Wednesday, May 15, 2013

I always think of the brilliant biologist/writer Rachel Carson's words when accepting the John Borroughs Medal for Environmental Science Writing for "Under the Sea Wind", prior to her courageous defense of the natural world in Congressional hearings and her landmark book The Silent Spring: ""I myself am convinced that there has never been a greater need than there is today for the reporter and interpreter of the natural world. Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, in his cities of steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water and the growing seed. Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going farther and farther into more experiments for the destruction of himself and his world. For this unhappy trend there is no single remedy - no panacea. But I believe that the more clearly we can focus on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for its destruction"

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