My point was that Silent Spring wasn’t a call for the end of pesticides, as some Carson-haters claim, but a plea for more judicious use of the chemicals. In Carson’s time—indeed, immediately following WWII and the advent the first synthetic pesticides—we went a little crazy with the stuff. Carson advocated for more attention to be paid to the overall ecology of the landscape, so that pesticide application could be limited and targeted to avoid killing the wrong things.

 

Silent Spring is mostly about insect control, but I recently came across an example of thoughtful pesticide use in plant control that I think she would have appreciated.