423-1y05mri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142945/original/image-20161024-28423-1y05mri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142945/original/image-20161024-28423-1y05mri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142945/original/image-20161024-28423-1y05mri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142945/original/image-20161024-28423-1y05mri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142945/original/image-20161024-28423-1y05mri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142945/original/image-20161024-28423-1y05mri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labour of love: The Moth Snowstorm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>McCarthy’s love of his home turf of the Dee estuary, near Liverpool, is detailed and contrasted against the example of the far vaster tidal flats of the Yellow Sea at Saemangeum in South Korea, once home to millions of migrant birds, now a “deadscape” of unused, reclaimed land measuring 40,000ha enclosed in a wall 33km long. </p>
<p>McCarthy peers spellbound at the satellite photo on Google Maps – at the “thin white line in the sea” of the wall. The entire estuary has gone. “Extinguished. Rubbed out. The whole thing”. The emotive thump of those three short, stepped sentences – one word, two words, three words long – is typical of McCarthy’s powerfully effective style.</p>
<h2>Blizzard of moths</h2>
<p>To have experienced the actual occurrence of a moth snowstorm in Britain, you need to be at least 50 years old or so – for the term refers to the effect whereby, as McCarthy writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The headlight beams of a speeding car on a muggy summer’s night in the countryside, turn[ed] the moths into snowflakes [that] plastered the headlights and the windscreen until driving became impossible, and you had to stop the car to wipe the glass surfaces clean.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For those who have known such sights, it is a poignant and vibrant memory of the abundance of insect life that once filled the night. But moments like those are now gone. Blizzards of insects are a thing of the past. So how can these rose-tinted instances of nostalgia serve us? McCarthy’s answer is simple. We must learn to recognise such losses to our wildlife populations yet see too that “our bond with nature” is unbreakable.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142947/original/image-20161024-28405-1x5lqfo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142947/original/image-20161024-28405-1x5lqfo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142947/original/image-20161024-28405-1x5lqfo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142947/original/image-20161024-28405-1x5lqfo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142947/original/image-20161024-28405-1x5lqfo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142947/original/image-20161024-28405-1x5lqfo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142947/original/image-20161024-28405-1x5lqfo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Award-winning environment journalist: Michael McCarthy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>McCarthy’s own memoir of loss, emotional torpor and eventual recovery exemplifies the deep peace we can all experience by seeking joy and wonder in the natural world. His tale is told with heart-rending honesty. Only our “belief in nature’s worth” is going to save the world’s green places and its wildlife. We must learn to recognise our “ancient bond with the natural world”. </p>
<p>We must remember to celebrate that eternal tie by observing and glorifying those natural phenomena that seem most wonderful to us as individuals – be they the spectacle of a clump of snowdrops, the inscape of magnolia or bluebell flowers, or the sight of a mad March hare. This is the vital message of The Moth Snowstorm. McCarthy’s words ring out as a rallying cry which is not only a delight to hear but one we should all seek to follow.</p>
<p>Books really can change the world. Here’s hoping that McCarthy’s The Moth Snowstorm, like Carson’s Silent Spring, is one such work that truly starts to make the world’s human population shift the way we see, experience and act towards the remaining wildlife that we share this planet with.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Canton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Michael McCarthy’s memoir is a timely reminder of the destruction of the natural world.James Canton, Lecturer in Literature, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/527152016-01-08T13:43:09Z2016-01-08T13:43:09ZGM foods: big biotech is quietly winning the war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107169/original/image-20160104-28997-amiycq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A rush and a push and the land is ours ...</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=1GRT-yNpLhTTVFK9Vr-ilA&searchterm=winning%20war&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=340682912">Memmore</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It must have been 1996 or 1997 when I first met someone from Monsanto. The anti-GM movement in the UK had by then already acquired some momentum and Monsanto was cast as the <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/1997/12/15/the-monsanto-monster/">prime villain</a> for seeking to import GM soya into Europe, though other seed producers were receiving similar treatment. I asked my contact why Monsanto allowed itself to be castigated in such a way. “It never occurred to us that anybody would be interested in plant breeding,” he replied. “They never had been in the past.” </p>
<p>Though hindsight is a wonderful thing, the industry should maybe not have been so surprised at the opposition when it <a href="https://theconversation.com/seeds-of-doubt-why-consumers-weigh-up-gm-produce-and-turn-it-down-50106">began to market</a> its insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant crops in the mid-1990s. Some readers might recall <a href="https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Bacterial_nucleation_in_pseudomonas_syringae">efforts in the mid-1980s</a> to delete a gene that made plants more susceptible to frost damage, which led to the development of “Ice Minus” bacteria. The <a href="http://modernfarmer.com/2014/05/even-first-gmo-field-tests-controversial-will-ever-end-fight/">spectacle of</a> scientists in moon suits spraying Ice Minus on strawberry and potato plants in California made global headlines. Despite the fact that the bacteria did improve the plants’ protection against frost, long legal battles with opponents concerned about the effects on the environment were one of the main reasons the project was abandoned. </p>
<h2>The rise of environmentalism</h2>
