寂静的春天英文读书报告(1000 words)

We Have Only One Earth

------Book report of Silent Spring Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitable a war against himself.

-----Rachel Carson If we scan those newspapers or books written by 1960s, we will find it difficult to find something about environmental protection. In other words, environmental protection was not a meaningful concept in social cognition and was not valued in academic experiments at that time. As a matter of fact, tho se slogans such as “conquer nature” were prevalent in the world, which meant that nature was only the object to be controlled not to be protected or to live with in peace. The concept may derive from primitive society when people did not have sufficient materials to exist in harsh environment, and all of their wishes were to conquer nature and develop the economy regardless of the possible outcomes derived from environmental problems. Rachel Carson may be the first person to doubt the correctness of the idea which had existed in human society for thousands of years.

Silent spring is a book which leads to a heated discussion about environmental protection. Even those people who disgust Rachel Carson also have to acknowledge that Rachel Carson did contribute a lot in environment protection promoting. In her book, she described a world without birds, bees or butterflies because of the use of pesticides. It was she, a weak woman with mammary cancer, woke nearly each person to concern about the future of the earth. After that, thousands of organizations aim to protect environment were founded, The 1st United Nations Conference on the human environment was convened in 1972, on which, a declaration was signed to promote environment protection.

The overriding theme of Silent Spring is the powerful—and often negative—effect humans have on the natural world. Carson's main argument is that pesticides have detrimental effects on the environment. In Silent Spring, Carson described a miserable village which was dying under the using of DDT. The village used to be prosperous and

beautiful. “I n spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxed barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidde n in the mists of the fall mornings.”[1]

However, with the use of pesticides, especially DDT, the village suffered enormous and irreversible damage and gradually withered and died. The use of DDT in other areas has also had major unanticipated affects since it is persistent and poisonous to many forms of life. Pesticides would never be completely useful since targeted pests may develop resistance to pesticides and weakened ecosystems fall prey to unanticipated invasive species. On the contrary, those more and more poisonous medicines, because of the enrichment effect, would accumulate in humans’ body.

After the discussion of the pesticides, she start to discuss the importance of animals, especially wildlife. “Every species have their value to be on this worl d. Then no one knows what would happened if we force them to disappear… Only in the state does man have a rational existence…There might be several tiny blocks on the bottom, which you think is useless and dispensable. But what would happen if we take them away? Perhaps nothing happened, and perhaps the whole castle ruined” [2] we are on the top of the food chain, and it is such a perfect and fragile system, and we are just a small part of it and we depend on all of the creatures who stay on the lower posit ions. ”Not One Less” will be appropriate in describing the nature.

If Rachel Carson had stopped here, Silent Spring would only have to be a successful science reading. But after that, she pointed out that the cause for the environmental problem is the huma n’s arrogance and ignorance. So she asked people to correct the attitude toward the nature and reconsidered the developing path of human being. In the primitive society, even though people did not have the awareness to protect the environment, their ability to transform the nature was so weak that the nature would recover soon. However, with the development of science and technology, people have much bigger ability to confront the nature, some people even declared that people have “conquered” nature. But they forget that we are only a small part of nature, conquering nature is a way to suicide. Nature does not have sufficient ability to recover from the

destruction, so it will take revenge on humans, all of its need is time. So if we do not change, we will be never forgiven by next generation.

In my opinion, nature is an integral nature. We should promote our knowledge of relation of chemical and ecology. Before we use chemicals, we should know clearly about their effect on environment, it is necessary to bring a healthy caution to the use of chemicals. An ignoring of the environment protection has brought harm to people in the past and could cause unprecedented harm in the future.

After all, we have only one earth. Protect it, not only for ourselves, but for future generations as well.

[1][2] Source: “Silent Spring” Rachel Carson 1962.