50 years since “Silent Spring” – how Rachel Carson influenced the ethical investment sector

The environmental side of ethical investment today has been profoundly influenced by a book that has just turned 50 years old – Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring”. When she passed away in 1964, one US senator remarked “All mankind is in her debt”.

Focussing on the indiscriminate use of pesticides, Rachel Carson questioned the logic of widely using chemicals in food production, whose effect on ecology or human health was unknown. She noted that in various states across America, sudden deaths in local bird population had been reported. In some cases, birds had fallen from the sky, hours after fields were sprayed. Carson publicly stated “I could never again listen to a thrush’s song if I had not done all I could.”

Rachel Carson was concerned with the desecration of wildlife, plant life, pollution of ground water and of course the threat to human life. But she also broadened this to the moral question – how can humans prosper, while living in harmony with nature?

This is a question that is regularly raised by ethical investors that I talk to. The 50^th anniversary edition of the book is timely, as the increasingly uncertain climate across the world reminds us just how deeply inter-connected we all are.

The book is the subject of a recent documentary on BBC Radio 4.

Tanya Pein (co-Chair of the Ethical Investment Association), writing in a personal capacity.
Investment specialist, advising charities and individuals, at In2 Consulting