Meet the mother of the environmental movement
May 12, 2017This 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: