Silent Spring

This morning I attended the opening session of the 3rd annual World Environmental Conference, held at the Asia Hotel on Gongti Beilu in Beijing. Like many conferences here, it was a showcase for Chinese officials to discuss what they are doing and what the goals are. One Chinese official, Cheng Siwei (成思危), Vice Chairman of the 9th and 10th National People's Conference Standing Committee, surprised me by referring to Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's 1962 classic that was an alarm bell for the environmental movement. He mentioned the book as one of the first calls for action and environmental sustainability, and went on to say that we need to change our path, on a global scale.