The More Things Change…
In 1962, the book Silent Spring was published. Its author, Rachel Carson, a marine biologist and conservationist, had spent years researching the destructive effects of chemical pesticides, like DDT, on the environment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, chemical manufacturers vilified her and attempted to discredit her findings by enlisting scientists with ties to the chemical-industrial complex. Despite these efforts, Silent Spring became a bestseller and is now credited with advancing today’s environmental movement. It also led to a national ban on the use of DDT.
For Californians, the DDT ban led to a resurgence in the California Brown Pelican population, once on the brink of extinction. We can now see flocks of pelicans flying up and down the Pacific Coast.
The California Condor, however, does not share this happy ending. Also affected by DDT, its numbers were reduced to just 27, and by 1987 the California Condor was declared extinct. A successful captive breeding program, led by the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos, reintroduced the condor into the wild and now there are a few hundred in existence.
As a species, however, its fate remains uncertain. The condor is now threatened by its consumption of trash and by lead poisoning from bullets that have killed the carrion upon which they feed. A ban on lead ammunition was passed in California in 2019, but, like many other so-called “bans,” it is difficult to enforce. The previous federal administration quashed a ban on lead ammunition for federal lands and waters despite ample documentation that it’s dangerous to fish, birds and other species, including humans. Referring to a U.S. Geological Survey, the Audubon Society reports that “regularly used upland hunting field(s) likely contains about 400,000 pieces of lead shot per acre.”
Despite the DDT ban, chemical pesticides and herbicides are everywhere. In the fall of 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report confirming that over 1,000 species are currently endangered because of the poisonous herbicide atrazine. Thousands of acres in Ventura County* alone are inundated annually, sometimes several times a year, with chemicals like atrazine, glyphosate (the primary chemical in Roundup), as well as anticoagulant rodenticides that devastate surrounding wildlife.
Local crops that are dosed with chemicals include strawberries, cabbage, lemons and avocados; statewide, it’s almonds and grapes. Perhaps almond milk is not a “healthy” alternative to dairy after all. For that matter, the monocrop almond industry is a major contributor to the demise of pollinators, as is the wine industry. California’s wine-type grapevines occupy an estimated 620,000 acres, consuming copious amounts of pesticides not to mention water. Many environmentalists have been sounding the alarm for decades about how toxic and carcinogenic these chemicals are and filing lawsuits against the manufacturers.
This is not new information; it is part of a continuum. Sixty years after Silent Spring, the struggle continues.
What perhaps is different from 1962 is the phenomenon of marketing strategies like greenwashing that breeds a level of denialism. Can planting a tree offset the devastation caused by global deforestation? At the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP26 (or, as I call it, COP(Out)26), more than 100 world leaders signed a resolution to end global deforestation by 2030. Again, enforcement is the issue. But a heck of a lot of trees will be felled in the interim and even if millions are planted, do we really think that by the time they mature they will have accomplished the goal of offsetting carbon emissions?
Don’t get me wrong, I am an ardent supporter of any effort to ameliorate the climate crisis, emergency, disaster—call it what you will, and continue to plant trees. When my daughter and I planted milkweed seeds a few years ago, watched them sprout and grow and, lo and behold, the mature plants were visited by a monarch butterfly, we both burst into tears. All to say, I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet and start taking 20-minute showers. But given the scale of what we are confronting, I am also not going to pretend that, any minute now, ExxonMobil or Bayer-Monsanto are suddenly going to “do the right thing.” Or that the local hardware store will stop selling Roundup.
On December 10, 1997, a young woman named Julia “Butterfly” Hill climbed up a 180-foot-tall, 1,500-year-old redwood tree in Humboldt County that was about to be felled by the Pacific Lumber Company. She lived in that tree, affectionately called Luna, until December 18, 1999: 738 days. She came down when the lumber company agreed to spare the tree. Hill’s act of civil disobedience made her world-famous. Her lifelong commitment to environmental activism has made her a folk hero.
Other environmental activists have not been so lucky. Since the Paris Accord in 2015, an estimated 1,005 activists have been killed. One in three is an indigenous person. In 2020, the deadliest year on record, 227 environmentalists were killed worldwide. Every time Greta Thunberg appears in public, I hold my breath in fear for her safety. This is the world we live in.
A recent Sierra Club bulletin quoted Paul Hawken saying, “Hundreds of millions of people need to realize that they have agency, that they can take action, and that collectively it is possible to prevent runaway global warming.” His website, regeneration.org, is one of many that offer helpful information on how to do just that—take action. Take to the streets, send a donation, call your senators and local representatives. If you can plant a tree and some milkweed seeds, go for it. But take note, Hawken said: “Hundreds of millions of people” need to take action. That’s what it will take to save this planet and all sentient beings including ourselves.
In the meantime, by 2022 California’s farmworkers were to be earning a $15 per hour minimum wage and are now guaranteed overtime protection. Have they been provided with shelters to escape from the heat, or adequate health care? Are their voting rights protected? Will they ever cease to live in fear of the next ICE raid? Not yet, and despite our state’s stringent worker safety laws, given their daily exposure, year in and year out, to the aforementioned chemicals, hundreds of farmworkers suffer from pesticide poisoning annually.
My eco-anxiety (yep, I just discovered there’s a name for it) has been ongoing for most of my lifetime, ever since the 1960s when I first learned about the disastrous effects of DDT, and I don’t see a cure in sight. Still, we cannot let our anxiety paralyze us. To that end, every time I see a California Brown Pelican swoop down and pluck a fish out of the ocean, I allow my heart to soar and think, “Maybe there is hope after all!” And, yes, I will be planting another tree in 2022 to celebrate the new year. And maybe someday our collective efforts will get those dangerous chemicals banned once and for all.
*For specific data on pesticide use, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation posts regular reports on its website (cpdr.ca.gov).
