Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition

To Albert Schweitzer

who said

“Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.”

The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.

KEATS

I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially.

E. B. WHITE