Thursday, April 26, 2007

Bees are busily dying

The mainstream media as usual are paying scant attention to a story with the potential to affect our lives in a catastrophic way: Honeybees across the country are mysteriously dying off.

If this fundamental part of the food chain were to disappear, we would starve.
No more fruit.
No more vegetables.
No more animals that feed upon fruit and vegetables.
No more people.

David Byrne has written a compelling article on this disturbing development in his online journal. It's worth a read.

2 comments:

oxeye said...

Michael - Yeah, it’s strange the lack of media coverage here. There is some stuff on the net about it but that is about it. It is a very rare thing to spot a honey bee in Ohio nowadays. And yet very few people around here are talking about it or even seem aware of it. It is almost as if people cannot imagine the loss of something once so common. Farmers depend on bees to move pollen from plant to plant. Pollination is an important step in the reproduction of seed plants because most plant fruits will not develop if the ovules are not fertilized. Without bees, plant species would start to die off. Then animals species would start dying also. As you quoted Albert Einstein, "No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." We need to start becoming interested in why this is occurring, because whatever is happening to the bees, will surely happen to us. I think the current debate over global warming has more to do with being responsible and up to date in all environmental matters, than whether the current trend in world temperature is good or bad or man made or not. Right now Global warming is a battle over how to spend tax dollars. We need to stay on top of it and stay aware of what we are doing collectively and individually. To investigate whether there is something that we are doing as a species that is endangering the planet. If we are not aware of the ramifications of our actions on other life forms, we might be committing a not so slow suicide.

Mystery of the dying bees

Michael said...

Good points, Oxeye.