Patricia DeMarco Ph.D.

"Live in harmony with nature."

Tag Archives: Rachel Carson


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Rachel Carson as a Model For a Purpose-driven Life

Patricia M. DeMarco

23 February 2023

Presented at Chatham University, Mellon Administration Building on the occasion of the formal book launch for In the Footsteps of Rachel Carson – Harnessing Earth’s Healing Power.

Thank -you to President David Finegold, Dean Lou Leonard and Rev. David Carlisle to my friends, colleagues, students. Thank you for joining me today to formally launch my second book.

I begin with a Land Acknowledgment recognizing the people who lived in this place for generations before colonial times, and whose influence remains here, interwoven with our own history in many ways.  We stand on the ancient tribal lands of the Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Osage, and Shawnee Peoples of the Iroquois Federation. We honor their legacy.

We are gathered here on the campus of Chatham University, called Pennsylvania College for Women when Rachel Carson attended here, graduating in the class of 1929. It is an honor and an obligation to follow the footsteps of Rachel Carson.  She has been a formative force in my life from childhood, when I read The Sea Around Us as my family traveled back to the US from Brazil on an ocean liner.  Awed and daunted by the vast mystery of the sea over which the boat traveled, I discovered Rachel Carson’s poetic descriptions of what lay under the waves, beyond the horizon and into the depths where only my imagination could penetrate.  

Her book Silent Spring came to me as a high school graduation present, and inspired me to study to be a biologist, but with a sensitivity to contaminants in the environment.  Her prescience in urging precaution in the production and dissemination of chemicals without knowing fully their effects on living systems stands as a challenge to us today.  We cope all the time with spills, leaks, production pollution so that pollution from man-made toxins has become ubiquitous to the ends of the earth.

Now in my late life, as I have engaged four battles with various forms of cancer, I realized that Rachel Carson’s greatest triumph and manifestation of her courage and strength was in her own silent battle with cancer. Only as a scholar of her life did discover that as she wrote Silent Spring, she was in a life-or-death battle with breast cancer.  What drove her to finish that book in the face of her daily misery?  Why did she persist even when others had to read her words back to her and type her dictation?  Rachel Carson lived every day to complete her mission, her moral obligation to speak out in the face of what she knew to be a clear path toward destruction.

In one of the last public speeches of her life, she spoke “On the Pollution of the Environment” to the Kaiser Permanente Foundation. She said, “Underlying all of these problems of introducing contamination into our world is the question of moral responsibility – responsibility, not only to our own generation, but to those of the future…to those who have no voice in the decisions of today, and that fact alone makes our responsibility a heavy one.” (Lost Woods. P 242.)

For my own perspective, I know I live on borrowed time.  But for the wonders of modern medicine I would have been overcome by cancer long ago.  I take my life as a gift to be spent in the service of the mission I share with Rachel Carson- to do all I can to make this world a place where our children, and their great-grandchildren- may thrive. A place where living in harmony with Nature is the mainstream. Where we are organized around renewable and sustainable energy systems; regenerative agriculture and food systems that restore the fertility of the land and sequester carbon too; where we value quality and legacy and make things to last with a circular system for managing materials.

I wrote this book to share what got me through my battles with cancer- connecting with Nature and opening myself to the healing power of the Earth. The essays in this book were condensed from a ten inch stack of hand-written journals.  I did not speak of my misery while I was going through cancer treatments, but wrote out my fear, my anger, my sense of frustration and despair.  And I wrote of the observations of the natural world around me and gathered joy from the intimate views of Nature, or the grand sweeping phenomena I encountered along the way.  I did not give Cancer my words, and I kept my conviction that we are each on this world to make it better for those who come after.

The first part of the book draws vignettes from my childhood, motherhood and early life. Here I found the close grounding and connection to Nature as a part of myself, as a source of strength and a source of endless wonder in the intricacies of the living Earth around me. 

The second part written during my time in Alaska reflects the time I spent healing from chemotherapy and surgery, absorbing with fascination the grandeur of the scenery and the intimate interactions with the wildlife that I live with, even in the city.

