As I Suspected-Chemical Follow Up
According to a recent report, a widely used bug spray may be the culprit behind the mysterious disappearance (death) of honeybees.
Ah, as I suspected and posted about on May 21.
Honeybees are a non-native but highly important player in food production. Not a necessary organism in a sustainable habitat with a reasonable number of humans, but once you start packing several million of us in a bioregion, well, everything changes. Hunter gathering is out and mass production of food is in.
Mass production that needs bees, not chemicals.
The killer is imidacloprid, the most commonly used insecticide on the planet. Just sounds awful, doesn’t it?
I’m sure the chemical companies will come out fighting with a carefully crafted propaganda campaign designed to keep revenues and profits high while the bees die. And heaven forbid any attempt to actually have the shit removed from the market. There will be calls more more studies, hearings, then more studies, rebukes of studies, counter studies (funded by the chemical companies, of course) and a final panel hearing. This will take ten years and by then, the bees will all be dead and it won’t matter.
There went your blueberries, Hazel.
This doesn’t pertain to your post at all. I just started using flickr again and upgraded to the pro. I’m heading off to Alaska for two weeks in couple days and plan on offloading tons of photos, so pro was the way to go. I love how you can group them into nice little categories. Anyway here’s the link if you want to check some of them out, I’ve got to upload alot more but they’re on my computer and I’m home using the only one with internet. http://flickr.com/photos/seancarr54/ …you might like the flower pics or the ones of Allegany State Park. Either way definitely check out the squirrel photos. Ok, this long post is officially over.
Regarding chemical companies and removing a chemical from the market: I just read an article last week about how DDT needs to be used again because people are dying of malaria. There was a rep. or sen. who criticized the do-gooders and enviro-wackos who would have us ban these life saving chemicals saying that the do-gooders want us to live as hunter gatherers again (or something equally ridiculous). So I think you’re right, the chemical companies will come out swinging and tout progress over making fires by rubbing sticks (which is obviously what anyone who cares about where we live wants us to go back to). Be well.