Never before there’s been so many startups cropping worldwide. Some of them will undoubtedly disrupt their markets. They’ll take innovative technologies and use them to push disruption forward. And that’s good. We need change. We need things to keep improving.

However, despite their numbers, very few will deliver solutions to humanity’s most significant challenges. One of these challenges, that of sustaining our environment, is the topic of Rachel Carson’s extraordinary Silent Spring book. Published in 1962, it brought up the dangers of pesticides to the White House.

While I was reading it, I became curious about the current state of affairs. I wondered how much we had improved since the 60s. The answer was staggering, not much. Virulent, toxic pesticides are widespread. Water, crops, forests, and animals are widely polluted. The most shocking discovery wasn’t to learn how toxic these compounds are, but that, even though we now know about them, they’re still broadly used.

“The fact that chemicals may play a role similar to radiation has scarcely dawned on the public mind, nor on the minds of most medical or scientific workers.

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Although chemical manufacturers are required by law to test