The third part is set here in Pittsburgh, in the experiences of my cancer battles in 2017 and 2018. I sheltered in the care of the two 100-year old pin oaks that preside as the elders of the neighborhood. Their wisdom and strength sustained me.

The fourth part is a selection of my blog posts written during this time and more recently.  Here my writing urges pathways to a just transformation of our society to live in harmony with Nature. I continue on this journey through teaching, so I may keep my ideas fresh through interaction with curious minds; through my work with ReImagine Appalachia to give voice to the people who see a better way forward than plastic and hydrogen hubs that mire us in another thirty years of fracking; and I write for reflection on the wisdom of Rachel Carson in a look back at Silent Spring after 60 years.

I dedicate my work to the children of the 21st century, in honor of Rachel Carson with the hope that they will thrive in a beautiful, bountiful Earth for generations to come. 

I see so many of you gathered here this evening, from such different parts of my life.  I urge you to step away from the people you came here with and to meet and speak with three people you did not know before.  Share you own stories and expand this community of caring. It is by extending the hand of friendship beyond our own circle of comfort, and by knowing that the living parts of this Earth are part of us too that we will find common ground to heal the hurts in our world.

Blessed Be


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A Reflection on Silent Spring after 60 Years

September 20,2022

In one of the last public speeches of her life, Rachel Carson addressed the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Permanente Medical Group in San Francisco. Her thoughts on that occasion resonate today with even more clarity, as much that she feared in 1963 has become our reality. 

In that speech “On the Pollution of Our Environment” she said, “In spite of the truly marvelous inventiveness of the human brain, we are beginning to wonder whether our power to change the face of nature should not have been tempered with wisdom, for our own good, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the welfare of generations to come.” Rachel Carson used her knowledge of science and her early understanding of the interconnectedness of all living things to advocate for policy based on science. 

The challenges we are facing today can be addressed by recognizing that the laws of Nature are not negotiable.  We must adjust our laws, our ways of interacting with the living earth and each other to align more closely to accommodate the laws of chemistry, physics, physiology and ecology.

Here is a presentation I gave for the C.F. Reynolds Medical Historical Society on September 20, 2022.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P4LoLeOtazEbcrHpnS7dcBJSDmsOcfHD/view (presentation begins at 2min 35 secs)

This will be the closing chapter in my forthcoming book, “In the Footsteps of Rachel Carson” with Urban Press.

9-20-2022-cf-reynolds-presentationDownload


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Earth Day 2018 – A View of Hope from the Pit of Despair

April 22, 2018

by Patricia M. DeMarco

A bright profusion of daffodils rims the pond.  Young mourning doves explore the edge of the waterfall with their fuzzy plumage offering camouflage from the Coopers hawks soaring overhead.  Blossoms and tree leaves swell in readiness to burst forth with the rich foliage of summer.  I listen to the songs of the birds in their Spring courtship calls and take comfort that the flow of the seasons continues.  At the micro-level of a single back yard, the thrum of Life pulses within the Earth and gives me peace. So much of what gives life meaning is embedded in little things. Priceless things like Spring.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth
find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Rachel Carson (The Sense of Wonder. P. 100)

My thoughts turn to Rachel Carson this Spring of 2018. Her heroic battle to complete her book Silent Spring in the face of the devastation of metastatic invasion of breast cancer into her bones, her lungs, her every nerve ending wracked with the devastation of a disease that in her time was a death sentence.  The one in eight women in America who face this same disease have a much more favorable trajectory for survival.[1] Rachel Carson’s voice calling for precaution in the use of man-made materials that are biologically active has fallen on deaf ears.  Even the protections for clean air and water and the toxic substances controls imposed by law have failed to stem the flow of toxic releases. Now labeled as “burdensome regulations” even the minimum standards in place are under attack in favor of unfettered pollution to create short–term economic profits. The myth that protecting the environment costs jobs is well entrenched and shows no sign of abatement. I look at a trajectory forward from this year and see nightmare visions of rivers flowing black with coal waste, plastic suffocating the life of the oceans, air thickened by noxious emissions newly relieved of constraints.  I think of the Pittsburgh of the late 1950’s when I was old enough to notice and complain of the sulfurous smell that suffused my world. Is it even remotely possible that this past will be the future my grandchildren know? I tremble in rage at even the possibility of such an outcome.

