The initial seed of this project began as a biographical piece on Rachel Carson, a biologist, chemist, and writer who published her seminal work “Silent Spring” in 1962. This work, which critiqued the widespread use of pesticides such as DDT throughout post-World War II America, is widely regarded as the genesis of the modern environmental movement.

Dr. Carson wrote at the height of the Cold War. Most of us born after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s probably don’t truly understand the absurdity and hysteria of the Cold War era, when the United States and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of annihilating each other through nuclear warfare.

The onset of the Cold War coincides with what many modern scientists dub ‘the Anthropocene’, which is defined as the geologic age where humanity has had a significant impact on Earth’s geology and ecology. Although there is no absolute consensus when it began, many scientists use one event to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene: the Trinity test, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the Manhattan Project in July 1945.

During the Second World War and continuing on into the late 1940s, 50s, and 60s, an attitude of ‘scientism’ dominated Western society: the idea that nature was meant to be ‘beaten back’ and subjugated into submission by mankind using the vast technological, chemical, and industrial advances the nuclear age had ushered in. Furthermore, the postwar economic boom that Americans enjoyed engendered a deep-seated belief that a better life, social status, and increased personal happiness were commensurate with consumerism and material wealth. Owning more appliances, larger cars, and owning a home in the suburbs were social markers of having “made” the American Dream.

It was against these deeply entrenched social attitudes that Rachel Carson urged caution against in '“Silent Spring”. It depicted a vision of a world where no new birds would be born due to the indiscriminate spraying of pesticide on all vegetation, which not only killed insects but softened and deteriorated bird eggshells so they could not survive to hatch.

A conservation and proto-ecological consciousness already existed prior to “Silent Spring”, perhaps tracing back to the foundation of America’s national parks during the late 1800s and early 1900s. But reality was different, and very absurd, during the Cold War: human extinction was now possible through the use of nuclear weapons. In addition, the rampant superficiality and consumerism of postwar America meant that many people were eager to find some validation for the alienation and disillusionment they felt in the societal values of the day.

After it was published in 1962, Dr. Carson faced persecution by industrial and chemical companies such as DuPont and Monsanto. Typical of the time, they attempted to use the fact that Rachel Carson was a woman to cut the legs out from beneath her thesis. It went hand in hand with a mostly male, mostly ‘left-brained’, ‘rational’, ‘logical’ scientific community that a woman could hardly understand biology, chemistry, or industry.

Dr. Carson withstood all of these attacks even as she battled with cancer. She eventually passed away in 1966, but her cause had been taken up by some powerful and influential figures which included President Kennedy, who had his own scientific panel test Carson’s methods and found them perfectly sound. As a result of the consciousness she has raised with “Silent Spring”, throughout the remainder of the 1960s and 70s, alongside the civil rights movement and other identity movements such as second-wave feminism and the modern gay rights movement, the contemporary environmental movement was born.