From a mailing list I am on.
I’ve been wanting to write about this forever, but it’s so depressing that I have not been able to write about it. The truth is that we are wiping out bees in this country. Bees are also going out in Europe, but we may be able to stop the process there. I do not know what is happening in the rest of the world. 80% of flowering crops and a majority of our food crops rely on bees for pollination. The are going extinct mostly because of pesticides called neonicotinoids or neonics for short.
These are made by Bayer and Monsanto, two of the worst companies on Earth. These two ultra-evil corporations are trying to merge to form the Beezlebub of all Corporations. That merger, among many others, needs to be stopped. The Obama Administration is a Corporate Democrat Administration and as such they tend to approve most mergers. They are also often rather poor on environmental issues. In particular, they are quite bad on issues affecting Big Agriculture because Big Agriculture heavily controls the Corporate Democrats. These Democrats are also in bed in the worst way with Big Ag and chemical corporations like Dow, Bayer and Monsanto. It’s so bad I might call the Democratic Party “the party of Monsanto.”
Bees are going extinct because of unfettered use of these pesticides, at the least the neonics and possibly others as well. Some pesticides act as bee birth control rendering bees infertile. Others cause neurological damage and make it so that bees cannot find their way back to the hive. I’m not sure what happens when they can’t make it back to the hive but perhaps they die because they eat honey. Certainly the hive itself becomes abandoned. Worse the pesticides are systemic, so the bees are being effected even when they are not being sprayed.
The causes of Colony Collapse Disorder which is destroying bee colonies across the land has become increasingly clear in recent years with ongoing research. Studies in particular have proven that neonics are definitely a cause of the problem. Corporations have spent millions on fake studies, lying, lobbying and buying people off (campaign donations) to lie to say that neonics are not harming bees.
People have been yelling at the Obama people for years now about this, but they have refused to budge. The EPA has refused to study the issue, putting off studies into the future over and over. I believe it may have done some studies now, but I am not sure. Bottom line is the government refuses to even study the issue much less do anything about it.
On the other hand, much more progressive EU has taken a hard line and banned a number of neonic pesticides. This is because European states and the EU are much less corporate-controlled than the US government is.
We really need to get the EPA to ban these pesticides before we wipe out all the bees in the country if not the Earth, but Obama seems to be dead-set against it as he is bought off by large chemical and agribusiness corporations.
Just as bad, Hillary is just as much of a corporate Democrat as Obama is, or perhaps she is even worse of one.
If we wipe out the bees in this country, we might be looking at a serious food situation. I have no idea what might happen but things could get very bad very fast. This is the sort of thing that leads to mass disease, death, declining health, social unrest including rioting, radicalized politics, increased authoritarianism and environmental and other catastrophes. If we really wipe out most of our plant food sources, we could be looking at societal collapse of some sort. Even if that doesn’t happen, it would still be very bad. Under capitalism, humans seem to resemble lemmings racing heedlessly off a cliff to their deaths, apparently chasing hallucinations of dollar bills that vanish as they plunge to their demise. Lenin said the capitalist will sell you the very rope you use to hang him with. He also said a capitalist would sell his own mother if he could.
I am starting to think that capitalism looks like sort of a society-wide suicide pact.
For years, we’ve been warning that bees are dying by the millions. But now, for the first time ever, seven species of bees have been added to the endangered list.1
The rusty patched bumble bee is a key pollinator that used to swarm all over the Midwest and Northeast, but now, due to habitat loss and pesticides, the unthinkable is happening: Some bees could go extinct.
A majority of our food crops and 80% of flowering plants rely on bees for pollination.2 That’s why we always say “No bees, no food.”
Now that bees are literally facing extinction, it’s time for the EPA to ban bee-killing pesticides once and for all.
In addition to the rusty patched bumble bee being recommended for listing as endangered in the continental U.S., seven native species of bees were listed in Hawaii as well. If those species are lost, we’ll also lose untold numbers of native plants.
The bee-killing pesticides that are helping to cause this devastation are harming bees in countless ways. Some pesticides cause bees to become infertile.3 Others disrupt their ability to fly and navigate, so they can’t find their way back to the hive.4
And because many of these pesticides are systemic—they are absorbed into every part of the plant—bees are exposed throughout the year, not just after a spraying.5
1. U.S. Adds First Bees to Endangered Species List, Reuters, October 1, 2016
2. Pollinators, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, accessed October 6, 2016
3. These Pesticides Could Be Birth Control for Bees, National Geographic, July 26, 2016
4. Study: Disorientation from Pesticides a Clue to Bee Disorder, USA Today, March 28, 2012
5. Systemic Pesticides, The Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, accessed October 6, 2016