(Host) Friday is Arbor Day in Vermont, and while thinking about this
upcoming day devoted to the planting of trees, environmental educator
and commentator Russ Weis branches out to consider the impact two
intrepid female environmentalists have had on our world.
(Weis) I
like the fact that Vermont’s Arbor Day falls midway between the
birthdays of two inspiring women who, each in her own way, tremendously
advanced the cause of environmentalism.
Wangari Maathai
was born in Kenya on the first of April, 1940. She was the first African
woman, and the first environmentalist, to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Upon her death last fall, the New York Times called her one of the most
widely-respected women in Africa. Environmentalist, feminist, human
rights advocate and founder of the Green Belt Movement, she spearheaded
the planting of trees across Kenya to fight erosion and to provide
firewood for fuel and jobs for women. She once said, " It’s the little
things citizens do…that make the difference. My little thing is planting
trees."
Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907. She was a
renowned nature writer and a former marine biologist with the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service. Her enormously influential book, Silent Spring,
published fifty years ago this coming fall, shone a spotlight on the
serious problems created by the use of synthetic pesticides in the early
‘60s. Carson’s work led directly to a nationwide ban on DDT, and
indirectly to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. In so
doing, she contributed mightily to the rise of the modern environmental
movement.
In the course of their work, both women encountered
fierce resistance from the entrenched patriarchal forces of their places
and times. After Silent Spring came out in 1962, Carson was vilified by
the chemical industry and the Department of Agriculture. Her detractors
called her "hysterical and unqualified," and her careful scientific
data was described as "oversimplified and filled with scary
generalizations." Time magazine even wrote that Carson had used
"emotion-fanning words."
Maathai also was denigrated simply
because she was female. The Kenyan Parliament once called her Green Belt
Movement a phony organization and its members "a bunch of divorcees."
This was perhaps not all that surprising. During Maathai’s divorce
proceedings a few years earlier, her husband had described her as being
"too strong-minded for a woman," and said that he was "unable to control
her." However, despite jail time, eviction from her home, and even the
wrath of the President of Kenya, the future Nobel Laureate’s spirit
remained strong. " African women…need to know" she said, "that it’s
okay…to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from
fear and from silence."
For her part, the author of Silent
Spring once mused that "those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth
find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts."
And
by speaking truth to power when they did, Carson, first-world
scientist, and Maathai, third-world activist, sowed the seeds for a more
enlightened future.
Their legacies remind us just how important
it is – for both women and men – not to remain silent in the face of
threats to our planet.