New Digs: Fracking and the Continued Effect of Rachel Carson’s Writing on Environmental Activism

“Do you want milk?  Which is a remarkable question in jail,” said Sandra Steingraber at a talk in the Alvin O. Kuhn Library’s 7^th floor on Monday April 29^th at University of Maryland Baltimore County.  The talk had been delayed twice: once from the “snow storm we didn’t have” as Steigraber said.  The second time was because Steingraber was in jail.

She served ten out of the fifteen days she was sentenced for trespassing onto a facility for natural gas storage near Seneca Lake in New York.  This all ties into her talk at UMBC.  She came to talk about how Fracking, a process of exploding the earth’s layers of bedrock to search for natural gas and other fossil fuel-based resources, is the new hot-topic environmental issue.  To explain the need to act, she compares herself as a modern Rachel Carson.

“I might be the youngest person alive to remember Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” said Steingraber.  “As a three year old, even though I couldn’t read it, I would recognize the cover.”  Steingraber reminisced over her father teaching the book to his classes when she was a kid.  He attachment to Carson began at a very early age.

Rachel Carson is the author of three books and numerous environmental essays.  Most prominently is her book, Silent Spring, which focuses on the dangers of the pesticide and environmental poison, DDT or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane.  This poison was originally used in World War II to prevent outbreaks of typhus (from fleas) and malaria (from mosquitoes).  When the war ended, the government, having a great deal of the chemical left, had to find a market for it.  Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was the strongest proponent against DDT use, and rightly got it removed from the market.

“Fracking is the DDT of our age.  It is Ubiquitous and heavily promoted and considered harmless,” said Steingraber.  We are using more and more of our fossil fuels.  Researchers are searching for alternative methods that only prolong the age of prehistoric corpses.

Here Sandra Steingraber and the Horseflies put on a performance in New York to get the fracking message out there:

For more Information on Fracking feel free to check this out: http://earthjustice.org/our_work/campaigns/fracking-gone-wrong-finding-a-better-way?gclid=COP5heGf9bYCFQYaOgodE1AASw