Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.
Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award,[2] recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths.
Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially some environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was the book Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides, and it inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.[3] Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.
A variety of groups ranging from government institutions to environmental and conservation organizations to scholarly societies have celebrated Carson’s life and work since her death. Perhaps most significantly, on June 9, 1980, Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States[95] A 17¢ Great Americans series postage stamp was issued in her honor the following year; several other countries have since issued Carson postage as well.
Carson’s birthplace and childhood home in Springdale, Pennsylvania — now known as the Rachel Carson Homestead—became a National Register of Historic Places site, and the nonprofit Rachel Carson Homestead Association was created in 1975 to manage it.[97] Her home in Colesville, Maryland where she wrote Silent Spring was named a National Historic Landmark in 1991.[98] Near Pittsburgh, a 35.7 miles (57 km) hiking trail, maintained by the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy, was dedicated to Carson in 1975.[99] A Pittsburgh bridge was also renamed in Carson’s honor as the Rachel Carson Bridge.[100] The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection State Office Building in Harrisburg is named in her honor. Elementary schools in Gaithersburg, Montgomery County, Maryland,[101] Sammamish, Washington[102] and San Jose, California [103] were named in her honor, as were middle schools in Beaverton, Oregon[104] and Herndon, Virginia [105] (Rachel Carson Middle School), and a high school in Brooklyn, New York.[106]
Two research vessels currently sail in the US bearing the name R/V Rachel Carson. One is on the west coast, owned by MBARI,[107] and the other is on the east coast, operated by the University of Maryland. Another vessel of the name, now scrapped, was a former naval vessel obtained and converted by the US EPA. it operated on the Great Lakes.
Migrants made 4,000 separate attempts to enter the UK via the Eurotunnel this week. Al Jazeera’s Simon McGregor-Wood reports from Folkestone, in England, where demonstrators from pro and anti-migrant groups clashed at the Euro terminal on Saturday.
The Passionate Eye | Season 2015 | Jul 5, 2015 | 43:16
He excommunicated all Mafiosi – but can Pope Francis’ crusade against the Mafia effect change? Historian & Mafia Expert John Dickie investigates the long & complicated relationship between organized crime & the Catholic Church.
See babies as you’ve never seen them before. This beautifully shot, heart-warming and scientifically revealing film offers a fresh perspective on baby development with stunning timelapse footage and amazing facts. Watch full episode on Sunday Feb 8 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC News Network! For more go to http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/episo… or http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/
Published on Feb 6, 2015
See babies as you’ve never seen them before. This beautifully shot, heart-warming and scientifically revealing film offers a fresh perspective on baby development with stunning timelapse footage and amazing facts. Watch full episode on Sunday Feb 8 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC News Network! For more go to http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/episo… or http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/
See babies as you’ve never seen them before. This beautifully shot, heart-warming, and scientifically revealing film offers a fresh perspective on baby development with stunning timelapse footage and amazing facts.
The Guardian’s latest videotakes a chapter out of their book by having Bill Nye’s “twin brother,” Andy Nye, finally reveal the “truth” about climate change and fossil fuels.
Seymour Smaug, host of “Climate Change Denier News,” has Andy Nye as a guest to get answers to the questions nobody else is asking like: “Are oil spills actually good for the environment?” and “Is coal edible … and delicious?”
‘Please issue a public statement opposing H.R. 1599, and please lead a movement in the U.S. Senate to defeat this bill, or any version of a bill that would preempt state or federal mandatory labeling of GMOs.’ – Ronnie Cummins, in an Open Letter to Sen. Bernie Sanders
Open a newspaper, turn on the TV news, click on your favorite news site . . . chances are you’ll see a picture of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), an article about where he’s speaking, a quote about something he said.
The media can’t get enough of Bernie Sanders right now. So we’re asking Sen. Sanders to use his media star power to draw attention to an issue that 90 percent of Americans care about. We’re asking him to speak out publicly about Americans’ right to know if their food contains GMOs.
To put it bluntly, humanity has been trashing the planet like never before. And unless immediate changes take place, the prognosis for global health and the natural systems on which civilization depends is bleak.
