The legacy of 'Silent Spring'

A second aspect of the Silent Spring success is that it led us to believe environmental problems are separate from other problems that society needs to deal with. Ban the offending chemicals and the birds will come back. Require tertiary treatment for inland towns and the rivers will be cleaner. Legislate for low emission exhaust from cars and urban smog will be reduced. These have all worked brilliantly for their separate problems. When the problems become tougher and require more sweeping changes, these old approaches don’t seem to be effective. When big lifestyle changes are required, we need to include everybody. We need to get everybody on board because we are asking everybody to make changes.

Despite all the good he has done, my friend Paul Ehrlich has made the job tougher by fighting with economists and implying that economists have no value in making the world sustainable. One of his quotes goes something like, “Economists are people who think that if a bus goes over a cliff, a market for parachutes will be created and the bus riders will be saved”. Perhaps some economists do think that way, but by implying that economists have nothing to offer, he has set the process of sustainability back, because we need to engage everybody to live more sustainably.

The more difficult challenge for environmentalists now, is that we are asking for sweeping changes to be made to solve complicated problems. For most people the problems are too complicated and that means we just continue with business-as-usual. That is understandable. The opponents of actions to improve sustainability, are happy with business-as-usual. They say that everything will work out. It almost always has.

If environmentalists want to see changes that will make the economy and the environment more sustainable, unsupported doom and gloom won’t work. We’ve heard it all before. If we want to see changes that will make our way of life more sustainable, we can’t see “The Environment” as something separate from our daily lives. It’s all wrapped up together. I hope the 21st century Rachel Carsons can get this new approach right.