120 The Environmental Debate
Document 99: Murray Bookchin on the Synthetic Environment (1962)
Murray Bookchin was the author of numerous books on environmental and urban issues. Writing under the pen
name Louis Herber, he warned that the use of technological innovations could have unanticipated consequences
and create new and unexpected environmental problems, often more serious than the problems the technology
was intended to solve. Bookchin’s book Our Synthetic Environment, published a few months earlier than Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring, contained much the same message, but it failed to capture a wide audience.The problems of our synthetic environment
can be summed up by saying that nonhuman
interests are superseding many of our responsi-
bilities to human biological welfare. To a large
extent, man is no longer working for himself.
Many fields of knowledge and many practical
endeavors that were once oriented toward the
satisfaction of basic human wants have become
ends in themselves, and to an ever-greater degree
these new ends are conflicting with the require-
ments for human health. The needs of indus-
trial plants are being placed before man’s need
for clean air; the disposal of industrial wastes
has gained priority over the community’s need
for clean water. The most pernicious laws of the
market place are given precedence over the most
compelling laws of biology.
The problems created by our conflict with
nature are dramatically exemplified by our
chemical war against the insect world. During
the past two decades, a large number of insec-
ticides have been developed for general use on
farms and in the home. The best-known and
most widely used preparations are the chlorin-
ated hydrocarbons, such as DDT, methoxychlor,
dieldrin, and chlordane. The chlorinated hydro-
carbons are sprayed over vast acres of forest land,
range land, crop land, and even semi-urban land
on which there are heavy infestations of insects.... Aside from the hazards that insecticides
create for public health, many conservationists
claim that extensive use of the new insecticides
is impairing the ability of wildlife and beneficial
insects to exercise control over pests. They point
out that the insecticides are taking a heavy toll
of life among fish, birds, small mammals, and
useful insects. There is a great deal of evidence
that the new chemicals are self-defeating. Not
only have they failed to eradicate most of the
pests against which they are employed; in some
cases, new pests and greater infestations have
been created as a result of the damage inflicted
on predators of species formerly under control.
Source: Lewis Herber, Our Synthetic Environment (New
York: Knopf, 1962), pp. 26, 53-54.