VOA标准英语2012--'Silent Spring' Turns Fifty
时间:2018-12-16 作者:英语课 分类:VOA标准英语2012年(九月)
'Silent Spring' Turns Fifty
In the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was spraying more than a quarter-million kilograms of pesticides 1 each year. Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, revealed that pesticides like DDT were lethal 2 not only for insects but for all living things.
“Silent Spring essentially 3 told the reading public that human beings could alter the natural world in ways that were quite deadly and that it could be potentially lethal to human beings as well as to other parts of the natural world,” said Linda Lear, the author of a biography on Carson.
More than six million copies of the book have been sold in the U.S. It's been translated into some 30 languages.
In the Washington suburbs, the house where Carson wrote Silent Spring is now a National Historic Landmark 4.
Carson was a pathbreaker.
“In Silent Spring, she is writing in a voice that I call apocalyptic 5 writing," added Linda Lear. "She is trying to sound an alarm to get our attention.”
Thirty years after Silent Spring was published, public television, in its program The American Experience, called the book one of the most important of our time.
But there were dissenters 6. Norman Borlaug, the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner, led the defense 7 of pesticides.
“We’re having troubles now feeding this hungry world," said Borlaug. "If you remove DDT with the hysteria that is present in the USA, the U.S. will be importing food, only there won’t be any place from where to import it.”
By 1972, DDT was banned for agricultural use in the U.S. But thousands of new chemicals were being developed.
For years, the U.S. Senate's Committee on the Environment has been trying to ban or control hundreds of chemicals from agricultural products and consumer goods.
"This committee heard from CDC [Centers for Disease Control] officials who told us their scientists found 212 industrial chemicals, including six carcinogens, coursing through Americans’ bodies," said Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg.
In 2006, the World Health Organization announced plans to use DDT again - indoors - in its campaign against malaria 8.
Syngenta is a major producer of agricultural chemicals. Like others in the industry, it says its chemicals are safe if used properly.
"We try to do every single study that is necessary to support the safety characteristics of the product." said Tim Pastoor, the company's principal scientist.
Fifty years after Silent Spring, millions of kilograms of new pesticides and other chemicals are being sprayed across US farmlands. And the environmental movement is still fighting back.
- vegetables grown without the use of pesticides 未用杀虫剂种植的蔬菜
- There is a lot of concern over the amount of herbicides and pesticides used in farming. 人们对农业上灭草剂和杀虫剂的用量非常担忧。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- A hammer can be a lethal weapon.铁锤可以是致命的武器。
- She took a lethal amount of poison and died.她服了致命剂量的毒药死了。
- Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
- She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。
- The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
- The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。
- The air is chill and stagnant,the language apocalyptic.空气寒冷而污浊,语言则是《启示录》式的。
- Parts of the ocean there look just absolutely apocalyptic.海洋的很多区域看上去完全像是世界末日。
- He attacked the indulgence shown to religious dissenters. 他抨击对宗教上持不同政见者表现出的宽容。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- (The dissenters would have allowed even more leeway to the Secretary.) (持异议者还会给行政长官留有更多的余地。) 来自英汉非文学 - 行政法