“Hmmm” Winnie-the-Pooh would say, “I love honey.” At our house, a steamy piece of cornbread is naked without honey. Pooh was regularly reminded that his honey came from busy bees. We humans, however, rarely think about bees or how much of our food depends on their hard labors.
It is but for the bees, busily foraging for nectar and transferring pollen from flower to flower, that we enjoy more than one third of all the foods we eat. Without their labors there would be no blueberries, cherries, tomatoes, apples, oranges, peppers, squash, watermelon, strawberries and the list goes on and on.
Though small, they have finely tuned brains allowing them to communicate to their hives, detailed directions to fields of sweet nectar they have found, a communication feat many humans find challenging. With this information, worker bees fly far away from home, returning to share their nectar with their hives and subsequently, with all of us who enjoy honey. So finely tuned are their small bodies that, just like humans, environmental poisons can devastate their immune systems causing them to forget where home is. They leave their homes but never return, a phenomena never seen before.
Between 2005 and 2006, the media’s hot story was about a “honeybee die-off.” Although there had been a notable decline for several years preceding that, that period of time seemed to be a waterloo for the bees. There were suspicions as to the cause, but it has been the worldwide community of beekeepers themselves, who have been able to determine the culprit. This catastrophic collapse of bee colonies, occurring in dozens of countries, simultaneously, was found to have one common denominator, a surge in the use of neo-nicotinyl pesticides, particularly their systemic use in seed treatments. An example would be the genetically modified corn seed. Modified, with a pesticide used to kill the corn rootworm, the pesticide is residual in the corn’s flower, pollen, dew, and water run off. It is also used in formulations for field spraying. Thus, bee contact is inevitable.
Neonicotinoids were in use, in smaller dosages, for several years prior to 2005. Beekeepers, puzzled by the affects they saw in their bees, were yet unaware of the pesticide connection. However, in 2005 the manufacturer drastically increased the amount applied and beehives collapsed in record numbers. This got everyone’s attention, even the media. Since industry in the U.S. can give EPA things environmentalists and small businesses cannot, such as contributions and high paying jobs, the message did not get through to them. Some European Union member countries, however, have taken action to ban use of these pesticides and have seen recovery begin in their honeybee colonies. Italy reportedly banned several uses of neonicotinoids with highly successful results.
While it is widely thought that the EPA is hard at work in Washington, protecting the public from potential poisons and their affects on food supplies, this is not the case. Licenses to sell potentially lethal chemicals are approved through a simple process. A manufacturer tells the EPA their product is safe and good for agri-business. They show the EPA tests, which they have performed and which prove their claim of safety and efficacy, after which they collect their licenses. While it might be advantageous for justice to be blind, it is an obvious disadvantage for the EPA to be purposefully blind. It is a disadvantage for bees, the bee industry; those who eat the many foods bees help produce, and lovers of honey. That includes Pooh, who would sigh and say “Oh, my” and go back to his honey pot which would, on the next page, be magically full.
The alfalfa, which cows turn into milk and meat, requires bee participation. We cannot assume foods we enjoy will magically appear on our tables like a full Winnie-the-Pooh honey pot. In fact, if nothing is done they could all disappear. How, then, will our grand children describe that sweet juiciness of a watermelon on a hot summer’s day to our great-great grandchildren?
In the real world, we have to take action and tell the EPA that we are watching, concerned, and expect them to take the necessary actions to protect the honeybee industry and our right to clean, healthy, real food.
Learn more about the plight of the honeybee, a letter sent to the EPA on January 28, 2010, and the availability of the documentary film “Nicotine Bees” at www.nicotinebees.com
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Water – The Simply Complicated Life Source
Why think about water? We play in it. We bathe in it. We float on it and fish for food that lives in it. It makes up approximately 70% of our body’s volume and covers over 70% of earth’s surface. We use it in our religious rituals and recognize it as the lifeblood of all that lives on earth.
When tranquil, it mesmerizes and soothes us. When it falls from the skies, it can be welcomed, or threatening. In either instance, it affects our wellbeing. In unexpected volumes, it can kill us. Its absence will also kill us. While some creatures have access only to contaminated water that sickens them, others thoughtlessly waste it. History tells us that wars have been waged over access to it.
Although protected by landowner laws, water cannot be owned in its entirety, just as one cannot own sunlight or air. Today, industrialized farming methods use excessive amounts of water, depleting and contaminating supplies. There are financially powerful entities that seek to own all of the world’s water and limit access to it. Profiteers withdraw it from local aquifers, far below earth’s surface, depleting available supplies. They bottle and sell it for profit, nationally and internationally, often selling it back to the very inhabitants of the area from where they have taken it. They use it as a tool to gather power and wealth. Powerful international forces finance construction of dams, displacing millions of people, to gather greater power and control of water sources. Worldwide, water, its purity and availability, is a focus for concern. It is easy for people to take it for granitite, oblivious that this life sustaining resource is at risk.
Why should we think about water? The answer is our lives depend upon it.
See the documentary film titled “FLOW – For the Love of Water”, available on DVD via the internet or view excerpts, in this six segment YouTube Presentation.
Afterwards, you may be inspired to sign a petition to add a 31st article to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, establishing access to clean water as a fundamental human right. Also, at this site, are links to the world wide organizations of citizens and corporations working against the privatization of water and to assure the community of man access to water for generations to come.
Other resources:
“Blue Gold: World Water Wars”, by Malcolm McDowell
“The Holy Order of Water: Healing the Earth’s Waters & Ourselves”, by William E Marks
“Song for the Blue Ocean”, by Carl Safina, Marine Biologist.
When tranquil, it mesmerizes and soothes us. When it falls from the skies, it can be welcomed, or threatening. In either instance, it affects our wellbeing. In unexpected volumes, it can kill us. Its absence will also kill us. While some creatures have access only to contaminated water that sickens them, others thoughtlessly waste it. History tells us that wars have been waged over access to it.
Although protected by landowner laws, water cannot be owned in its entirety, just as one cannot own sunlight or air. Today, industrialized farming methods use excessive amounts of water, depleting and contaminating supplies. There are financially powerful entities that seek to own all of the world’s water and limit access to it. Profiteers withdraw it from local aquifers, far below earth’s surface, depleting available supplies. They bottle and sell it for profit, nationally and internationally, often selling it back to the very inhabitants of the area from where they have taken it. They use it as a tool to gather power and wealth. Powerful international forces finance construction of dams, displacing millions of people, to gather greater power and control of water sources. Worldwide, water, its purity and availability, is a focus for concern. It is easy for people to take it for granitite, oblivious that this life sustaining resource is at risk.
Why should we think about water? The answer is our lives depend upon it.
See the documentary film titled “FLOW – For the Love of Water”, available on DVD via the internet or view excerpts, in this six segment YouTube Presentation.
Afterwards, you may be inspired to sign a petition to add a 31st article to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, establishing access to clean water as a fundamental human right. Also, at this site, are links to the world wide organizations of citizens and corporations working against the privatization of water and to assure the community of man access to water for generations to come.
Other resources:
“Blue Gold: World Water Wars”, by Malcolm McDowell
“The Holy Order of Water: Healing the Earth’s Waters & Ourselves”, by William E Marks
“Song for the Blue Ocean”, by Carl Safina, Marine Biologist.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
2010 New Year and the Great Awakening
How can, and why should, 2010 become the year of Great Awakening? Who should awaken and what would they awaken to, or from? The Great Awakening is about global warming. It is about genetic manipulation of nature and about seizing ownership of life resources by a select and rich minority. It is about a denial of responsibility for the subsequent consequences of these actions, which could result in the extinction of life as has been known on Earth. Mostly, it is about how these wrongs can be made right through a collective re-commitment.
Regardless if one has faith in a higher power or not, it is difficult to ignore how the environment affects life on Earth. Simply quenching one’s thirst with a glass of pure water, or inhaling a breath of clean air, done with thoughtfulness, reminds one of our body’s reliance on our environment. We expect our environment to be nurturing and not polluted or dangerous. Like all things of value, the environment must be protected. At the very least, environmental responsibility requires awareness and thoughtful care. Ideally, awareness and care would inspire activism on a broader spectrum.