For the first time in the history of the world,
every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals,
from the moment of conception until death. Rachel Carson. (Silent Spring. P.12)

Rachel Carson’s precautionary message, vilified in the industrial mainstream in America, has taken hold in the regulatory systems of other countries, especially Europe. In the EU, the burden of proof of safety rests on the manufacturers who must demonstrate that products and their breakdown components pose no health or toxic danger to people or living things.  Not so in the US.  Here, the industry meets minimum requirements, and whole categories of materials are “generally regarded as safe” without testing for health effects.  The burden is on the consumer to prove that their illness was caused by exposure.  According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention biennial bioassay of the US population, for example, the average American has over 300 synthetic chemicals in his or her body, 75 of which are known mutagens or carcinogens.[2]  93% of the adult population has Bis-Phenyl-A in their bodies, a known endocrine disruptor found in plastic container linings, thermal paper such as receipts, and plastics used for food.[3] Even babies are born pre-polluted, as documented by a study of cord blood in newborns that showed 237 synthetic chemicals present at birth, including carcinogenic and mutagenic compounds.[4] The wanton disregard for post-consumer fate of synthetic materials now forms a global chemical stew that surrounds all living things. The modern Age of Plastic has been a massive experiment on life without any controls.

Global awareness of global pollution as an existential problem is growing across the world.  It is impossible to ignore the millions of ocean creatures coming to land dead from consuming plastic debris floating in the ocean in great gyres concentrated by the currents. Our habit of converting fossil raw material to trash as rapidly as possible with no plan for retrieving the waste creates millions and millions of pounds a year of synthetic material that does not break down into smaller molecules that can re-enter the cycle of life.  Synthetic materials made from fossil resources, extracted with great damage to the living systems of the Earth, transported, manufactured into materials for convenience. 300 million tons of plastic is produced every year, over half for single use items that become trash – More than eight million tons of plastic debris ends up in the ocean every year.[5] Modern living has hundreds of daily actions depending on plastics- structural components of buildings, vehicles, electronics, tools, instruments, fibers. The problem of plastic pollution is complex, and has evolved over fifty years at least.  The solutions will require dedicated effort, but most critically, a force of will to change the process toward solutions.

It is a moral and ethical problem, not a technology problem. The plastic pollution of the globe is the most serious unintended consequence of convenience combined with a failure to take responsibility for the waste produced at any level.  Manufacturers have failed to take responsibility at the design stage to prevent toxicity and harm in the biological activity of the synthetic material they produce.  Unless regulatory restrictions are imposed and enforced, there is no ethic of assuring safety in the products or their degradation by-products.  Industry, especially in the US screams about burdensome regulation and insists that restrictions limit profits and kill jobs. Producers of plastics, especially single-use consumer convenience products, take no responsibility for reclaiming or recapturing the waste. There is no profit in recapturing the used materials, it is apparently cheaper to make new plastics from more fossil raw resources like petroleum and natural gas liquids.  Retailers and advertisers promote ever more items for convenience, representing the single use and throw away concept as a convenience to the consumer. Cutlery, plastic cups, dishes, straws, food containers, take-out foods, packaging everything within packages then clad in shrink-wrap… the list is endless. Consumers take little responsibility for the waste created with all this “convenience.” Americans recycle less than 5% of the plastic waste.  The ethic of taking responsibility for recycling plastic has evaporated with the old-fashioned practice of returning beverage bottles for re-use. Soda. Milk, beer, water once came in bottles with a deposit and refund on return.  Glass bottles could be cleaned and reused five or more times before being recycled and reformed for renewed use.  A circular fate for the silica based resource of glass.  This practice is routine in Germany, where re-use of beverage bottles is standard.[6]  They also recycle and re-use some plastic bottles with machines that shred the bottles at the point of sale for a deposit.

