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雷切爾‧卡森 (RACHEL CARSON) 寂靜的春天 Silent Spring
「控制大自然」這一短語是在驕傲自大的心態中構思出來的，它源於尼安德特人時期的生物學和哲學，當時人們以為自然界是為人類的便利而存在的。
六十年代初期，雷切爾‧卡森的書《寂靜的春天》引起國際上對環境污染危險的關注。卡森比當時任何人更強烈地提醒世界注意由任意使用化學藥品造成的人員傷亡和自然界損失。卡森(1907─1964)是個生物學家，長期在美國漁業局工作。她也是頗有成就的作家。1951年卡森因《我們周圍的海洋》一書獲得國家圖書獎。然而她留給後人最為不朽的遺產是1962年出版的《寂靜的春天》，該書對發動美國的環境保護運動起了重要作用。
地球上生命的歷史即是生物與它們的環境互相作用的歷史。在很大程度上，地球上動植物的形體和習性是由環境造成的。考慮到地球的漫長歷史，反向作用即生物對其環境的實際影響相對較小。只有在由本世紀所體現的時光瞬間中，一個物種──人──才獲得了有效力量去改變他所在世界的大自然。 在過去的四分之一世紀裏，這種力量不僅增大到了令人不安的程度，而且其性質亦發生了變化。人類對環境最可怕的破壞是用危險甚至致命的物質對空氣、土地、河流和海洋的污染。這種污染多數是無法救治的；由它所引發的惡性循環不僅存在於生物賴以生存的世界，而且存在於生物組織中，而這種惡性循環大都不可逆轉。在當今對環境的普遍污染中，化學藥品是幅射線的兇惡但卻被人忽視的同謀，它們共同改變著世界的根本性質──它的生物的根本性質。由核爆炸釋放到空中的鍶90以放射性塵埃的形式隨雨水或漂浮物落到地球上，留在土壤裏，進入地上生長著的草、玉米或小麥等植物體內，最後鑽進人體，停留在骨骼裏直到人死去。同樣，噴灑在農田、森林或花園裏的化學藥品長期留在土壤中，進入活的生物體內，在一種毒害和死亡的連鎖反應中從一個生物體傳到另一生物體。或者這些化學藥品隨地下溪流神秘地流淌直至冒出地表，通過空氣和陽光的化合作用構成新形式，毒死植物，使牲畜得病，對那些飲用曾一度純淨的井水的人們造成人所不知的危害。正如阿爾伯特‧施威策所說：「人甚至連自己創造的魔鬼都認不出來。」 要生成現今棲居在地球上的生物需要億萬年的時間──在這漫長的時間裏，生物不斷發展進化，種類越變越多，達到一種同其環境相適應、相平衡的狀態。而環境一絲不苟地塑造和引導它所供養的生物，這環境既包含有利生物生長的成分，又包含有害的成分。某些岩石放射出危險的射線；即便在一切生物從中取得能量的日光中，也包含有傷害力的短波射線。經過一定的時間──不是過了若干年，而是過了千百年，生物適應了環境，達到了平衡，因為時間是最基本的因素。但在現代世界裏人們沒有時間。 伴隨著人類急躁輕率的步伐而非自然界穩健的步履，事物很快發生變化，新情況急劇不斷地產生。如今幅射不僅是地球上出現生命之前便存在的岩石隱秘的射線、宇宙射線的轟擊以及太陽紫外線；它更是人類撥弄原子的奇異產物。逼迫生物與之適應的化學物質不再只是鈣、二氧化矽、銅，以及從岩石上沖刷出來由河流帶入海洋的其他礦物質，它們是人類聰明才智所合成的創造物，在實驗室裏配製而成，在自然界找不到與它們相似的東西。 適應這些化學藥品所需時間應以大自然的尺度衡量；人的一生太短暫，它要求的是若干世代的時間。但即令這麼漫長的時間內可能奇蹟般地實現了適應，也將毫無用處，因為從我們的各個實驗室會源源不斷地冒出新的化學藥品投入實際使用。這數字令人震驚，而且它的深層含義不易為人們所領會──每年有五百種新化學藥品需要人和動物的身體以某種方式去與之適應，它們完全超出了生物學經驗的範圍。 在這些化學藥品中，有許多被用於人類對自然的戰爭。自40年代中期以來，逾二百種基本化學藥品被研製出來，用於殺死昆蟲、雜草、齧齒動物和其他現代行話稱為「害蟲」的生物體；這些化學藥品打著數千種不同的商標出售。 這些噴霧液、花粉、煙霧劑現在幾乎普遍在農場、花園、森林和家庭中使用──這些化學藥品能夠不加選擇地殺死任何昆蟲，不論其是「好」是「壞」；能夠使鳥兒不再歌唱，魚兒不再跳躍於水中；能夠以一層劇毒物質覆蓋在葉片表面或長期滯留在土壤中。而人們使用所有這些藥品消滅的目標或許僅僅是屈指可數的幾種雜草或昆蟲。難道有人會相信，可以向地球表面傾瀉這麼多毒物而又繼續使它適宜一切生物生長? 這些化學藥品不應稱作「殺蟲藥劑」，而應稱為「殺生物藥劑」。 藥物噴灑的整個發展過程似乎捲入了一個永無終點的螺旋。自從滴滴涕被允許民用便逐步升級，人們得不斷尋找更有毒性的物質。這是因為作為對達爾文適者生存原理的絕好證明，昆蟲已演化出對人們使用的某一殺蟲藥具有抗藥性的超級品種，於是人們必須發明一種更毒的藥劑，接著又發明一種比這種藥劑更毒的藥劑。…… 「控制大自然」這一短語是在驕傲自大的心態中構思出來的，它源於尼安德特人時期的生物學和哲學，當時人們以為自然界是為人類的便利而存在的。應用昆蟲學的概念和實踐大都發端於那石器時代的科學。如此原始的科學竟已用最現代、最可怕的武器裝備起來、這真是我們的一大災禍。這門科學在使用這些武器對付害蟲的同時也在打擊整個地球。 附註： l 尼安德特人：指更新世晚期，舊石器時代個期的「古人」，分佈在歐洲、北非、西亞一帶。 l 阿爾伯特‧施威策：阿爾伯特‧施威策(1875－1965)，法國。 The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species－ man－ acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world. During the past quarter century this power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed in character. The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world－ the very nature of its life. Strontium 90, released through nuclear explosions into the air, comes to the earth in rain or drifts down as fallout, lodges in soil, enters into the grass or corn or wheat grown there, and in time takes up its abode in the bones of a human being, there to remain until his death. Similarly, chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in the soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and, through the alchemy of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer has said, "Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation." It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth－ eons of time in which that developing and evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. The environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained elements that were hostile as well as supporting. Certain rocks gave out dangerous radiation; even within the light of the sun, from which all life draws its energy, there were short-wave radiations with power to injure. Given time－ time not in years but in millennia－ life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time. The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature. Radiation is no longer merely the background radiation of rocks, the bombardment of cosmic rays, the ultraviolet of the sun that have existed before there was any life on earth; radiation is now the unnatural creation of man's tampering with the atom. The chemicals to which life is asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea; they are the synthetic creations of man's inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories, and having no counterparts in nature. To adjust to these chemicals would require time on the scale that is nature's; it would require not merely the years of a man's life but the life of generations. And even this, were it by some miracle possible, would be futile, for the new chemicals come from our laboratories in an endless stream; almost five hundred annually find their way into actual use in the United States alone. The figure is staggering and its implications are not easily grasped－ 500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience. Among them are many that are used in man's war against nature. Since the mid-1940's over 200 basic chemicals have been created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents, and other organisms described in the modern vernacular as "pests"; and they are sold under several thousand different brand names. These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes－ nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the "good" and the "bad," to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in the soil－ all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called "insecticides," but "biocides." The whole process of spraying seems caught up in an endless spiral. Since DDT was released for civilian use, a process of escalation has been going on in which ever more toxic materials must be found. This has happened because insects, in a triumphant vindication of Darwin's principle of the survival of the fittest, have evolved super races immune to the particular insecticide used, hence a deadlier one has always to be developed－ and then a deadlier one than that. . . . The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth. |