For the millions of years Earth has existed, development and change has occurred slowly and methodically. Species have flourished and perished, due to genetic strengths or weaknesses and their relative biological adaptability. Humans, with brains developed to far greater extents than any other of Earth's creatures, share many characteristics with other species. However, they are, if not the strongest or most agile, the smartest and most successful of all. In synchronization with nature, man has prospered. Nature took great care of man, he reciprocated, and both thrived. The relationship, however, has changed.
In contrast, many of today’s humans, particularly those who believe they control everything within their reach, are reaching for and gathering even more than they need. They do this even at the peril of their own species as well as other creatures; and often contaminating the very food, water and air, their own lives depend upon. By ignoring nature’s rhythms, modern man is writing a new story, one of extinction, framed by denial.
While some are aware of their symbiotic relationship to the environment, others are too greedy for material wealth to realize the harm they do. Material wealth, hidden under a blanket of industrialization and production, is nothing more than the acquisition of food, water and air, the same essential elements needed by the single celled creatures that first inhabited the planet. Some people believe that fortune is something far fancier but in reality, it is not. Without food, water and air life, as we know it, cannot exist. Those three elements control all that lives.
A Great Awakening obliges humankind to be responsible for the protection of food, water, and air from unhealthy molecular manipulations and contaminations. It requires humankind to recognize the sovereignty of the life source, seed or egg, and not strive to patent it for private gain. Most of all, it calls humankind to commit its superior abilities to safeguarding the purity and health of life’s three most important elements so that they may be safely passed to the generations yet unborn. Finally, as a being that expresses belief in a greater power, a Great Awakening would compel humankind to share, and assure access to, safe, healthy food, water and air for all other life on planet Earth.
Happy New Year to all and to all a Great Awakening.
Regardless if one has faith in a higher power or not, it is difficult to ignore how the environment affects life on Earth. Simply quenching one’s thirst with a glass of pure water, or inhaling a breath of clean air, done with thoughtfulness, reminds one of our body’s reliance on our environment. We expect our environment to be nurturing and not polluted or dangerous. Like all things of value, the environment must be protected. At the very least, environmental responsibility requires awareness and thoughtful care. Ideally, awareness and care would inspire activism on a broader spectrum.
For the millions of years Earth has existed, development and change has occurred slowly and methodically. Species have flourished and perished, due to genetic strengths or weaknesses and their relative biological adaptability. Humans, with brains developed to far greater extents than any other of Earth's creatures, share many characteristics with other species. However, they are, if not the strongest or most agile, the smartest and most successful of all. In synchronization with nature, man has prospered. Nature took great care of man, he reciprocated, and both thrived. The relationship, however, has changed.
In contrast, many of today’s humans, particularly those who believe they control everything within their reach, are reaching for and gathering even more than they need. They do this even at the peril of their own species as well as other creatures; and often contaminating the very food, water and air, their own lives depend upon. By ignoring nature’s rhythms, modern man is writing a new story, one of extinction, framed by denial.
While some are aware of their symbiotic relationship to the environment, others are too greedy for material wealth to realize the harm they do. Material wealth, hidden under a blanket of industrialization and production, is nothing more than the acquisition of food, water and air, the same essential elements needed by the single celled creatures that first inhabited the planet. Some people believe that fortune is something far fancier but in reality, it is not. Without food, water and air life, as we know it, cannot exist. Those three elements control all that lives.
A Great Awakening obliges humankind to be responsible for the protection of food, water, and air from unhealthy molecular manipulations and contaminations. It requires humankind to recognize the sovereignty of the life source, seed or egg, and not strive to patent it for private gain. Most of all, it calls humankind to commit its superior abilities to safeguarding the purity and health of life’s three most important elements so that they may be safely passed to the generations yet unborn. Finally, as a being that expresses belief in a greater power, a Great Awakening would compel humankind to share, and assure access to, safe, healthy food, water and air for all other life on planet Earth.
Happy New Year to all and to all a Great Awakening.
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