North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Dylan Ford" <dford@suffolk.lib.ny.us>]

Rivka - I'm no Andrew Einstein, but I suspect there's something wrong with
this computer.
Statements that seem saucy and pertinent when I type them in somehow turn
snide and imprecise when they get to the list. I had read your whole post,
and the specific lines I was reacting to were:

"However, there are lots of plants, including plants which are eaten by
humans and plants eaten by animals which are then eaten by humans, which are
not dependent on bees for pollination; and many plants ordinarily pollinated
by honeybees are also pollinated by other insects, though not always as
efficiently."

What I meant to imply by my lame jape was "ask not for whom the bell tolls".
Whatever is killing the honey bees now will, to my way of thinking be just
as likely at some point to (if not already) to be killing the other
pollinators. People keep bees, therefore we notice bee populations crashing
first, and care more. Who knows what is happening to wild pollinators? And
whatever the "canary" species is that indicates potential trouble abrewing,
the broader implications for every other species of life ought not be
glossed-over.

I must admit the wording of the last sentence of that paragraph bothered me
most. I have no idea if Einstein ever said anything about bees, but your
challenge to this prediction credited to him, "We might well lose some
population; but it's not likely that the disappearance of honeybees would
wipe out the entire human species." struck me as glib and dispassionate. I
can accept the fact that you don't believe that loss of the honey bee will
wipe out the human species, and maybe you're right, but to callously concede
"We might lose some population..." as if to imply that "losing some
population" was somehow relatively acceptable, is taking scientific
objectivity someplace I don't want to go. The actual day-to-day mechanics of
death by starvation are too awful to objectify, whether it applies to all,
most, many, some or just the unlucky few.

The speculations I have read as to whether it is GM pollen, pesticide abuse,
global warming-driven climate and weather anomalies, circumstantial
starvation, cell phone radiation, HAARP, ELF or GWEN, chemtrails, et
compounding cetera, seem to beg the question: if any one of these things
might be adequate to doom the bees, imagine all of them occurring
intermittently 24/7 to every creature, great and small.

dylan


> Do you mean by that, that whatever is killing the bees may also be
> toxic to humans, in the same fashion in which the lack of oxygen that
> can kill canaries in mines is also toxic to humans?
>
> This possibility is of course another good reason why unexplained
> deaths or other major problems of any species should be investigated,
> whether or not they're directly and obviously involved in the food
> chain which feeds humans. Whatever's killing the bees might or might
> not be toxic to humans, but as long as we don't know what's killing
> them, we also don't know whether it threatens us directly.
>
> However, it's got nothing to do with the point I was making. I never
> said that CCD should not be investigated; if you read all of my post,
> you'll see that I was saying exactly the opposite. What I meant was
> that attempting to impress the importance of an issue on others by
> including exaggerated and clearly false information often doesn't have
> that effect; it instead often has the effect of causing people to
> dismiss the entire thing as nonsense, which is unwise. It's especially
> unwise if the issue is genuinely important, as this one is.
>
> --Rivka
> Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly

Dylan Ford is the author of the proposal at www.ideaforpresident.com , a
website devoted to an idea that could provide an avenue to address pollution
issues, food safety, social justice, prison reform and healthcare.