Einstein once famously said that human beings would disappear from the face of the Earth four years after bees went extinct.
Well, that was a long time ago. And I am not convinced that this was only about bees. There are plenty of species out there that, if they were to go extinct, would eventually seriously affect us. After all, even if we cannot make the immediate connections to them and our own survival, there definitely has to be an impact, and it is likely to be much more important than we initially recognized. That always seems to be the way that we do things.
In recent years, we began to notice that bee populations seemed to be disappearing. This was alarming, as people remembered that quote by Einstein. But nobody seemed to be certain about what, specifically, was causing it. But there was widespread suspicion that it was related to pesticides, which, when you think about it, makes sense.
Nothing happened in some, perhaps even most countries. After all, in a country where climate-denying politicians keep getting elected, like in the United States, you cannot expect anything like this to be taken seriously.
Yet, it was taken seriously elsewhere, particularly in Europe. Action was taken, and legislation was passed to ban some of the pesticides believed to be killing the bees. And France, in particular, is going a bit farther still, outright attempting to ban all such pesticides:
In May 2018 the EU banned three of the significant pesticides implicated in the collapse of bee populations. Clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam are now prohibited for use on crops.
However France has gone a step further and set the high bar in the effort to save the bees. Given the importance of pollinators to nature and the survival of the biosphere, this could not happen too soon!
So, while that makes me proud as a dual citizen of France and the United States, it should be noted that this was not static. It did not simply happen to be France, of all countries, that took this action. Read this:
There is a reason why France is ahead of the field in this regard: The “bee killing” pesticides were tested first on French fields in the 1990’s – and the French farmers witnessed first-hand the catastrophic effects that occurred in 1994; describing “a carpet of dead bees”. 400,000 bee colonies died within days – yet the story was buried under a layer of corruption and distorted science.
So, this came at a cost. But I still am glad that France is taking this step, as it shows that we can indeed accept our past mistakes and faulty thinking, and come to terms with it and, most importantly, at least try to take some corrective measures to at least address, if not outright fix, some past mistakes. It sometimes feels to me that the United States, by contrast, sticks doggedly on a collective basis to this silly notion that it never made mistakes, and thus has no problems to fix. We all make mistakes, and the key, after falling, is to get and keep fighting, not to give up or pretend that there is no problem. In this case, France made a big mistake in ignoring this story in the mid-nineties, but it is now, finally, doing something about it. For that, I applaud this action by France, and wish that Americans could take some hints from this, and other actions by other countries in at least trying to confront our detrimental impact on this planet head-on, and try, at least, to minimize the damage.
Below is the link to the article that I got this story from, and from which I obtained all of the quotes used above:
France Becomes The First Country To Ban All Five Pesticides Linked To Bee Deaths
http://www.herbs-info.com/blog/france-becomes-the-first-country-to-ban-all-five-pesticides-linked-to-bee-deaths/?i=rd&fbclid=IwAR3ubDjo8qyck8v2qB3lT6jZ768f16MJmmEl_vtt7aMg54B9GldjG3C_Hcg
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