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> Silent Spring had a huge and immediate impact on the American public, which Carson and her publisher, Houghton Mifflin, had very much expected and prepared fo

> Silent Spring had a huge and immediate impact on the American public, which Carson and her publisher, Houghton Mifflin, had very much expected and prepared for. A couple of things here: 1. Could a book come out now that would have this kind of effect on the public and spur us to action? I suspect not because we're much more divided now than we were in the *early* 60s. (Yes, the divisions would grow quite large in the mid-to-late 60s, but the early 60s was the calm before the storm) 2. They expected that it would have the impact it did? I guess that goes back to #1.

JohnFen 3y ago
> we're much more divided now than we were in the early 60s. I really don't think this is substantially true. I think we're about as divided as we were then.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  see my response to swatcoder in this thread. Most of the division came in the mid-to-late 60s. The early 60s was the calm before the storm.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Fair enough. But why quibble over a couple of years? The point is that the amount of division we have going on now isn't unprecedented. Lots of people have the last time in their living memory.
    - UncleOxidant 3y ago
      Yes, the amount of division now definitely isn't unprecedented. But Silent Spring wasn't released into that very divisive part of the 60s - it was released just prior to it and that's what probably allowed it to have more of an impact. The media landscape was definitely more uniform then than now, information bubbles were much less of a thing - again, I can't imagine any book or film having that kind of impact now, that's my main point. Another example would be the ozone layer: When it became clear in the 70s that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer we were able to make changes to stop that from happening over the course of a decade. Can't imagine us being able to do something like that now.
      - brightsize 3y ago
        Having grown up in New England in the era, I remember "acid rain" being a big concern too. The polluters fought to keep anything from being done about the problem, but decades later some steps were actually taken by the US government (and others) and apparently there's been a fair amount of success. I agree, now that "corporations are people" in the US it's hard to imagine being able to successfully battle them and force large-scale, cross-industry environmental-health measures to be taken. That is, unless it so happens that such measures maximize short-term profits in some way.
PaulHoule 3y ago
Some book about a problem like that comes out every week now.
swatcoder 3y ago
Critical reflections about the ecological impact/carelessness of modern society was an already booming genre during that time, so the response they were preparing for was surely part of HM's decision to publish in the first place, not just some insight gleaned from how convincing the work felt or whatever. And these books were consistently controversial and politicized at the time, which is why sales and discussion were high yet still lead to our 2020's society being only marginally more ecologically responsible than the that of 1960's (if that). Nothing much has changed. In the way you're referencing, the US was extremely divided in the 1960's and is extremely divided again now. Practiced media companies know how to "prepare" for that by exploiting it for sales, and today's publishers do it just the same -- sometimes on ecological topics like this, sometimes on other controversial topics du jour.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  > Nothing much has changed. In the way you're referencing, the US was extremely divided in the 1960's and is extremely divided again now. The deep divisions mostly came later in the 60s. The early 60s was the calm before the storm. The Vietnam war was barely on anyone's radar in 1962 - there were only ~9,000 US troops there in '62 and these were being referred to as 'advisors' - the vast majority of Americans didn't even know where Vietnam was or that we had any troops there at that point. Kennedy had not yet been assassinated. The Civil Rights movement was in progress, but again, not on the radar for most Americans yet. Most Americans felt that the Soviet Union was the existential threat - not a lot of division about that at the time. Silent Spring certainly seems to have had some major impact at the time it came out - by 1970, eight years later, we had the EPA and Earth Day. Again, it's hard to imagine any kind of book or film coming out today that would have a similar impact on the culture at large since we now have a collection of subcultures each with their own preferred media outlets. In '62 you got your news from your local newspaper and the networks (mostly CBS & NBC at that point, with ABC as sort of the upstart) - while newspapers did often have a political slant, broadcasters mostly all had the same political slant (or lack of one) due to the fairness doctrine. > discussion were high yet still lead to our 2020's society being only marginally more ecologically responsible than the that of 1960's (if that). I think this has more to do with Reagan and the rise of the right wing in the 80s and into the current era. That led to backsliding on ecological progress that was made in the 60s through the 70s. Jimmy Carter was probably our most ecologically-minded president - he even began to sound the alarm on climate change towards the end of his administration.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
Not to nitpick but in the early 60s there was an entire race of people who were systematically marginalized to be Third Class citizens. (White) women were still effectively Second Class. That's pretty fucking divided.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  Indeed POC were still systematically marginalized in the early 60s. That's a division that existed since the founding of the US. Many whites began to pay attention to this after the murder of Emmett Till in '55. But when we talk about political division, were enough whites convinced yet in the early 60s that this was an issue that wasn't just confined to the South? The fault lines were definitely there, and there had been several aftershocks since the big one (The Civil War), the quakes to come were still a few years out. Those fault lines are still there.
  - readyman 3y ago
    The labor movements of the 20s/30s were very explicitly not segregated. Any segregation in labor was always the work of the bosses, all the way back.
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      Not entirely true. The CIO was pretty open to Blacks, not so much the AFL. Which became an issue in 1955 when they merged to become the current AFL-CIO.
      - readyman 3y ago
        The AFL was effectively an anti-labor organization and the CIO was not "pretty open". They were explicitly and actively organizing all workers.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    A lot of our political divisions are essentially a reflection of the same issues that led to and pre-dated the civil war. Although nowadays the geography has expanded, you can still easily see the outline of the confederacy in today’s voting patterns.
mattgrice 3y ago
I do not think so. What would it be about? Just like Carson correctly predicted indiscriminate use of DDT would lead to resistance, the corporate 'immune system' has evolved to shut down stuff like this much more effectively.

