By Matthew Dooley Staff writer
Dr. Robert Musil came to Susquehanna to give a lecture titled, “Rachel Carson: is her environmental legacy still relevant?” on March 22. Musil is an author and the executive director and CEO of the Rachel Carson Foundation.
Musil came to discuss the work the late Rachel Carson did regarding nature’s preservation along with why the environment needs protecting and what he has done to preserve nature as well.
During the lecture, Musil explained why he wanted to give a lecture on this topic.
He said: “I deeply believe that our planet and the people on it are in crisis. From all the hunger, food, disease and climate change. I just can’t stand idly by and say what can I do about it or I don’t know about it or I never took that course. That is what is underneath [the lecture].”
According to first-year Matthew Waldschmidt, “[The lecture] really showed no matter whether you’re good at math or science, that just having a basic understanding and then applying what you know well can really make a difference in any field.”
Musil discussed why it is important to know about what is happening to the environment.
Musil said: “I have also seen positive change happen. On the environmental front, I helped with millions of others to get the first real climate treaty in Kyoto and then the Paris Agreement, which is a serious treaty that has bound all the nations of the world.”
Carson was a big topic for the lecture, as he described her to be an inspiring person.
Carson was a marine biologist, author and conservationist who worked to preserve rivers from pesticides.
Musil said: “Rachel Carson had an entire chapter in [her book] ‘Silent Spring’… [where she wrote] about various toxins in rivers and how in her time there were massive fish kills because these pesticides were not only being sprayed on land, but they were spreading into the water. And so while she was writing ‘Silent Spring,’ there was a fish kill in the Colorado River… with a million fish. [Their deaths] were all related to pesticides.”
According to Musil, this was the book that “caught the eye of President John F. Kennedy. He brought her book to national attention and the modern environmental movement was born.”
As the lecture progressed, Musil told the audience more about Carson’s life and the lives of those who helped her with the preservation work.
Musil briefly told the students about his own work with preserving rivers, noting how some of his work was done on the Rio Grande River.
“I was involved in projects that were concerned about nuclear waste coming from our national laboratories in New Mexico and where that went and communities that lived nearby,” Musil said.
Musil is currently working with the Rachel Carson Council in North Carolina.
The focus of this project is on the huge poultry factories that are pouring large amounts of waste into the watershed and rivers.
