102 The Environmental Debate
Document 87: Fairfield Osborn on the Interrelatedness of All Living Things (1948)
Fairfield Osborn, who founded the Conservation Foundation in 1947 to raise public consciousness about
ecological problems, contended that the idea that humans could replace the fundamental functioning of natural
systems was a dangerous illusion. He warned of a “silent spring” more than a dozen years before Rachel Carson
wrote her popular book Silent Spring [see Document 100].There is no risk in making the flat statement
that in a world devoid of other living creatures,
man himself would die. This fact—call it a the-
ory if you will—is far more provable than the
accepted theory of relativity. Involved in it is, in
truth, another kind of principle of relativity—
the relatedness of all living things.
As a somewhat extreme illustration,
among many others, take that form of life that
man likes the least—of which the unthinking
person would at once say, “Kill them all.”
Insects. Of the extraordinary number of kinds
of insects on the earth—about three quarters
of a million different species have already
been identified—a small minority are harmful
to man, such as the anopheles mosquito, lice,
the tsetse fly, and crop-destroying insects. On
the other hand, innumerable kinds are benefi-
cent and useful. Fruit trees and many crops are
dependent upon insect life for pollination or
fertilization; soils are cultured and gain their
productive qualities largely because of insect
life. Human subsistence would, in fact, be
imperiled were there no insects. On the other
hand, insects, capable of incredibly rapid
reproduction, have been freed by man him-
self of many natural controls such as those
once provided by birds, now so diminished in
numbers, or by fish, once a potent factor in
insect control, no longer existing in countless
lakes, rivers and streams now so polluted that
aquatic life has disappeared. In attempting to
find substitutes for natural controls man has
resorted to the use of chemicals of increasing
power. A few years ago arsenicals came into
style—widely used in freeing fruit orchards of
pests. So promising this method has seemed—
but insidiously it sometimes results in
destroying insect-eating birds; and after
several seasons the ground itself, in many
orchards, has become so impregnated with
the poison that the trees are affected and their
fruit-bearing capacity dwindles. More recently
a powerful chemical known as D.D.T. seems
the cure-all. Some of the initial experiments
with this insect killer have been withering to
bird life as a result of birds eating the insects
that have been impregnated with the chemical.
The careless use of D.D.T. can also result in
destroying fishes, frogs and toads, all of which
live on insects. This new chemical is deadly to
many kinds of insects—no doubt of that. But
what of the ultimate and net result to the life
scheme of the earth? On another front man
is blindly in conflict with nature, too often
overlooking the fact that the animal life of the
earth, its interrelationships, its preservation,
are wrapped up directly with his own well-
being. Will the day come when this is gener-
ally realized?
Source: Fairfield Osborn, Our Plundered Planet (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1948), pp. 60-62.