EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Bees 410
hether writes "The mystery of the disappearing bees has been baffling scientists for years and now we get another big piece in the puzzle. From Fast Company: 'A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined — electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.' Now environmentalists and bee keepers are calling for an immediate ban of the pesticide clothianidin, sold by Bayer Crop Science under the brand name Poncho."
EP(what?) (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm and i thought the "P" stood for Protection, but clearly its something to do with Profits and or Pressure.... what a freakin sellout i bet they were pressured to allow more profits by the big agribusiness lobbyists... i guess agribusiness will be the first to cry foul when their crops no longer get fertilised....
I'm safe (Score:0, Insightful)
I'm safe because I'm always wearing my tinfoil hat.
We need to make tinfoil hats for all of the bees now so that they will be safe too.
I'm a hacker so I know about this kind of stuff.
Re:Not like Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, see, you can live in your little Randroid free-market fantasyland all you want. But when you start poisoning the land, air, and water we all have to share, the rest of us will organize to stop you. We will call this organization "the government." We will give this organization the power to fine you, imprison you, or even kill you if you refuse to mend your ways, and you can't stop us. There are more of us than there are of you, we're smarter, and we're better than you in every conceivable way.
Don't like it? Move to Somalia. There are a bunch of people there who have taken your ideology to its logical extreme. Let's see how long you last.
One More Bush Era Screw Up (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just like the BP Gulf oil spill and the coal mine explosion in West Virginia. There are systems in place to protect people and the environment, but when the Republicans gain control they stop all oversight. It takes five to fifteen years to see all the failures, and by then everyone forgets who turned over control to the crooks and lairs.
They just wave the flag, blame everything on the government bureaucrats and illegal aliens, scream about the war on terror, and then lie and deny when the shit hits the fan. I guess as long as these morons continue to lie and cheat their way into power we deserve to have poisoned gulf seafood and the end of flowering crops.
Don't worry, you can just consume more high fructose processed food and get diabetes. The corn/agribusiness lobby will continue to do just fine with their massive tax breaks and government subsidies, and they're so rich that they can afford imported fruits and vegetables. If you get sick and loose your health care you can crawl off and die, and that will solve them problem.
Where are those who dubbed wikileaks 'terrorists' (Score:5, Insightful)
North american bee population has been declining, scientists estimated that in a few decades this would affect everything in agriculture (pollination), and trying to solve it. it was even dubbed end of mankind. it was that serious.
Now it turns out that, your government has allowed bee-killing pesticides. noone heard about it. no journalist made news of it. no ngo was warned of it. NOONE KNEW. if wikileaks didnt leak it, you would not know about it, still.
tell me now, who are the real terrorists ? the ones letting you know that your entire ecosystem and agriculture is being killed by corporations which have been allowed by your government, or, those corporations and the government themselves ?
wise up. support wikileaks. it is giving you the control over your government that was taken away from you.
Snippy "Free Market" Comments (Score:4, Insightful)
So when anything bad happens involving some private enterprise, someone on here usually has some stupid comment like "I thought the free market would make life perfect."
Well, let me be the one to offer a hypothesis: people are no good and there is no perfect system because of people. Or if we want to be sarcastic too "I thought government regulators were going to make life perfect."
malicious skepticism (Score:5, Insightful)
You've insinuated gross incompetence on the part of the researchers. Have you actually gone out and tried to find the answers to these questions? Are you qualified in the field to question the research? Or are you just going off the article, which is a summary of research that was almost undoubtedly much more in-depth than a journalists' summary?
I consider myself a strong skeptic, but one of the duties of a skeptic is to realize their limits. I don't attend a graduate-level lecture and start asking questions - I'd be asked to leave, or at least laughed at. So when I'm confronted with something that doesn't seem right, I seek more information. You're not. You're just throwing out questions. Rather slanted ones.
I see this often, and I suspect it is an actual class of logical fallacy...
1)A slashdotter posts a series of slanted questions and wondering-alouds that are very FUD-ish.
2)The questions aren't (properly) answered, because the audience (jokes about parent's basements aside) doesn't have much knowledge on the subject. Or, the answers that are qualified aren't noticed by moderators.
3)The questions, which are more a challenge to refute a contrary viewpoint to the article than anything else, appear to be valid because there's no response visible. And thus what was probably perfectly legitimate research gets shot down by someone with no background in the subject. Probably not even a mild background in research.
Lastly: the burden of proof no longer rests on the shoulders of the public. After decades of the chemical industry producing toxins and marketing them for uses which were harmful, then doing everything to cover it all up...they are no longer entitled to public trust. If you want to manufacture a chemical and spray it on thousands of square miles of farmland, you better prove first that it doesn't cause problems.
This is especially so, given that research shows that old farming techniques and organic practices are equally or more effective, and cause no permanent damage to people or the environment. Virtually none of the artificial stuff spread on the farmlands of the world are *necessary*, even if one's sole criteria is increased yield.
If anyone wants to see another scary example of this "what, me worry?" attitude, check out methyl iodide, a known toxin, which was just approved for use by California:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fn%2Fa%2F2010%2F12%2F01%2Fnational%2Fa143424S98.DTL&tsp=1 [sfgate.com]
"Hey, it's okay to spread this toxic crap all over the ground, because we'll only use what we think is just enough, and people want pretty strawberries."
Re:EP(what?) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not like Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument for limited government controls to prevent a tragedy of the commons is not also an argument for strong government controls like massive redistribution of wealth and the destruction of the dollar as a valuable entity. Furthermore, your suggestion that Somalia is a form of free market is ludicrous.
You should actually try to understand what you're arguing against. Capitalism is a philosophy of private ownership, pacifism, and protection of property rights. Somalia, by contrast, is what happens when you make a point of not respecting private property. It is no more the logical extreme of Capitalism than Soviet Russia was the logical extreme of communism. They're both good examples of what happens when you believe that might and the majority are all it takes to make right.
You can pretend to be smarter than us, but your asinine suggestion that government shouldn't represent us because we don't adhere to your philosophy is abhorrent and anti-democratic. Furthermore, any intelligent person should be able to see the damage being caused by this particular pesticide. Why do you assume that we wouldn't acknowledge that there is a problem and move to stop it? Are you arguing that we should have predicted this in advance? Are there not errors in your life that you wish you could have prevented?
A good capitalist would admit that he or she fucked up and do something about it. What would you do in the same situation, other than point fingers or beg the Government to come save you?
Re:Some Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you go all tinfoil-hat on us, maybe you should get some points straight. Among them is that the Detroit idea is a proposal, is contingent on approvals at multiple levels and securing funding to move people from neighborhoods that would no longer receive full services, and is simply reflective of the reality that Detroit, once a bustling city of 1.85 million people in 1950, is now under half of that, with nearly 35,000 empty homes.
Besides, urbanization has been happening for centuries. It's picked up the pace in recent decades, but I bet most of the people around in even the 1950s would have been hard pressed to provide entirely for themselves had the need arisen.
This industry is SO CORRUPT. (Score:5, Insightful)
My father is an entomologist for a university Extension Service. For those who don't know (non-Americans), the Extension Services are outreach arms of the universities set up to provide advice to the public. His main job is to advise farmers on pest control measures for crops, mostly cotton; the advice is often "if you spray to kill pest A, you'll also kill predator B, which eats pest C which is resistant to insecticide, and C will eat your cotton. So don't do anything and put up with A, they won't eat that much."
Many of the meetings are sponsored by chemical companies. There are responsible uses of insecticides; used wisely, some insecticides can provide a cost-effective way to increase yields with very minimal long-term environmental harm. But the chemical companies are corrupt as hell. They try to bribe the scientists with lavish gifts to publish studies that favor their products, and encourage farmers (and scientists) to use too much insecticide, or use it when it's not really appropriate. It's sham science done for the sake of greed, and it is disgusting.
On the flip side, there are "studies" that show environmental harm where there really isn't any -- either by misguided "everything must be grown organically" types, or by people pushing back against the chemical company propaganda.
It's hard to tell a damn thing from "studies" on this sort of thing, because everyone is so busy grinding axes that who's right and who's wrong gets completely lost. This makes me, as a scientist in another field where there is far less of that, rather angry.
Re:Some Questions (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree with the sentiment of your post, you misrepresent the neonicotinoids. Nicotine evolved as a natural insecticide; it's only logical that we use it too if we want to kill insects. (When insects should be killed, of course, is not the question here.)
There are pretty stringent controls on how recently food can be sprayed before it's harvested; I'd worry far more about environmental degradation from the stuff than harm to food consumers.
I am sure the EPA will act swiftly (Score:5, Insightful)
These leaks MUST be stopped immediately, and those responsible must go to jail for life, and execution may even be warranted. I am sure the EPA will be acting quickly to ensure those responsible for the leaks are rapidly brought to justice.
This is a clear and dire threat to national security, and the leakers are traitors; think of what will happen when the Bees find out the nature of the pesticide, and the informants who formulated it!
This will only serve to cause more incidents of bee attacks against us, costing precious human lives.
Lives are at stake; and the leakers are enemy combatants performing an act of terrorism
<sarcasm>
Re:Those crazy germans. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, their advertising for Heroin was for "non-addictive opium".. could they have gotten that any more wrong?
Re:Snippy "Free Market" Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because there are idiots out there known as "libertarians" who believe that emasculating the government will solve everything. They are just as fucking wrong as utopian communists.
A transparent market is an amazing thing, but unfortunately, a market desires to be opaque in order to increase profits. Unless you have a strong and largely uncorrupted government to continue providing transparency, you don't have a market. You have a conspiratorial oligopoly that will risk destroying entire ecosystems to push up quarterly profits.
