The limbo of insects

The book began just like a story by Hans Christian Andersen: “Once upon a time there was a city in the heart of North America where all existence seemed to live in harmony with what surrounded it”. Undoubtedly, there are books that suddenly transformed science, such as Newton's Mathematical Principles (1687), Chemical Elements by Lavoisier (1789), Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) or Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1915). In July 1962, now 60 years ago, the American marine biologist Rachel Carson would publish Silent spring, a combative book of great lyrical beauty that fully entered the altar of scientific publications, decisively promoting the environmentalism of the 20th century and causing social awareness that is rarely known.

In her study, Rachel Carson documented, with solid evidence based on scientific methodology, the terrible damage that the chemical industry was inflicting on ecosystems, due to the indiscriminate use of pesticides, pesticides, phytosanitary products and herbicides that were applied to crops, especially glyphosate and DDT, whose uncontrolled use was causing enormous destruction of life, mainly insects and the species that fed on them.

In the midst of post-war industrial development, when no one dared to question that economic model, the epigones of the agrochemical industry launched a perverse campaign of harassment and discrediting, almost mafia-like, calling her hysterical, bitter, spinster and even a lesbian. But Rachel Carson wasn't intimidated. His book was a bestseller, being on the best-seller list for more than half a year; a best-seller with an ecological content that managed to generate debate with a question that crossed consciousness: “What has silenced the voices of spring in countless North American cities?”

Such was its shocking impact on public opinion that President J.F. Kenedy himself was among his readers, even receiving it at the White House and, after dispatching with it, ordered the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which would end up banning the application of most of the products that Carson denounced in his book.

Rachel Carson's wonderful book, written with scientific rigor and accompanied by a very tender lyric, is proof of how reading can change people's lives and social conscience. His fear that one day spring would come and there would be no frogs that croaked, birds that sang or bees that buzzed, was the spearhead of an international call to change the way in which human beings relate to nature.

If we think about it, just two decades ago, maybe less, it was enough to go out to the countryside or go to the beach to return with the cracks in the car's radiator crammed with insects, a kind of insectarium composed of dragonflies, hymenoptera, butterflies and small beings of all kinds. Today, we might ask our readers, when was the last time they saw a firefly, a band-aid, an earwig, a light bug or a rhinoceros beetle? We have not yet assimilated that without those thousands of species that provide balance and flows of matter and energy to ecosystems, human beings would not be able to live.

The anniversary of the 60th anniversary of Silent Spring is an excellent opportunity to continue delving into new cultures of sustainability and efficiency, ecological food production, respect for wildlife and the fragile balances that sustain it and connect people with their environment to make life on Earth more habitable. Without Silent Spring, the environmentalism of our time would be different, or perhaps, simply, it wouldn't be.

Recommended reading:

● Silent spring, Rachel Carson (1965)

● The sense of wonder, Rachel Carson (1965)

● Rachel Carson and the book that changed the world. The Little Savages (Laurie Lawlor, 2020)