Solutions to the single-use plastic problem can begin immediately with citizens calling for responsible plastic policies.[7] REFUSE single-use plastics: straws, shopping bags, water and soft drink bottles, cutlery, food containers.  REDUCE the amount of disposable plastic in a conscious effort at the point of purchase.  Ask: “Is there a reusable version of this product?  Is the container recyclable? Is the packaging excessive? What becomes of this product when I am done with it?” Plan ahead to bring re-usable shopping bags, re-usable cutlery, cups and water bottles. Bring re-usable containers fort take-out rather than Styrofoam or polystyrene take out boxes. RE-USE items that can be re-purposed for creative applications from crafts to the selection of goods made from recycled materials, such as wrapping paper, carpet, flooring, some furniture. Recycled plastic for 3-D printing and ocean recovered plastic for product containers are two initiatives from industries developing more responsible global practices. (Ref) RECYCLE responsibly. Know the requirements for recycling in your community. Sort appropriately; wash out food contamination, avoid cross-contamination that will send the entire load to a landfill. RAISE YOUR VOICE to demand better plastics management policies.  From the local level, seek community action to have efficient recycling programs, compositing clean materials for community gardens being careful to prevent plastic contamination. Stand up for state and federal rules that make product safety a priority to protect consumers. Call product manufacturers of brands you use and demand a responsible waste recovery program.  Send the packaging back! In the UK, a group of consumers have been leaving excess single-use packaging at the store after check out….. Call your Representatives and Senators to demand stronger regulations that protect consumers and the environment by reducing the production of single-use materials at the source.[8]

Forty-eight years ago, the first Earth Day called millions of people to action.  We filled the streets in droves, held Teach-Ins and demanded that law-makers pay attention to the pollution of water air and land that was killing us and our children. Today, the approach of limiting the exposure by determining allowable levels of emissions has still resulted in 5.2 billion pounds per year of toxic releases into air, water and land.[9]  Today’s technology has the capacity to go beyond the old adage that the “Solution to pollution is dilution.” We have managed to pollute the oceans globally, the air worldwide, entire watersheds, acres and acres of farmland.  It is time to exercise the precautionary principle in full force.  Design materials to be safe from the beginning – benign by design through green chemistry practices.[10] The culture of convenience based on consumer freedom to act without restraints and for industries to make decisions based exclusively on the economic profit as a driver, leaves the priceless attributes of the living Earth exposed to wanton destruction.[11] Freedom without responsibility and accountability for damage leads to chaos. The moral obligation to preserve the priceless life support system of the Earth must balance the economic drive of profits at any cost.  We can live without plastic straws; we cannot live without fresh water, clean air, fertile ground and the biodiversity of species that constitute the interconnected Web of Life, of which humans are but one part. On this Earth Day, take a walk through your neighborhood, and pick up all the trash around you. Notice how much plastic debris has become a normal part of the landscape, and resolve to be part of the solution.

 

Citations and References

[1] U.S. Breast Cancer Statistics  http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics

[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Biomonitoring Program. https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/index.html

[3] Edna Ribiero et. Al. Occupational Exposure to Bisphenol A (BPA): A Reality That Still Needs to Be Unveiled. Toxics. 2017 Sep; 5(3): 22. Published online 2017 Sep 13.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5634705/

[4] Sara Goodman. “Tests Find More Than 200 Chemicals in Newborn Umbilical Cord Blood.” Scientific American. December  2, 2009. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/newborn-babies-chemicals-exposure-bpa

[5] Joe McCarthy. “9 Shocking Facts About Plastics in Our Oceans.” Global Citizen. June 12, 2017. https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-oceans-facts-images-2436857254.html

[6] James. How Does The German Pfand System Work, And Is It Effective? 21 May 2017.

