Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Silent spring rachel carson paper
Effects of pesticides in an agricultural land
The effect of pesticides on the environment in usa
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Silent spring rachel carson paper
Rachel Carson’s work Silent Spring, while it dramatizes the situation and events, also provides information on how society has suffered losses from the use of pesticides in recent years. She focuses highly on the irreversible damage to wildlife and the danger these new pesticides pose to humans. With Carson’s background and knack for writing, this piece was excellently written to exact a specific response from the uninformed reader. This piece does a bit of a poor job at balancing the gains and losses between pesticides and the welfare to humankind. Her purpose appears more wavering towards an impassioned plea for action against the use of these new insecticides than an informed piece striving to enlighten the population. Many of the sources documented in her piece are unreliable. These “cases” were accidents, resulting from careless acts of one or more persons involved. In other cases, the damage to local wildlife was the failure of those who used the pesticide without the consideration of the effects it might have. The way the piece is written evokes a certain response from the reader and her approach has resulted in a wider understanding of the simple fact that these are chemicals, poisons, we are using when spraying pesticides. More importantly, the population may understand the more careful approach and control in every step of the way these poisons must travel, from research to laboratory to government approval to being used in the field. The advancement in chemical technology with these improved pesticides has created improvements in the public health as well. From this, perhaps, we have become careless in our use and control of them. While there are many positive points, there are also extreme risks involved in using th... ... middle of paper ... ...d and as such has been attacked with much vivacity to rid of it. There are values to be had with the new pesticides in terms of human welfare. Carson neglects these benefits quite determinedly throughout her work. She neglects to mention that the average human life has steadily increased in length or the important role modern pesticides has been in the production of food. Modern agriculture has also benefited from this new technology. Of course if pesticides were regulated things may run a bit more smoothly, however, once regulated there runs the risk of not enough pesticides being used and certain species either adapting or becoming more dominent with their predators diminishing. Perhaps even more bacteria would be produced should pesticides be used less. We could end up facing a new age of nature’s baterial and viral weaponry that we simply cannot afford to face.
My initial observation was that simple conservation actions such as reducing the use of pesticides can achieve measurable improvements in habitat quality and environmental health. Herbicides are toxic to most mammals as well as to the beneficial insects that you want to encourage in your garden. Sometimes herbicides seep into the ground water; causing contamination of which the long term effects are not known. Herbicide application can also result in drift or movement in the soil, this endangers wanted vegetation nearby. Herbicides are used far too rampantly. Excessive use of toxic herbicides is used when not necessary and because most are not aware of the many other natural alternatives. We must find more ways to cut back on the use of chemical herbicides and change to biological weed control methods.
Rachel Carson establishes ethos to begin constructing her argument against poisonings. In lines 8-12, she cites the Fish and Wildlife Service to demonstrate that her concerns extend to credible organizations and are not unfounded. She documents an example where farmers in southern Indiana “went together in the summer of 1959 to engage a spray plane to treat an area of river bottomland with parathion” (lines 12-16). To further establish her ethos and authority to speak on this topic, she also supplements this example by explaining a healthy, eco-friendly alternative to how the farmers could have responded. In lines 17-22, she states that agricultural practice revisions would have sufficed for a solution, making the poisonings unnecessary. By offering a solution, Carson not only
Have you ever thought about how your fruits and vegetables are grown? How about which ingredients are put into bug sprays and insecticides to ward off those pesky insects? Look no further because author Rachel Carson looks deep into the many environmental issues caused by pesticides and herbicides in her New York Times best-selling novel, “Silent Spring.” “Silent Spring” is a collection of studies which were performed in an effort to educate others about the harmful things occurring everyday to their foods and every-day environment in hopes of giving them a wake up call. This novel is thought by many to be a revolutionary novel that forced people to take notice of the harm being caused in their world, many of which people were unaware of. After discovering the results of these chemicals, it really makes one wonder, is the luxury of being insect free really worth all of the consequences?
