...[I]t is simply impossible to predict the effects of lifetime exposure to chemical and physical agents that are not part of the biological experien… - Rachel Carson

It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.

A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

Between low water and the flotsam and jetsam of the high-tide mark, land and sea wage a never-ending conflict for possession.