So finds a new report from The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, written by 15 leading academics and policymakers.
Entitled Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch (pdf), the report from the international team outlines how a new, integrated view of what prosperity means can safeguard the environment, foster equitable consumption, and offer a better outlook for human well-being.
Part of the problem thus far, the researchers write, is that nature and economy have been divorced. “We have been mortgaging the health of future generations to realize economic and development gains in the present,” the study states. Instead, seeing the interconnectedness of nature and human civilization can benefit both, they write, adding that “there is a growing awareness that humanity’s historical patterns of development cannot be a guide for the future.”
Dr. Judith Rodin, President of The Rockefeller Foundation, explains the gravity of the situation: “The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Planetary Health Commission has issued a dire warning: Human action is undermining the resilience of the earth’s natural systems, and in so doing we are compromising our own resilience, along with our health and, frankly, our future.”
Professor Andy Haines of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, and chair of the report added: “We are on the verge of triggering irreversible, global effects, ranging from ocean acidification to biodiversity loss.”
“These environmental changes—which include, but extend far beyond climate change—threaten the gains in health that have been achieved over recent decades and increase the risks to health arising from major challenges as diverse as under-nutrition and food insecurity, freshwater shortages, emerging infectious diseases, and extreme weather events,” Haines stated.
Citizens of the U.S. are being denied the right to know what they are feeding their families. Despite the fact that 90 percent of American citizens want GMO labeling on their food, big business is doing everything it can to prevent people from accessing their rights. Representative Pompeo’s bill, popularly known as the DARK Act (Denying Americans the Right to Know), has been written almost entirely by the biotech industry lobby. While American citizens are advocating for their rights to knowledge and healthy, affordable food, Monsanto’s legal team is busy on every legislative level trying to prevent this from happening.
Monsanto’s subversion of democratic legal processes is not new. In fact, it is their modus operandi, be it the subversion of LA’s decision to be GMO free by amending the California Seed Law—equating corporations with persons and making seed libraries and exchange of seed beyond 3 miles illegal—or suing Maui County for passing a law banning GMOs.
Decades before there was a “debate” over GMOs and Monsanto’s PR and law firms became the busiest of bees, India was introduced to this corrupting, corporate giant that had no respect for the laws of the land. When this massive company did speak of laws, these laws had been framed, essentially, by their own lawyers.
Today, Indian cotton farmers are facing a genocide that has resulted in the death of at least 300,000 of their brothers and sisters between 1995 and 2013, averaging 14,462 per year (1995-2000) and 16,743 per year (2001-2011). This epidemic began in the cotton belt, in Maharashtra, where 53,818 farmers have taken their lives. Monsanto, on it’s own website, admits that pink bollworm “resistance [to Bt] is natural and expected” and that the resistance to Bt “posed a significant threat to the nearly 5 million farmers who were planting the product in India.” Eighty four percent of the farmer suicides have been attributed to Monsanto’s Bt Cotton, placing the corporation’s greed and lawlessness at the heart of India’s agrarian crisis.
There are three outright illegalities to Monsanto’s existence in India.
First, Monsanto undemocratically imposed the false idea of “manufacturing” and “inventing” a seed, undermining robust Indian laws—that do not allow patents on life—and by taking patents on life through international trade law. Since 1999, Monsanto has had the U.S. government do its dirty work, blocking the mandatory review of the Monsanto Law in TRIPS (the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement implemented through the WTO).
Second, since they do not have a patent for Bt-Cotton, Monsanto’s collection of royalties as “trait value” or as a “fee for technology traits” (IPR category that does not exist in any legal framework and was concocted by Monsanto lawyers to work outside of the laws of the land) is illegal. These illegal royalty collections have been collected from the most marginal farmers, pushing them to take their own lives.
Third, the smuggling of a controlled substance without approvals (and thus Monsanto’s very entry into India) is a violation and subversion of India’s Biosafety Regulations. This includes the illegal introduction of GMOs into the food system in India, which poses grave risks to the health of ordinary Indian citizens.
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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