https://liveworkgermany.com/2017/05/how-does-the-german-pfand-system-work-and-is-it-effective/

[7] Beth Terry. 100 Steps to a Plastic Free Life.  https://myplasticfreelife.com/plasticfreeguide/

[8] National Council of State Legislatures offers resources and model legislation.    HTTP://WWW.NCSL.ORG/RESEARCH/ENVIRONMENT-AND-NATURAL-RESOURCES/PLASTIC-BAG-LEGISLATION.ASPX

[9] Environmental Protection Agency.Toxic Release Inventory. National Analysis 2015.  www.epa.gov

[10] Patricia M. DeMarco. Pathways to Our Sustainable Future- A Global Perspective from Pittsburgh. (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh. 2017) Pages 140-169.

[11] Report of the World Commission on The Environment and Development “Our Common Future.”  United Nations 1985.  http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf

 

 


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International Women’s Day 2018

International Women’s Day 2018
Today my thoughts are centered on my brave beautiful daughter who is just recovering from breast cancer surgery. She has excellent prospects for a full and happy life, but I think of the many women who do not have such excellent care. I also am so thankful that the understanding and treatment are so much more advanced than when Rachel Carson faced a tragic encounter with this disease. In only a few decades the diagnosis of cancer has gone from a stigma and certain death sentence to a treatable condition.
I think of Rachel Carson who wrote much of Silent Spring while in serious suffering from the advanced
stages of breast cancer. She faced not only the lack of technology for diagnosis and treatment but also the difficulties of dealing with a male oriented medical establishment. Her courage in the face of her private and ultimately losing battle with cancer qualifies her as a heroine not only for the environmental movement but also for the millions of women who suffer the affliction of breast cancer.

“FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, EVERY HUMAN BEING IS NOW SUBJECTED TO CONTACT WITH DANGEROUS CHEMICALS, FROM THE MOMENT OF CONCEPTION UNTIL DEATH.”
                                                                                                                         RACHEL CARSON

 So many people deal with cancer now. Many have multiple tumors over a lifetime. Some explain the higher incidence of cancer to the longer life span in modern times. Others draw a strong correlation with the chemical stew that penetrates our bodies from birth to death. The average newborn child in America has over 200 synthetic chemicals in his or her body at birth, 79 of which are known mutagens and carcinogens.(1) While scientists continue to explore the causes of cancers, and some are better understood than others, there is a sinister accumulation of man-made materials that play a role in our collective vulnerability.
To make cancer a less prominent feature of our health expectations, we need to reduce the flow of toxic synthetic materials. The entire regulatory system is designed to try to limit the amount of toxics that can be released into the air or water. However, the additive effect of even permitted levels yields millions of pounds of toxic releases a year. (2) A better approach would limit the hazard of products  by design. This is the exciting field of Green Chemistry which can limit the amount of carcinogenic and mutagenic material in the air, water and land by designing materials that are benign and biodegradable by design. Prevention rather than dilution will produce better materials with less impact on the living Earth.

Terry Collins- Theresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University

If we are to take a serious effort to control cancer and endocrine disruption for the next generation, we must begin by redirecting our materials supply chain away from fossil based precursors and toward biologically benign materials. The process of converting fossil based raw material to products and then to trash as quickly as possible is killing the living Earth. And as part of the creatures of the living Earth we are killing ourselves too. Green chemistry and bio-based materials as well as processes to remove and destroy synthetic hydrocarbons from water supplies holds great promise for a much more healthy and sustainable world.(3) Technology will not save us unless we add the Ethical element of choosing to pursue technologies that support and preserve the life support system of the Earth.

