When Rocky Anderson introduced Australian scientist and author Tim Flannery last week at the City Library and compared him to Rachel Carson, he may have had in mind the galvanizing power Carson’s Silent Spring had on the early environmental movement of the 1960s and the potential for Flannery’s new book, The Weather Makers, to have a similar power on the growing debate about climate change. But the comparison was far more apt than Anderson may have realized. Flannery made a point in his talk, one that even environmentalists don’t harp on much these days, that is straight out of Carson. He argued that more than a scientific or political issue, climate change is a moral issue, an ethical issue. In 1963, Carson described her times as the ‘Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy’ that assumes ‘nature exists for the convenience of man.’ She thought DDT an ‘evil’ (her word) for the indiscriminate loss of life it caused. To ignore its effects compromised what it meant to be human. ‘By acquiescing in an act that can cause such suffering,’ Carson asked, […]