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Dow Chemical Vs. ‘Coercive Utopians’: Constructing The Contested Ground Of Science And Government Regulation In 1970s America, Amy H. Hay

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

In 1979, the Dow Chemical Company published an excerpt from a speech by H. Peter Metzger that announced an emerging conflict in American ideals and public policy. He stated that a new kind of individual inhabited Washington, people from the counterculture who were “coercive utopians” because they sought to achieve their agenda through covert actions and hoped to end the American free market economy. Following the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the subsequent banning of DDT in 1972, Dow and other chemical manufacturers fought to keep the regulatory climate favorable to industry. Dow found itself defending the …