Meet the mother of the environmental movement

This Mother’s Day weekend, T4CI would like to introduce you to the woman considered by most the mother of the environmental movement: Rachel Carson.

Carson was the first woman to take and pass the civil service exam for federal employment. And in 1936 she began working for Bureau of Fisheries as a biologist. She wrote several books on the environment and in 1952 left the Bureau to pursue a full-time writing career.

Her environmental writings inspired the nation to look at environmental problems seriously. Her  book Silent Spring, published in 1962, provoked a national reexamination — and ban — of the use of DDT,  a pesticide shown to cause and that its agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds.

In it, she said:

“In nature nothing exists alone.”

Carson’s writings were attacked by chemical manufacturers who painted her as an alarmist and even attempted to dismiss her findings because she was a woman. But Carson also had powerful advocates, among them President John F. Kennedy, who established a presidential committee to investigate pesticides.

Learn more about this amazing woman, below: