EU may ban bee killing pesticides.
Submitted by Nastarana on Wed, 03/29/2017 - 9:20am
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/23/europe-poised-for-to...
Europe is a great deal smaller than the USA, much of it is mountains, and its population is much denser than is the case in most of North America outside of our largest cities. Nevertheless, the European Union's Commissioners don't seem to think that their populations can't be fed without chemical pesticides.
Two of the chemicals whose use would be banned are made by Syngenta and Bayer. Imagine that, a government willing to say no to multinational chemical and biotech companies!!
Comments
Bayer and Monsanto have been working toward a merger for
several years now. Trump has indicated his approval. I wonder what multinational shenanigans these corporate behemoths will get up to. I worry that they will try throwing their considerable weight around.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Of course
they will. Monsanto needs a benign sounding (asperin) name to hide behind while European biotech wants access to American farmland.
Mary Bennett
I think Maryland is on the verge, or has done that, too.
An experiment in the States. Hope the aviaries can try it out. I had bee poop on my windshield yesterday! A flying poop-day. Too cold today, 44F now. They like 55F and above. Former bee keeper, here.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Maryland is
outlawing bee killing pesticides? Do you have a link or any further details for that?
Mary Bennett
This sentence in the article
What kind of (stupid?) farmer would want to use a pesticide or any other chemical that is known to kill bees. This is just too weird.
The kind
who lives in Manhattan and employs a manager to follow orders. The farmer/investor buys whatever chemicals are recommended, usually by people with whom he or she socializes, went to school, etc etc. It is all about class solidarity with these folks.
Mary Bennett
Well, almost nobody will be
Well, almost nobody will be eating or breathing soon without pollinators, as not only the bulk of variety in crops but much of the remaining wild-life, both plant and animal, will be unable to reproduce/survive.
While they can still generate power, the top fraction of the 1% may last for a while in their luxury bunkers, but any glitch or power failure leaves them nowhere to breathe, since there will not be sufficient oxygen produced on Earth, worsening in snowballing effect like the ongoing die-off, especially with the unlimited industrial pollution they plan - at current rates, already killing any possibility of perfect health and creating a massive and accelerating die-off of life.
No regulations = a world full of countries more inimical to health and life than China at its worst, with universally heavily poisoned air and water, unsafe wind-pollinated food, work-places, vehicles and products - only also with a steadily diminishing natural cleansing process and oxygen production as the death throes of the planet go into full and final swing. All for the greed of a relative few for whom even having 'merely' most of everything is not enough if anyone else has anything at all, whether rights, happiness or property.
Corporate interests are so insanely intent upon killing off the natural life support system and the general population, thinking that they can further enrich themselves and increase their life-or-death control over the rest of us by using monopolies on patented tech to substitute for a whole world consisting of the interdependent results of billions of years of evolution, which conditions produced us among the others and upon which we also depend, no matter how ridiculously wealthy, because they believe that they're as far above natural life as they are above the law. They have achieved being considered above the law by law-makers only because they and their political lackeys are ignorant, pathologically greedy and corrupt, but when their ignorance and pathological greed ends their health and lives as well, a different type of corruption will come, because there is only one way out of life, and it ain't transcendent...
Are we really going to let these madmen destroy the planet within this or the next few decades, just because they can?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
That is very well put.
For all the reasons you stated, plus many more, a new party MUST, MUST have food, farming and environmental issues as a MAJOR part of its platform, so matter what faction objects. We are fast getting to the point where people can see for themselves the results of industrialized food production and processing and environmental degradation. These are NOT elitist preoccupations, they are a necessary part of a platform of peace and non-intervention abroad and social justice at home.
Mary Bennett