 

As I am now facing my fourth tumor, all of independent origin over two decades, I wonder about the many exposures I have experienced in my life.  The technician at the MRI lab sternly telling me to control my breathing said there are many people with multiple tumors as they reach advanced years.  She seemed to think it was a normal thing to accumulate cancers with age.  I do not accept that as normal!  I think of the many years I spent as a child living in a community where every house burned

Pittsburgh 1952

coal for heat, and we played in the coal pile, looking for fossils, and finding many! Of course we were covered in coal dust.  Then, the skies were full of smoke, with cinders actively falling to coat everything with a foul, oily and gritty blackness from the steel mills and coke operations that defined Pittsburgh.  Beyond that, DDT was sprayed on everything from trucks that coursed through the neighborhoods, especially on the compound we lived in in Manilla, Philippines in the ’50s. And, I worked in a biology laboratory as an undergraduate, in times when scintillation fluid was washed down the sink, and I stood over the toluene fumes for hours at a time cleaning the vials. And what of the open air testing of nuclear weapons that filled the air with radioactivity around the globe? Or the teflon frying pans everybody thought was so wonderful? I have reverted to well-used cast iron but nobody alive is immune from the plastics and preservatives and additives in our food.  It is a wonder we survive at all!

The worst horror of my nightmares is not my own saga of assault by out of control cells, but the thought that my children will suffer from something in my life of chemical exposure and environmental mutagens. This is the motive that propels my purpose and my advocacy for reform.  I have such fears for the next generation as the evidence that the “Fable for Tomorrow” Rachel Carson described in Silent Spring is already upon us.

~~~~~~~~~

  1.  Sara Goodman. “Tests Find More Than 200 Chemicals in Umbilical Cord Blood. Scientific American. December 2, 2009.  Accessed 8 March 2018. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/newborn-babies-chemicals-exposure-bpa/  
  2. US Environmental Protection Agency. Toxic Releases Inventory (TRI) 2016- Executive Summary. Accessed 8 March 2018. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-01/documents/2016_tri_national_analysis_execsumm.pdf
  3. Terry Collins. Green Chemistry. Science and Society.July 27, 2012.  Accessed 8 March 2018. http://scienceandsociety.net/2012/07/27/dr-terry-collins-–-green-chemistry/


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Earth Day 2017- A Call for Earth Teach-Ins

The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970 grew from a rising awareness of the need to protect the environment from the pollution of industry. It started nearly a decade earlier in 1962 with Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring calling attention to

1970 Earth Day Protesters

the effects of pesticides such as DDT on all living things, including people. The practices of the Industrial Revolution produced smoke-filled air, polluted lifeless rivers and toxic waste dumps. The prevailing attitude was that “the solution to pollution is dilution” but by 1970, the environmental laws enacted in the early 1960s had not yet made much effect, and a series of tragedies in 1969 brought sharper focus on the need for a stronger system to defend clean air, safe drinking water, fertile land, and the biodiversity of species. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire and burned down two bridges; an oil tanker ran aground and contaminated the beaches of Santa Barbara; and a spill from a DDT manufacturing plant caused a massive fish kill in the Mississippi River.

From this concentrated spate of outrages, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D) Wisconsin, called for a day of “teach-ins” on Earth Day to raise awareness and call for public action to protect the environment more systematically. There were public seminars in the streets, in union halls, in university courtyards and churches all across the country. Millions of people came to listen, to march and to protest. The result of this effort finally led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1974. It took more than a decade for the alarms Rachel Carson raised to see fruition in a legal apparatus to protect our life support system- fresh air, clean water, fertile ground and the biodiversity of species – the interconnected web of life of which humans are but one part.

In the years since those early days of concern for protecting the environment, a continuous erosion of the power of environmental laws has made its way through amendments, exemptions, and revisions of the laws. Industry has a larger say in the approval of new pesticides, herbicides or synthetic products. Entire industries such as hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas are exempt for seven federal environmental and worker safety protections. The regulatory review process has become so complex that only experts and teams of specialized attorneys can successfully navigate the labyrinth. Regulatory agencies at both federal and state levels have suffered from continuously shrinking budgets, required to do more with less.

