Science, lobbies and the environment: marking the 60th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
We owe to Rachel Carson’s book "Silent Spring" the birth of the environment as a subject of public discourse and policies.
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Published 60 years ago, on September 27th 1962, the book created at the same time a new genre and a new sensitivity to environmental issues.
Carson's book documented the devastating ecological impacts of pesticides, a theme that is still hot today [1], [2]. She was fiercely criticized by industry lobby, and chemical companies launched vicious anti-Carson campaigns. Whatever the subject of ecological concern, science has always occupied a core position in environmental conflicts. At the same time, corporate lobby groups deploy "science" to manipulate the public, as discussed by a recent book by investigative journalists and sociologists [3].
Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and the University of Bergen have recently studied new strategies of regulatory capture played out in the public arena that mobilize an image of science and innovation to corporate advantage [3]–[7].
In the spirit of Rachel Carson, UiB's BeeCaution project and CEO are honoured to jointly host a half-day international seminar aimed at policy makers, civil society, journalists, and scientists to discuss the new frontiers of regulatory capture and environmental conflict.
Key questions:
- How exactly is science instrumentalised by corporations in environmental conflicts (focus on Europe)?
- How can science defend itself?
- How can (investigative) journalism contribute?
- What would need to happen to stop corporate capture through science and corporate attacks on individual scientists, and who is responsible?
- What is the link with the current political context in the EU (EGD/Farm to Fork, etc)?
See a trailer for + a full recording of the event here:
Science, lobbies and the environment | trailer of the seminar
Science, lobbies and the environment | seminar on 60th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
Program
14.30 Welcome by Andrea Saltelli
14.35 Introductory keynote by Naomi Oreskes
Discussion chaired by Hans van Scharen, CEO
15.05 Regulatory science and precaution: lessons from the neonicotinoids case - Jeroen van der Sluijs
Discussion chaired by Hans van Scharen, CEO
15.20 Science and regulatory capture - Andrea Saltelli
Discussion chaired by Anna Blome, SVT, UiB
15.35 The Guardians of reason - Stéphane Foucart
Discussion chaired by Anna Blome, SVT, UiB
16.05 Coffee break
16.25 Lobbies in action - Nina Holland
Discussion chaired by Franziska Achterberg, Greens/EFA
16.40 Pushing pesticides onto Norwegian gardens, fields, and forests, 1945-1995 by May-Brith Ohman Nielsen
Discussion chaired by Franziska Achterberg, Greens/EFA
17.10 Round table discussion with speakers and organizers, plus Román Arjona Gracia, chief economist at DG Grow, European Commission.
Discussion chaired by Jeroen van der Sluijs
17.50 End of the meeting - light snacks and drinks will be served.
Speakers
- Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University
- Jeroen van der Sluijs, Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT), University of Bergen
- Andrea Saltelli, guest researcher at SVT, UiB and academic counselor at UPF-BSM - Barcelona School of Management
- Stéphane Foucart, journalist in Le Monde
- Nina Holland, Corporate Europe Observatory
- May-Brith Ohman Nielsen, Professor of History at the University of Agder, Norway, and leader of the project Deadly Dreams – The cultural history of poison 1850-2020
Organizers
Corporate Europe Observatory
Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT), University of Bergen
Abstracts
Naomi Oreskes: Paths to a Less Silent Spring
See recent piece in Scientific American.
Jeroen van der Sluijs: Regulatory science and precaution: lessons from the neonicotinoids case
For the last 65 years we have been on a pesticide merry-go-round: successive generations of pesticides are released and subsequently banned a decade or two later once the environmental harm they cause becomes evident. While pesticides are typically replaced by new ones, this new generation of chemicals often raises new and unanticipated risk concerns.
