<p> Dr. Ari Santas’ Study Questions for Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (PBS, 1993; 55 min.)</p><p>Things to Look For:  Connection to The 11 th Hour, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth , James Balog’s Chasing Ice, and Timothy Bennett’s What a Way to Go  See wiki articles on Rachel Carson and Silent Spring (1962)  See enviropaedia article on the pesticide treadmill and wiki entry on pesticide resistance  See NYT Magazine article on “How Silent Spring Ignited the Environmental Movement”</p><p>Discussion Questions: 1. DDT had been incredibly successful and useful during World War II and in post-war agriculture. It in some ways symbolized the ideal of progress through science and technology. Give this, explain how Carson’s work might be seen as culturally dangerous, if not blasphemous. 2. Comment on Carson’s criticism of a tenant of Christianity that suggests that the natural world was created for the convenience of man. Why did she see the control of nature as an arrogant assumption of the modern age and how are these ideas related? 3. Comment on the mainstream criticisms of Carson’s work by the scientists of her day. Relate their ridicule and condemnation of her work to common attitudes about the compelling environmental issues of today. What does this trend indicate about the nature of environmental science and eco- activism? 4. Carson’s idea of the natural balance of nature was considered outdated by Dr. Robert White Stevens, who represented the chemical industry. He suggested that nature was increasingly controlled by man through science and technology. Can, as she put it, the balance nature be repealed? 5. Carson was criticized for not being balanced in here presentation of the facts. Comment on her response that people have already and repeatedly been told of the benefits of pesticides by the industry, and the she is simply offering the other side of the question. 6. Carson is said not to be against all use of pesticides, just the indiscriminant broadcasting of them. Compare this stance to that of Joe Thornton on the issue of Chlorine Sunset in in the Newton text, Watersheds4 (chapter 7).</p>