JohnFen 3y ago

> we're much more divided now than we were in the early 60s. I really don't think this is substantially true. I think we're about as divided as we were then.

UncleOxidant 3y ago
see my response to swatcoder in this thread. Most of the division came in the mid-to-late 60s. The early 60s was the calm before the storm.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Fair enough. But why quibble over a couple of years? The point is that the amount of division we have going on now isn't unprecedented. Lots of people have the last time in their living memory.
  - UncleOxidant 3y ago
    Yes, the amount of division now definitely isn't unprecedented. But Silent Spring wasn't released into that very divisive part of the 60s - it was released just prior to it and that's what probably allowed it to have more of an impact. The media landscape was definitely more uniform then than now, information bubbles were much less of a thing - again, I can't imagine any book or film having that kind of impact now, that's my main point. Another example would be the ozone layer: When it became clear in the 70s that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer we were able to make changes to stop that from happening over the course of a decade. Can't imagine us being able to do something like that now.
    - brightsize 3y ago
      Having grown up in New England in the era, I remember "acid rain" being a big concern too. The polluters fought to keep anything from being done about the problem, but decades later some steps were actually taken by the US government (and others) and apparently there's been a fair amount of success. I agree, now that "corporations are people" in the US it's hard to imagine being able to successfully battle them and force large-scale, cross-industry environmental-health measures to be taken. That is, unless it so happens that such measures maximize short-term profits in some way.

PaulHoule 3y ago

Some book about a problem like that comes out every week now.

swatcoder 3y ago

Critical reflections about the ecological impact/carelessness of modern society was an already booming genre during that time, so the response they were preparing for was surely part of HM's decision to publish in the first place, not just some insight gleaned from how convincing the work felt or whatever. And these books were consistently controversial and politicized at the time, which is why sales and discussion were high yet still lead to our 2020's society being only marginally more ecologically responsible than the that of 1960's (if that). Nothing much has changed. In the way you're referencing, the US was extremely divided in the 1960's and is extremely divided again now. Practiced media companies know how to "prepare" for that by exploiting it for sales, and today's publishers do it just the same -- sometimes on ecological topics like this, sometimes on other controversial topics du jour.

UncleOxidant 3y ago
> Nothing much has changed. In the way you're referencing, the US was extremely divided in the 1960's and is extremely divided again now. The deep divisions mostly came later in the 60s. The early 60s was the calm before the storm. The Vietnam war was barely on anyone's radar in 1962 - there were only ~9,000 US troops there in '62 and these were being referred to as 'advisors' - the vast majority of Americans didn't even know where Vietnam was or that we had any troops there at that point. Kennedy had not yet been assassinated. The Civil Rights movement was in progress, but again, not on the radar for most Americans yet. Most Americans felt that the Soviet Union was the existential threat - not a lot of division about that at the time. Silent Spring certainly seems to have had some major impact at the time it came out - by 1970, eight years later, we had the EPA and Earth Day. Again, it's hard to imagine any kind of book or film coming out today that would have a similar impact on the culture at large since we now have a collection of subcultures each with their own preferred media outlets. In '62 you got your news from your local newspaper and the networks (mostly CBS & NBC at that point, with ABC as sort of the upstart) - while newspapers did often have a political slant, broadcasters mostly all had the same political slant (or lack of one) due to the fairness doctrine. > discussion were high yet still lead to our 2020's society being only marginally more ecologically responsible than the that of 1960's (if that). I think this has more to do with Reagan and the rise of the right wing in the 80s and into the current era. That led to backsliding on ecological progress that was made in the 60s through the 70s. Jimmy Carter was probably our most ecologically-minded president - he even began to sound the alarm on climate change towards the end of his administration.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

Not to nitpick but in the early 60s there was an entire race of people who were systematically marginalized to be Third Class citizens. (White) women were still effectively Second Class. That's pretty fucking divided.

UncleOxidant 3y ago
Indeed POC were still systematically marginalized in the early 60s. That's a division that existed since the founding of the US. Many whites began to pay attention to this after the murder of Emmett Till in '55. But when we talk about political division, were enough whites convinced yet in the early 60s that this was an issue that wasn't just confined to the South? The fault lines were definitely there, and there had been several aftershocks since the big one (The Civil War), the quakes to come were still a few years out. Those fault lines are still there.
- readyman 3y ago
  The labor movements of the 20s/30s were very explicitly not segregated. Any segregation in labor was always the work of the bosses, all the way back.
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    Not entirely true. The CIO was pretty open to Blacks, not so much the AFL. Which became an issue in 1955 when they merged to become the current AFL-CIO.
    - readyman 3y ago
      The AFL was effectively an anti-labor organization and the CIO was not "pretty open". They were explicitly and actively organizing all workers.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  A lot of our political divisions are essentially a reflection of the same issues that led to and pre-dated the civil war. Although nowadays the geography has expanded, you can still easily see the outline of the confederacy in today’s voting patterns.

mattgrice 3y ago

I do not think so. What would it be about? Just like Carson correctly predicted indiscriminate use of DDT would lead to resistance, the corporate 'immune system' has evolved to shut down stuff like this much more effectively.