JOHANNESBURG SUMMIT: Devastated by Our Desire to Use, Consume and Discard ; THE ISSUES

Beginning of article

FORTY YEARS ago a series of articles appeared in The New Yorker magazine warning the world of an impending ecological disaster. The author, a minor-league scientist called Rachel Carson, published her thesis later that year as a book called Silent Spring. In it she spelled out the dangers posed to the environment of the new generation of agro-chemicals being used to boost food production around the world.

Silent Spring - a reference to the death of songbirds - became an instant classic. It made people aware of the fragility of the natural world to man-made chemicals and it led directly to the creation of the modern environmental movement. The 65,000 delegates to the …