<p>You can trace the anti-GM movement to two things. First, increasing disillusion, especially in Europe, with the progress of left-wing ideologies in the former Soviet Union and its allies. And second, a growing awareness of environmental problems in the years following the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s landmark attack on synthetic pesticides, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/dec/07/why-rachel-carson-is-a-saint">Silent Spring</a>. These created a breeding ground in which movements like anti-GM could flourish: as the socialist cause faded, environmentalism began to take its place. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107170/original/image-20160104-28985-1xqrn0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107170/original/image-20160104-28985-1xqrn0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107170/original/image-20160104-28985-1xqrn0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107170/original/image-20160104-28985-1xqrn0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107170/original/image-20160104-28985-1xqrn0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107170/original/image-20160104-28985-1xqrn0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107170/original/image-20160104-28985-1xqrn0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107170/original/image-20160104-28985-1xqrn0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usepagov/15011159418/in/photolist-oSu7Hq-5jwyYt-4DTVS2-6cRtyK-6cVBFm-9veNn9-6bEuaB-bachxH-iym7DN-h6NjWR-7oqAg8-eaGpGa-eaN3F3-eaN3BE-MFm45-4Kier9-c65jTW-5RxkRb-69rVmD-bF6VGg-dgdX68-67TovS-wu7wzZ-qzUe6P-qUWaNU-74gEJE-rcwaYg-qUW9Zj-eeJRYT-8K4ijo-9u85ns-9u84VY-9u54ZD-9u53F2-9u55wc-9u55SF-5JHHuo-as9mMP-6dxBMK-6Fkuod-7WJfjG-qfHmjT-bpWRVF-62Yt1W-4TNR5U-4TJBzR-4TNPdf-9gpSyK-pwQrd5-ehaHHv">USEPPA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Helping this along were scores of green politicians who saw political advantage in adopting postures which could frighten the population with threats to their food, and commercial interests such as the organic food industry which may have seen GM as a threat to their own brands and market shares – although it didn’t explain its opposition in that way. </p>
<p>This was the potential maelstrom into which agribiotech companies launched their first projects. The objections erupted primarily in Europe, reaching the US only ten years later (in the form of opponents seeking local GM bans and a <a href="http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/issues/976/ge-food-labeling/us-polls-on-ge-food-labeling">nationwide campaign</a> for GM labelling). Yet even in Europe, the opposition was far from universal in the early days. Between 1995 and 1997, for example, GM tomato purée <a href="https://theconversation.com/whatever-happened-to-bans-on-gm-produce-in-british-supermarkets-51153">was sold</a> in two UK supermarket chains without incident. </p>
<p>It was only in 1997 when the anti-GM row really got going over the import of GM soya into Europe. At the time, some environmental pressure groups were in need of a new vehicle through which to channel protest – for example Greenpeace <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/greenpeaces-brent-spar-apology-1599647.html">had backtracked and apologised</a> for publicising a seriously mistaken estimate of the amount of oil left onboard the Brent Spar storage buoy. Accordingly, these organisations adopted a vigorous and at times violent opposition to all things GM, including imports and, above all, their cultivation on European soil. They frightened enough people to create a public outcry. The media became largely anti-GM, in Europe at least. Retailers <a href="https://theconversation.com/whatever-happened-to-bans-on-gm-produce-in-british-supermarkets-51153">began to</a> remove GM products from their shelves, although their approach was far from coherent. The seed producers battled on but to little effect.</p>
<h2>In from the cold</h2>
<p>Fast-forward 15 years and the environment has improved somewhat for GM in Europe. The UK media, for instance, now <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/13/gm-crops-environment-study">tends to be</a> more in favour than against. There is more pro-GM media coverage than there once was even in Germany, a country still generally more determinedly opposed than England (<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-33833958">Scotland</a>, <a href="http://www.fwi.co.uk/arable/wales-bans-gm-crops-to-protect-organic-farming.htm">Wales</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34316778">Northern Ireland</a> also take a more anti-approach). </p>
<p>Supermarket opposition has softened in the UK, too. Recent changes to EU rules <a href="https://theconversation.com/gm-crops-an-uneasy-truce-hangs-over-europe-48835">have made</a> GM crop cultivation more likely in a handful of countries, including England, the Czech Republic, Romania and Spain. My sense is that much of the European public has become bored with the issue, even in countries whose governments remain opposed. GM is meanwhile <a href="https://theconversation.com/gm-crops-and-the-developing-world-opposing-sides-miss-the-bigger-picture-50479">very successful</a> in the Americas and parts of Asia and Australia, while growing perceptibly in Africa. </p>
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<span class="caption">‘Put a GM sock in it.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=Y9MXZdeIbCUFsBZnytGNXQ&searchterm=public%20bored&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=262932707">Jane0606</a></span>
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<p>Through all of this, the major agribiotech companies have focused on quietly selling themselves to people prepared to listen, and publishing various accounts of their technical and scientific advances. In Europe, they work with the industry group <a href="http://www.europabio.org">EuropaBio</a> to represent their interests in the corridors and conference centres of the EU. In the past few years, the industry seems essentially to have given up on cultivating GM crops in the European countries where it is not welcome, focusing instead on the places that want the technology. But it is keen to maintain imports into Europe of GM products, particularly animal feedstuffs, which are widely used. </p>
<p>Agribiotech no doubt did make mistakes in the early days of GM by failing to anticipate the strength of the opposition. But maybe the need to commercialise the products made this unavoidable. Certainly the industry remains unpopular in some quarters: Monsanto in particular is still seen by activist protesters as a large and visible target. But whether the general public subscribes to such views, or ever really did, is much less certain. Ultimately that is the only thing that matters, even if there is still some way to go to persuade everyone yet. </p>
<p><em>For more coverage of the debate around GM crops, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/gm-food">click here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52715/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Prof Moses is Chairman of CropGen, a public information organisation in the UK originally supported by the agricultural biotechnology industry. He consults to the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, and has received funding from the EU as coordinator of three projects to explore the public understanding of and consumer attitudes to agricultural biotechnology in a number of countries in the EU and elsewhere.</span></em></p>Monsanto an other biotech companies got caught short in the 1990s. But since then, the GM argument has been moving in their direction.Vivian Moses, Visiting Professor of Biotechnology, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.