More insidiously, industry interests have infiltrated the administration of the regulatory process, to shape the outcome for maximum economic effect, rather than maximum public or environmental health and protection. Doubt, reasonable or otherwise, has replaced reasoned judgment based on the facts of science. Opinion has replaced evidence based on observation and measurement, and political rhetoric has replaced peer-reviewed assessments. President Trump has

Senate confirms EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt 

overtly rejected science as a basis for sound public policy. His appointed, and Senate confirmed, administrators vow to deconstruct the regulatory protections for the environment, for addressing climate change, and for protecting public health and worker safety. His Executive Orders in the first 100 days of his tenure illustrate the ardor of his passion for destruction of all that holds the living Earth dear. National Wildlife Refuges, National Parks, public lands – the legacy of our nation to the future- all fall to the greed of exploitation. The natural resource capital of the nation is squandered for short term corporate profits, while the public taxpayer pays the costs in the form of worse health from air and water pollution, costs for cleaning the public water supplies, or fighting wildfires, floods or droughts from climate change.

Rachel Carson provides a role model for a responsible scientist. She carried the revolutionary passion that all living things have the basic right to exist! She spoke for the unborn

Rachel Carson Testifies to Congress June 1963

of future generations. She spoke for the oceans, forests, grasslands, winged creatures and soil dwellers- the great interconnected web of life. In her testimony to Congress months before her death, she called them to account: “Our heedless and destructive acts enter into the vast cycles of the earth and in time return to bring hazard to ourselves.” This living Earth is the precious hallmark of our planet. This unique living mantle of the Earth evolved to a finely tuned balance over 7,000 years, resting on millions of years of evolution before then. Humans have now strained the limits of the natural systems that keep the living Earth in balance. We see the evidence in the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the consequent acidification of the oceans, rising global temperatures with the consequent melting of glaciers, expansion of drought areas, and more frequent extremes of storm events. Scientists observe, document and measure. We model the possible outcome and attempt to predict what has never happened before in recorded time. We wring our hands, and preach to each other. The journals are filled with data and documentation of ever more dire forecasts. And Trump became President!

We march in protest of his policies. We rise in rage at the folly of ignoring the facts, and despair for our children, and the unborn of all creatures whose fate we shape with our actions today. But, in the mainstream media, nobody reports on the peer-reviewed science. No media cover the extinction of a

Great Coral Reef in Australia- under threat

Monarch butterfly and other pollinators under threat

species, or the effects of destroying the coral reefs, home to 30% of the fishes in the ocean. Ordinary people do not
automatically make the connection between rising global temperatures and the fate of our life support system. People do not make the connection between the death of pollinators and their own lives. They do not read peer-reviewed journals. Why would they?

We who stand as scientists with fists raised in outrage have enjoyed the freedom to pursue intellectual curiosity to the ultimate end of finding truth. We who know have the obligation to inform. Not in a pedantic way, which we can impart through our students. But in the vernacular. In the media. At our dinner tables. In the classrooms and PTA meetings where our children are. In the playgrounds, and on the sidelines where the coaches gather for soccer games or track meets. We need to be in the churches and community centers where people struggle with keeping whole in the face of adversity of all kinds. Science matters in everyone’s daily life. Where are the Teach-ins about climate change? Where are the street theater demonstrations of the better path forward? Where are the scientists at the tables where political decisions are being made? The ivory tower is not where we live. The community needs engaged scientists. The halls of Congress need our voices, as constituents, as experts, and as opinion leaders holding them accountable for their decisions. We need to take the truth to the streets and teach people across all levels to know the difference between manufactured doubt and established facts.

