Evaluation of “the Obligation to Endure”

Evaluation of “The Obligation to Endure”

        Rachel Carson is a famous American biologist and writer. The argument “The Obligation to Endure” comes from her most famous work “Silent Spring”, which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. The argument was written in 1960s, it stated that human being was changing nature rapidly, and we should use our knowledge, take the advice from ecologists. Our natural environment was under threat. Is this true or just an alarmism? She stated that human are changing the world. Is it really a result of human activities or it’s just because of geologic time? Are we really at war against the nature? What if we continue doing what we were doing and take actions later? An evaluation of the argument suggests that it’s is still trustworthy and convictive today. We should follow it and take actions.

      The contrast between the “heedless pace of man” and the “deliberated pace of nature” is quite valid. Things like radiation in the nature hardly change for billions of years. The chemicals in the nature that most lives have to make adjustment have not changed for millions of years. These conditions barely changed for a huge number of years, but it still took a large amount of years for lives to adapt to the environment. Modern forms of lives are results of mutations and natural selections for millions of years. The process is slow and deliberate, which makes the animals and plants can perfectly fit their living environment nowadays. The ecosystem is like a work of art, and the nature is the artist. Oppositely, because of the development of technology, humans are rapidly changing the world in many ways. The argument was written in 1960s, when technologies were developing very fast in many fields. However, for now the technologies are developing even faster because of more advanced information technology. We create new stuffs that have never appeared on earth. Radiation now is much more than there used to be, and so are the chemicals, electromagnetic waves and pollutions. We don’t even realize what the materials will do to the environment when we create them, which is quite impetuous. The history of modern humanity is just thousands of years. Compared to the history of nature it’s like one second. But the changes we made on earth are no less than the changes happened naturally in the environment in millions of years. The living beings on earth are not able to adapt to the much changed environment so quickly, and so are the human beings ourselves. So the distinction between the “deedless pace of man” and “the deliberated pace of mature” is quite valid. By comparing to the changes made by the nature itself in a very long period of time, it shows how fast we are changing the world and the unknown result of such a rapidly changing world. We always fear unknown things. Showing the unknown result successfully makes readers seriously thinking what humans are doing is anti-nature.

       That’s how the author showed us her view of people and their relationship with the environment. A “war against nature” is exactly what people are doing. Not like the 1960s when the argument was written, nowadays developed countries like America do take actions to protect the environment. That makes the relationship between human and the nature look mild. But when we talk about human, we should look around the world, not just the developed countries. Developing countries like China and India are growing very fast in economy. They are not paying too much attention to being kind to the environment. A lot of manufactories are polluting the environment there. And the situations in those countries are very serious. It’s really like human and the nature are at war. Human are hurting the nature through water and air pollution, and the nature is also hurting human beings. Recently there are terrifying smog appeared in Beijing, the capital of China, a city of 20 million people. The smog is very harmful and people have to wear respirators to go outdoors. Further more, there is another important “battle” between human and nature: species invasion. There are many famous species invasion events in human history. Asian cyprinoid fishes are ruining the water environment of north America, rabbits had almost destroyed the whole Australia. These are all results of human activities, and do hurt the environment and human themselves. Humans are changing the world in every way, which the nature is not able to do itself. Human beings are engaged in a war against the nature, even if they don’t realize or admit it.