Unlike Lynn Scarlett, I can’t wax rhapsodic about Rachel Carson’s “poetry.” For sake of argument, I can agree that Rachel Carson meant well when she wrote Silent Spring, but her legacy has helped lead to the deaths of millions of people from DDT. For more on that see this article Katherine Magu-Ward, this post by Ron Bailey, and this op-ed by some folks from CEI. Here’s a little sample from Ron Bailey:

In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson asked, “Who has decided—who has the right to decide—for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power.”

Banning DDT saved thousands of raptors over the past 30 years, but outright bans and misguided fears about the pesticide cost the lives of millions of people who died of insect-borne diseases like malaria. The 500 million people who come down with malaria every year might well wonder what authoritarian made that decision.