Re:Where are those who dubbed wikileaks 'terrorist (Score:5, Insightful)
Here we are. When they released the locations of targets, they became terrorists.
rest of the world doesnt give a flying fsck about american cia operatives who participated in kidnapping ,or american soldiers who have participated voluntarily in occupations, are being targeted or not. its their choice, their life. they should ask themselves, what are they doing there, in the first place.
what is appalling is that, there are people who are basically saying that we should be sorry for cia operatives who kidnapped german citizens or other nationals from the middle of europe, took them to bases in client countries in middle east, and tortured them. and, anyone revealing the location of these people, are 'terrorists'.
the real terrorists are people who kidnap others, and torture them. the world doesnt give a flying fuck about the 'lives' endangered by wikileaks' leaks as such. they are the terrorists which should have been hunted for that long time. they have even violated constitutions and sovereignty of ALLIED countries.
To recap. get a fucking clue. you dont know right from wrong.
Re:One More Bush Era Screw Up (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that's the responsibility of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However I think the point the gentleman was making was that the Republicans (in particular their "libertarian" wing) have this tendency to gut red tape, minimize government enforcement, and count on industry self-monitoring and "voluntary guidelines" with the expectation that the free market will redress all wrongs. That doesn't happen with car emissions, with pollution controls, with pharmaceuticals (remember snake oil salesmen promoted snake oil for curing all sorts of ailments), or Ponzi schemes gussied up as investment funds. It also doesn't work when there are only around 7 major meat packing companies in the country and safety problems in one producer create significant shortages that drive up the price and force vendors to turn back to suppliers that have proved themselves unsafe in the past. Too big to fail doesn't just happen to banks. There are areas where excessive regulation may be caused by overzealous bureaucrats, but food safety is one where I generally prefer to err on the side of safety.
The one exception I would make regarding food safety, if I could still eat cheese, has to do with the mandated pasteurization of soft cheeses. Put warning labels on the cheese and keep them away from small children and pregnant women, but let me make that choice. It's telling that there have been far fewer deaths in Western Europe from unpasteurised cheeses than there have been in Canada or the US with listeria or E. Coli outbreaks from inspected meat plants. Mainly I find it ridiculous that you can't buy an unpasteurized brie, but cigarettes are sold by the carton at the checkout stand,
Re:This industry is SO CORRUPT. (Score:2, Insightful)
You've also described how modern medicine works as well.
Re:Some Questions (Score:4, Insightful)
"The bad Science Fiction dystopia is real. The bees? Just a late stage of this sad, intentional collapse..."
No, the reality is that nobody could have guessed our current social norms back in the 50's, let alone planned them! The idillic picture of the past you paint is just the misplaced nostalgia of a bunch of semi-senile people from my generation.
Re:One More Bush Era Screw Up (Score:5, Insightful)
This stuff is used because of a conditional waiver that was issued in 2003, against the scientific advices of the experts.
Bees are in decline in europe as well, and the decline has been going on since before 2003.
Maybe this conditional waiver was bad for the environment, I wouldn't be at all surprised, but to think that it's the root cause of the problem is pretty childish.. The world isn't so simple
Re:EP(what?) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not like Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not like Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism is a philosophy of private ownership, pacifism, and protection of property rights.
The only problem is that your argument relies on a sort of "enlightened dictator" in the role of the supreme capitalist. In the history of the world, this has never happened for any significant length of time.
Look at the history of the labor movement. The mega-companies at the turn of the century had de-facto private armies that beat and killed workers who protested horrendous working conditions.
Capitalism in its pure form as as rare as any theory; too many people are avaricious bastards who will screw their own mother for a dime. Capitalism without a strong government will not lead to "respect of property rights"; rather it will lead to theft, murder, and destruction of anyone who is less powerful than you.
Look at the history of the American West; a lot of "pure capitalists" look at that as some sort of proof of superiority of pure american capitalism personified by the immigrants. In fact, those who became wealthy often did so by cheating, killing, and stealing the property of others. It's not a pretty story, and it goes on to this day.
Re:and (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite honestly, I think posts like this deserve to be modded flamebait, even if they do have some seeds of truth in them (the lobbying and all that jazz), because they do not contribute to a conversation in an intelligent or rational manner. They are just pissy rants posted by people too immature to accept the fact that the real world is an ugly place, and more often than not, blame doesn't lie with one group of "thems" verses the "us."
Don't worry though, it appears that, despite some downmodding, the post was modded back up to insightful because, just like some commentators, some moderators are too juvenile to recognize flambait when they agree with the point of the rant being posted. So you and the OP can go back to your smug little world where you see things along black and white lines and there are always "bad guys" that always fall under some easily recognizable label like Republicans, assuring yourselves with every breathe that, "at least we're not like them."
Re:EP(what?) (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition, you can keep the insect infestation quite low by using chickens. Chickens love to eat insects, so if you corral them into the garden for a set amount of time per day, they'll keep the bugs out. Don't let them stay too long, though, or else they'll start eating the crops.