Risks that in retrospect required precautionary action have been systematically overlooked as a result of blind spots in overly reductionist risk assessment protocols. These protocols in are largely shaped by pesticide lobbies. Knowledge about risks that do not fit into such protocols (e.g. academic scientific studies in the peer-reviewed literature and knowledge regarding end-points not covered by the protocols) is often systematically downplayed, marginalised or ignored. Too often, coalitions of concerned scientists and societal actors have needed to step in and ‘break the script’ of routinised assessment and management processes in order to recognise key uncertainties and the potential for serious harm to human, animal and environmental health. Based on the results of the EU-funded project ‘REconciling sCience, Innovation and Precaution through the Engagement of Stakeholders’ (RECIPES), we can learn important lessons for the necessary reforms of environmental risk assessment frameworks and beyond.
Andrea Saltelli: Science and regulatory capture
New frontiers of regulatory capture involving an instrumental use of science have become visible. Here corporate interests from pharma to agro-chemical operate over several epistemic levels, from invalidating the evidence, the methodology or the legitimacy of regulators, all the way up to the more recent use of platform technologies to construct a vision of reality where regulatory 'interference' is to be restrained. What specific responsibilities pertain to scientists overall and to academia specifically?
Stéphane Foucart: The Guardians of reason
The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, in 1970, was one of the consequences of the alert launched by Rachel Carson on the damage of the indiscriminate use of pesticides on the environment and public health. Following this model, other countries have created their own agencies in charge of expertise. Initially opposed by the companies, most of these agencies have become over the years allies of the industries generating health and environmental risks. Today, the very existence of these institutions creates confusion between regulatory decisions and scientific consensus.
Nina Holland: Lobbies in action
Corporate lobbies fund and promote science and scientists that are selected or paid to back their narrative and interests. This – they hope – contributes to the credibility of their arguments, that for example manufacture doubt on the harmfulness or confirm claims of economic losses to their sector and to ‘innovation’.
May-Brith Ohman Nielsen: Pushing pesticides onto Norwegian gardens, fields, and forests, 1945-1995
The second and third generations of pesticides were pushed onto Norwegian farmers, family gardeners and foresters by corporate interests, state institutions, branch organisations and broad membership associations, both before and after Silent Spring. How was this done in practice? And how was this system resisting reforms and voices of environmental concern?
References
- [1] J. P. van der Sluijs, “Insect decline, an emerging global environmental risk,” Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain., vol. 46, pp. 39–42, 2020
- [2] J. P. van der Sluijs, “EU Ban on Neonics: Too Little, Too Late,” Green European Journal, 2018. Accessed: May 23, 2022. [Online].
- [3] S. Foucart, S. Horel, and S. Laurens, Les gardiens de la raison. Enquête sur la désinformation scientifique. Éditions La Découverte, 2020. [Online].
- [4] A. Saltelli, D. J. Dankel, M. Di Fiore, N. Holland, and M. Pigeon, “Science, the endless frontier of regulatory capture,” Futures, vol. Volume 135, no. 102860, 2022
- [5] N. Holland, The ‘innovation principle’ trap. 2018. [Online].
- [6] Project Recipes, Home | RECIPES,” 2022
- [7] GUIDANCE on the application of the precautionary principle in the EU Recipes Project 2022 https://recipes-project.eu/sites/default/files/2022-07/2814_RECIPIES_Guidance_Book_final.pdf
Silent spring
- The impetus for Silent Spring was a letter written in January 1958 by Carson's friend, Olga Owens Huckins, to The Boston Herald, describing the death of birds around her property in Duxbury, Massachusetts, resulting from the aerial spraying of DDT to kill mosquitoes.
- Carson later wrote that this letter prompted her to study the environmental problems caused by chemical pesticides.
- She addressed the topic in a series of articles in the magazine The New Yorker, which were later publicized as a book: Silent Spring came out in 1962.
- Its title was inspired by a poem by John Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci", which contained the lines "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing."
- The overarching theme of Silent Spring is the powerful—and often negative—effect humans have on the natural world.
- Silent Spring and the activism it inspired are partly responsible for the deep ecology movement and the strength of the grassroots environmental movement since the 1960s.
