of humans and honeybee societies
The breakdown of societies
History is full of sad endings, times when people made bad decisions and ignored the consequences till too late. We seem to be in another such time, as problem after problem overwhelms us. Over the years, just in my lifetime, we've seen human technology take down ever larger sections of the Earth's ecosystem.
It wasn't bad enough that we had to invent chemical warfare and use it in World War 1. Then we went on to make chemical warfare on the land - using some of the same chemicals - so that now the ecosystem services Nature had provided free are no longer automatic.
A case in point: Due to a possible combination of causes, including systemic insecticide use on some of our crops, there has developed a dieback in commercial or "tame" honeybee populations (mostly in the United States), now called “colony collapse disorder”. Since about a third of our crops use honeybee pollination, we may see a dramatic reduction in our ability to grow food. So, in order to kill of some insects we’ve defined as enemies, we’ve killed some of the insects (honeybees) we need.
This, to me, is just one more indication of how our attitude of trying to force other creatures into what we want is backfiring. We try to turn livestock into robot workers growing our food, not facing that animals are beings also and have their own legitimate desires that are not always in synch with ours.
We continue to try to turn our forests into tree farms - as with the cherry here in Pennsylvania - only growing the species we think we can make the most money on. But that eventually results in weakened health and growth rate of the trees because we've ignored the fellow species they need.
We can't keep taking apart the ecosystem like it's just so many parts of a cake or steak or casserole. We're all connected, so as the web of life collapses we become weaker.
Remember the worries about worldwide decline in the family of life known as amphibians? It's still happening. Remember the worries about acid rain? Add to that acidification of the oceans. Think we've got the ozone layer thinning problem under control? Not.
Remember maple syrup? Chances are the syrup you're putting on your pancakes isn't mostly from maple trees any more. Like so many other processed food products, which have corn syrup and contribute to the higher diabetes rate, subsidization of massive factory farming of corn has made it more profitable than the environmentally weakened maple tree industry.
Think you'll have it made when you or your loved ones have gotten a good education? Won't mean a thing if we don't have air to breathe or food to eat. Formerly free clean air is becoming affordable only to the super-wealthy as effects of the pollute-if-you-want-to-make-money non- ethic engulf the rest of us.
Do declines in maple syrup and honey production signal increasing difficulty growing other foods? If we don’t get together and work for rather than against our fellow species they do.
History is full of sad endings, times when people made bad decisions and ignored the consequences till too late. We seem to be in another such time, as problem after problem overwhelms us. Over the years, just in my lifetime, we've seen human technology take down ever larger sections of the Earth's ecosystem.
It wasn't bad enough that we had to invent chemical warfare and use it in World War 1. Then we went on to make chemical warfare on the land - using some of the same chemicals - so that now the ecosystem services Nature had provided free are no longer automatic.
A case in point: Due to a possible combination of causes, including systemic insecticide use on some of our crops, there has developed a dieback in commercial or "tame" honeybee populations (mostly in the United States), now called “colony collapse disorder”. Since about a third of our crops use honeybee pollination, we may see a dramatic reduction in our ability to grow food. So, in order to kill of some insects we’ve defined as enemies, we’ve killed some of the insects (honeybees) we need.
This, to me, is just one more indication of how our attitude of trying to force other creatures into what we want is backfiring. We try to turn livestock into robot workers growing our food, not facing that animals are beings also and have their own legitimate desires that are not always in synch with ours.
We continue to try to turn our forests into tree farms - as with the cherry here in Pennsylvania - only growing the species we think we can make the most money on. But that eventually results in weakened health and growth rate of the trees because we've ignored the fellow species they need.
We can't keep taking apart the ecosystem like it's just so many parts of a cake or steak or casserole. We're all connected, so as the web of life collapses we become weaker.
Remember the worries about worldwide decline in the family of life known as amphibians? It's still happening. Remember the worries about acid rain? Add to that acidification of the oceans. Think we've got the ozone layer thinning problem under control? Not.
Remember maple syrup? Chances are the syrup you're putting on your pancakes isn't mostly from maple trees any more. Like so many other processed food products, which have corn syrup and contribute to the higher diabetes rate, subsidization of massive factory farming of corn has made it more profitable than the environmentally weakened maple tree industry.
Think you'll have it made when you or your loved ones have gotten a good education? Won't mean a thing if we don't have air to breathe or food to eat. Formerly free clean air is becoming affordable only to the super-wealthy as effects of the pollute-if-you-want-to-make-money non- ethic engulf the rest of us.
Do declines in maple syrup and honey production signal increasing difficulty growing other foods? If we don’t get together and work for rather than against our fellow species they do.
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 10:02 AM
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