At this pivotal time in history, it is our obligation to speak out. To make our voices heard and to listen to the fears that underlie the obstruction. We are a country that strives for freedom- in markets, in personal pursuits, and in opinions. But freedom without responsibility yields chaos. We are a nation governed by laws, but when the laws are corrupted by greed and protections for private interests over the public good, we have the obligation to speak out, to protest and to demand accountability. The laws of Nature are not negotiable. The path we have set upon with economic profit as the primary determinant of value sets us on a path of certain destruction. Our life support system is being destroyed, and our economy registers only more jobs, more sales for extracted resources, more profits from plundered land. Unless we protect the common necessities for life to exist, we will leave a legacy of an uninhabitable planet. Scientists engaged in the debate, professing hope through better solutions, teaching the ways of life based on the laws of science can shape a better future. We who know have the obligation to act. We who see better options based on facts have the power to change the world. We must reach out beyond our comfort zones. We must invite people in to knowing the facts science can bring to the wonders of our fragile and marvelous living Earth.


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Celebrating Women’s History Month

March 8, 2015

Today is International Women’s Day, and March has been declared Women’s History month. This is one time in the year we call to mind the women who have helped to shape our world. They are too numerous to enumerate all in one place, and the perspective is always a personal one. We all have our heroes. Mine are Rachel Carson, Theo Colborn and Wangari Muta Maathai. These women are trail blazers in our time and practitioners of the ways to live in harmony with nature. I have been reflecting on the new direction and the new challenges of the 21st century, challenges that already press upon us with the inescapable progression of natural law. These women recognized that the laws of nature are not negotiable, but hold the wisdom of millennia to guide our path forward, if only we heed the message and adjust our behavior.

Testimony to Congress June 1963

Rachel Carson galvanized global awareness of the threat of pesticides and other persistent organic chemical contaminants on living systems. Her book Silent Spring and her testimony to Congress in June 1963 helped to mobilize a national movement to improve the environment. The rare decade of consensus in the public across partisan lines allowed the enactment of laws to protect Clean Air, Safe Drinking Water, Coastal Area Management, Toxic Substances Control and Endangered Species. Her core message of taking precaution in exposing living systems to the unintended effects of man-made chemicals remains an important message for us today. She called for people to respect and protect the natural world and to live in harmony with natural systems of which people are a part. Rachel Carson’s words speak to us today urging that we be very clear about what we oppose, and what we STAND FOR.

dr-theo-colbornTheo Colborn, who died in December 2014, documented the detailed mechanism of action of many of the chemicals released into the environment through things we use every day: personal care products, food additives, plasticizers, emulsifiers, preservatives, fragrances, and myriad others in addition to pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and industrial chemicals. Most of our environmental laws are focused on controlling the amount of admittedly toxic materials allowed to be released into the air, water or land, now a total of 5.2 billion pounds per year. We know that many of these materials act in extremely low doses to mimic the hormones that act as control messengers in our bodies, as well as the bodies of many other complex organisms. We see evidence of global contamination with man-made chemicals in the body burden studies done every two years by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their most recent report finds over 441 man-made chemicals in the bodies of the average American, and of these, 79 are known to cause cancer, mutations, or developmental abnormalities. Theo Colborn’s book Our Stolen Future called for action on controlling endocrine disrupting chemicals and spent her life working for reforms to protect public health.

imagesWangari Muta Maathai founder of The Greenbelt Movement in Nairobi, Kenya is celebrated in her own country as a leader and a revolutionary reformer. Her Nobel Prize testifies to the power of her work empowering women to reclaim, regenerate and preserve the land by planting trees native to the area. Satellite views document the effectiveness of her work as a million trees reclaim the traditional vegetation and cultivation patterns of her land. Wangari Maathai put into action the process of living in harmony with nature, institutionalized and protected in law and practice.

In addition to these heroic public figures, I am always mindful of the strong women who made me who I am today, my mother Marcella DeMarco and my Nona, Pasqualina DiNardo DeMarco. My Mother pursued a career as a teacher, coach, mentor and leader at a time when most of her peers settled down to be happy home-makers after World War II ended. And I stand in the long comforting shadow of my Nona whose intelligence and wise counsel drove the success of our entire family in the New World. Her courage, wisdom, patience, love and humor sustained us all through the hard times, and to the aspirations to greatness. In the seventh decade of my life, I have decided to run for elective office to help make the community I live in a better, more resilient and equitable community living in harmony with the laws of nature.

I take courage from the many successful women whose legacy has changed our world for the better.