ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses life history of Rachel Carson, a feminist thinker, who is more famous today for her environmental activism than for her feminism. Carson is credited with popularizing ecology, with raising public awareness about the risks of indiscriminate pesticide use, and with fostering political action that led to the foundation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and the banning of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in 1972. Carson's rhetorical strategies worked synergistically with the public anxiety to drive toward policy change. Carson's work as a government scientist had acquainted her with the widespread and complex effects of pesticides. In the wake of the CBS program, letters calling for pesticide reform flooded the United States Department of Agriculture. In response, President Kennedy expedited a long-stalled federal report on the issue, which repeated many of the concerns articulated in Silent Spring; and, the Senate's Ribicoff Commission interviewed Carson as part of its own investigation.