Rachel Carson, in the excerpt from her 1962 book, Silent Spring argues that the carelessness of humans has led to an “ever-widening wave of death,” alleging that the use of deadly poisons to eradicate problems need to cease. To construct her argument, Carson paints a bleak future, using a palette of harsh, morbid diction, historical scientific facts, metaphors, and rhetorical questions to convey the seriousness of the situation. Carson attempts to create fear and guilt in order to terrify Americans into action before it is too late and we lose the “deep and imperative” meanings that nature offers. Adopting a blunt, pessimistic tone, Carson seeks to save the world by addressing the “millions of inattentive” Americans. Carson opens her excerpt
“Carson used the era’s hysteria about radiation to snap her readers to attention, drawing a parallel between nuclear fallout and a new, invisible chemical threat of pesticides throughout Silent Spring,” (Griswold 21). She described radiation as the creation of human’s tampering with nature, and warned that similar dangers would become inevitable with the continued use of pesticides (Carson 7). Carson also knew that a large percent of her audience would be housewives, who she could use as example of those who found poisoned birds and squirrels in their gardens. She angled much of Silent Spring towards this audience, which helped her book become the catalyst for environmental change (Griswold
Silent Spring is one of the most important books of the environmental movement. It was one of the first scientific books to talk about destruction of habitat by humans. As a result, one can imagine that Ms. Rachel Carson needed to be quite persuasive. How does she achieve this? In this excerpt from Silent Spring, Carson utilizes the rhetorical devices of hyperbole, understatement, and rhetorical questions to state the necessity of abolishing the practice of using poisons such as parathion. Carson starts out by using the symbiotic nature of hyperbole and understatement to paint the whole practice as dangerous and unnecessary. She further strengthens her argument by using rhetorical questions to make her readers see the ethical flaws and potential casualties caused by deadly pesticides.
“Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called “insecticides,” but “biocides” (Carson, 2015, p.607). Rachel Carson, a marine biologist and conservationist, writes about modern society’s heedless contamination and destruction of the planet and how it affects humanity in “The Obligation to Endure”. This essay is one of many from her book Silent Spring, which was published in 1962. It is a compelling essay calling for agricultural reform. Carson uses all three appeals of argument to persuade the reader. First, the ethical argument stems from the fact that Carson is an influential author, employed by the government. Carson then uses a logical argument to lay out the facts about the
In 1962, the publication of Silent Spring Rachel Carson captivated the American public. Carson wrote about the harmful effects of chemical pesticides in the environment, and her writing was very reflective of the events occurring at the time. There is a strong connection between Carson’s writing and the Cold War. In fact, if it were not for the war, the American public may not have responded in the same way to Carson’s writing. Carson used tone and content as methods of getting her point across to the public. Silent Spring shined a light on the damage done to the environment as a result of the Cold War, and this issue was finally being recognized by American public.
Her audience is anyone who cares about the world we live in and its long term health. “The world we live in” is a vast category, which includes our entire ecosystem as well as animals and humans. The essay also targets producers and users of chemicals and pesticides used for insect and pest control. In “The Obli...
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring revolutionized the American point of view concerning the environment. It rejected the notion that pesticides and chemicals are the right choice for “controlling” various animals that are seen as an inconvenience. Carson writes about the dangers of pesticides, not only to nature but man himself.
"Pesticides." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 18 July 2005. Web. 20 May 2011. .
As time has progressed, there has always been an overarching need for high amounts of crop production throughout the world. With the rapid rate of population growth, the need for crops and other sources of nutrients is only increasing. In order to meet these high demands and increase yields, farmers and other agriculturalists have started implementing the use of pesticides. These chemical mixtures are being used in order to prevent, destroy, repel or mitigate any pests from destroying growing crops. However, using pesticides on crops can create massive amounts of pollution, negatively affect an individual’s health, and can spark biodiversity loss within an ecosystem. According to Michael C.R. Alavanja, “Over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used within the United States (US) each year and approximately 5.6 billion pounds are used worldwide”. With all this in mind, it is clear that pesticides should not be made available to farmers and agriculturalists, and should
I remember when I first thought about the power one person could have to create change. I was a teenager growing up in the South when I read Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring”. This beautifully written book is a powerful indictment of the widespread use of pesticides. Rachel Carson criticized the chemical companies for claiming that pesticides were safe despite mounting evidence to the contrary. And she criticized public officials who accepted the chemical industry’s claims.
"1 Matthiessen goes on to write that "one shudders to imagine how much more impoverished our habitat would be had Silent Spring not sounded the alarm. " 2 This is indeed a worthy claim by Mr. Matthiessen, but he correctly uncovers a bigger and more alarming truth when he says, "the damage being done by poison chemicals today is far worse than it was when she wrote the book. 3 In fact, since 1962, pesticide use in the US has doubled. As an environmentalist (or a "radical" environmentalist, as I am often labeled by members of the mainstream environmental movement), I feel it is my duty as a protector of the Earth's well-being to write this editorial as a means of bringing into the American consciousness a variety of frightening environmental issues.
The pesticide is a controversial topic since farmers are used it to gain their yield. Especially, pesticide is discovered during World War II as a chemical weapon that mixture of multiple chemicals together to kill human. Therefore, Chantries redesign pesticide to kill an organism where and when we don’t want it. Because people want to go to the grocery store to buy the perfect product, pesticide makes it happens and with a little cost for farmers. Nonetheless, pesticide also is the expenditure of life expectancy, which directly threatens people and poses risk of mortality rate. Abusing the pesticide has multiple affects on our society, (Add). (Add thesis)