Right now, billions of bees are dying. Already, there are nowhere near enough honeybees in Europe to pollinate the crops, and in California -- the biggest food producer in the US -- beekeepers are losing 40% of their bees each year. Were in the middle of an environmental holocaust that threatens all of us, because without pollination by bees, most plants and ⅓ of our food supply are gone. Scientists are sounding the alarm about pesticides that are toxic to bees, and say we’re using way, way more pesticides on our crops than we need. But as with oil companies and climate change, big drug companies that sell pesticides are fighting back with corporate-funded junk science that questions the evidence, and gives politicians an excuse to delay. We’re running out of time. A new study has revealed the scary truth: in more than half of European countries, there are not enough honeybees to pollinate crops. In the UK, the honeybee population is only a quarter of what is actually needed for pollination -- and although other kinds of bees are stepping in to fill the honeybee void, we’ll likely start losing them too if we keep loading our crops down with pesticides. If the bees die out, the world we hand off to our grandchildren will look very different -- MORE INFORMATION: Pesticides halve bees pollen gathering ability, research shows (The Guardian) theguardian/environment/2014/jan/29/bees-pollen-pesticides-ban Honeybee shortage threatens crop pollination in Europe (BBC) bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25656283 Pesticides making bees smaller (The Guardian) theguardian/environment/2014/jan/20/pesticides-making-bees-smaller One-Third of U.S. Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter, Threatening Food Supply (Wired) wired/wiredscience/2013/05/winter-honeybee-losses/ Warning Signs: How Pesticides Harm the Young Brain (The Nation) thenation/article/178804/warning-signs-how-pesticides-harm-young-brain
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 21:43:58 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015