Getting What We Deserve
In the past few days, I’ve seen a few more articles on the rapidly disappearing bee population.
From a kos diary:
Albert Einstein once predicted that if bees were to disappear, man would follow only a few years later.
That hypothesis could soon be put to the test.
Now in Spain, hundreds of thousands of colonies have been lost and beekeepers in northern Croatia estimated that five million bees had died in just 48 hours this week. In Poland, the Swietokrzyskie beekeeper association has estimated that up to 40 per cent of bees were wiped out last year. Greece, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal have also reported heavy losses.
The depopulation of bees could have a huge impact on the environment, which is reliant on the insects for pollination. If taken to the extreme, crops, fodder - and therefore livestock - could die off if there are no pollinating insects left.
Over the past two decades concern has risen around the world about the decline of pollinators of all descriptions. During this period in the United States, the honeybee, the world’s premier pollinator, experienced a dramatic 40 percent decline, from nearly six million to less than two and a half million.
And one from February at the All Spin Zone, which ties the problem to GMO foods:
It’s really not that hard to put 2+2 together here. The bees’ immune systems are impacted by GE foods, loss of native plants, and pesticides. We continue to destroy our environment in hundreds of ways, and it is rapidly catching up to us. What will happen when our ability to grow food is greatly weakened by a few powerful corporations? I don’t want to find out.
Somegirl’s piece at the ASZ is really worth reading. To tie it all together, if bees go extinct, humanity is in deep shit: it’s goodbye apples, goodbye melons, goodbye squash, goodbye broccoll, goodbye to “three-quarters of all flowering plants - including most food crops and some that provide fiber, drugs and fuel” that “rely on pollinators for fertilization.” Indeed it’s goodbye flowers, and goodbye food supply.
This is called “getting what we deserve.” Perhaps the Christians were onto something after all: we’ve already got war and pestilence. With a collapse in the food supply, we’d all be staring famine in the face and at that point it would only be a matter of time I guess before the Pale Horse and his Rider go by…
Yeah, they’re not cool anymore, but it fit. Besides, the first Metallica album, which “The Four Horsemen” is from, is blistering.
2 Responses to “Getting What We Deserve”
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April 1st, 2007 at 10:25 am
Exhibit A-No one could have foreseen the breach of the levees.
Exhibit B-No one could have imagined that terrorists would take airplanes and crash them into the world trade center.
Why do I get the feeling that when it is too late those who hate the environment will wonder why no one warned them about the collapse of the environment?
April 8th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
[...] we’re busy killing it (and ourselves). While you’re oohing over your Easter lilies, don’t forget the collapse of the bees, and how many flowers will disappear as a [...]