WEBSITE

Visit my website

http://sites.google.com/site/aprenderinglesteacheranacouto

Mankind has been hurting nature for so long...

Hugo Krayn's METROPOLIS (Berlin) (1914)


Hugo Krayn's (1885-1914) METROPOLIS depicts the darker side of Berlin: billowing smoke, factories, and hurrying workers reflect the impersonal forces of modernity.
from GHDI

The web of life

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Chief Seattle, 1885

Rachel Carson

Born: May 27, 1907
Died: April 14, 1964
Nationality: American
Occupation: zoologist, marine biologist
Most important work: Silent Spring
Subject: ecology, pollution, pesticides

Environmentalism

Rachel Carson made environmentalism respectable. Before SILENT SPRING, nearly all Americans believed that science was a force for good. Carson's work exposed the dark side of science. It showed that DDT and other chemicals we were using to enhance agricultural productivity were poisoning our lakes, rivers, oceans, and ourselves. Thanks to her, progress can no longer be measured solely in tons of wheat produced and millions of insects killed. Thanks to her, the destruction of nature can no longer be called progress.

Quotes from SILENT SPRING

These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes — nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the “good” and the “bad,” to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil — all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called “insecticides,” but “biocides.”

from SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson


“The earth’s vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations between plants and animals. Sometimes we have no choice but to disturb these relationships, but we should do so thoughtfully, with full awareness that what we do may have consequences remote in time and place.”

from SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson

“It is not possible to add pesticides to water anywhere without threatening the purity of water everywhere. Seldom if ever does Nature operate in closed and separate compartments, and she has not done so in distributing the earth’s water supply.”

from SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson

Nature turns against us

Volcanic eruption in Iceland

Nature turns against us

Tornado in Lisbon

Iceland volcanic ash cloud

Iceland volcano