{"id":14966,"date":"2012-09-12T23:06:14","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T23:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.honeybeehaven.org\/2012\/09\/12\/pesticides-the-silencing-of-the-bees\/"},"modified":"2012-09-12T23:06:14","modified_gmt":"2012-09-12T23:06:14","slug":"pesticides-the-silencing-of-the-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.honeybeehaven.org\/pesticides-the-silencing-of-the-bees\/","title":{"rendered":"Pesticides & the silencing of the bees"},"content":{"rendered":"
This month marks the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson\u2019s Silent Spring<\/em>, the book that galvanized an extraordinary cross-section of the American public into what we now call the environmental movement. Fifty years later, her courage, skill and sacrifice still inspire, and her legacy remains the contested terrain of some of our country\u2019s most disabling rituals of political partisanship. Pesticides still function as a kind of litmus test: either you\u2019re for farmers and progress and \u201csound science,\u201d or you\u2019re in the camp of those reflexively \u201cchemophobic\u201d tree-hugging \u201cenvironmentalists.\u201d And your loyalties to one or the other of these tribes can be indexed to how you feel about pesticides.<\/p> Take bees. They have been dying off<\/a> at about 30% per year since the mysterious \u201cColony Collapse Disorder\u201d (CCD) was first diagnosed in the U.S. in 2005\/2006. If Rachel Carson were alive today she might be writing about the silencing of the bees: honey bees and other wild pollinators (including bats and birds and bumblebees) are seeing catastrophic population declines. These losses are part and parcel of complex global problems like biodiversity collapse and climate change \u2013 they are also linked to something much more specific and discrete that we fail to name at our peril. Pesticides.<\/p> But what is interesting about the pollinator decline issue is how close to home it hits for so many. People all along the social and political spectrum are freaked out<\/em> by the sudden decline of bee populations. Even those who don\u2019t know that bees are indicator species still know, on a visceral level, that bees are canaries in the coal mine. Their declining populations signal that something is profoundly wrong \u2013 that our environment is unwell and out of balance.<\/p> In public discussions of CCD, people generally fall into two camps: those who believe pathogens and parasites are behind bee die-offs, and those who believe that pesticides are the problem.<\/p> The truth is that pathogens, parasites and pesticides are all at play. But the fuller truth is that pesticides<\/a> are absolutely driving bee losses in a number of different ways:<\/p> So is it the neonicotinoids killing off our pollinators?<\/p> No, not alone. They likely tag-team with other pesticides. They also make bees more vulnerable to the common gut virus, Nosema. New parasites and other pathogens also play a significant role, as do habitat loss and poor nutrition. But we cannot solve this problem without addressing pesticides<\/a>, they sit at the center of CCD and bee kills alike. And as if helping our farmers transition off the pesticide treadmill were not a sufficiently complex task, it seems that we cannot address pesticides without having the public conversation kidnapped by political partisanship.<\/p> Bees are an indicator species. They signal the well being of our broader environment, so their message is important. It is also one that I believe we are capable of receiving.<\/p> Our generation, and our children\u2019s generation face overwhelming environmental issues. How do we process climate change? Water and food shortages? Biodiversity collapse? But I think of saving the bees<\/a> as one of those graspable, manageable things that we can accomplish \u2014 and that when we do accomplish it, the effects will ripple and magnify. If we stop poisoning bees<\/a>, they will thrive and the world we live in will be more resilient as a result.<\/p> <\/p>
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