ent Spring II. Silent spring Significance of the book It roused a new public awareness that nature was vuInerable to human intervention. She proposed that, at times, technological progress is so fundamentally at odds with natural processes that it must be curtailed Conservation had never raised much broad public interest, for few people really worried about the disappearance of wilderness. But the threats she had outlined-the contamination of the food chain cancer genetic damage, the deaths of entire species -were too frightening to ignore. For the first time, the need to regulate industry in order to protect the environment became widely accepted, and environmentalism was born W BTL E To be continued on the next page.W B T L E Lesson 11 – Silent Spring To be continued on the next page. II. Silent Spring Significance of the book It roused a new public awareness that nature was vulnerable to human intervention. She proposed that, at times, technological progress is so fundamentally at odds with natural processes that it must be curtailed. Conservation had never raised much broad public interest, for few people really worried about the disappearance of wilderness. But the threats she had outlined—the contamination of the food chain, cancer, genetic damage, the deaths of entire species—were too frightening to ignore. For the first time, the need to regulate industry in order to protect the environment became widely accepted, and environmentalism was born