Bee Afraid

Colony Collapse Disorder of bee hives has killed tens of billions of bees over the last decade or so. Beekeepers across Europe and North America have found each summer their hives empty or filled with dead bees - as much as 40% of the total bee population. In the absence of any obvious cause, there has been wide ranging speculation about climate change, viruses and mites, and pesticides.

 

Bees - Nature's free service to humanity

We depend on bees pollinating crops for a huge proportion of our food - some estimates suggest as much as 70% is dependent on pollination by bee and other pollinators such as various weevils and beetles, birds and bats. Bees are particularly important as they carry out about half of this "free service" from Nature, as farmers refer to the pollination process.

ALL of these species are mysteriously declining across Europe and North America - notably, there are fewer to no instances of colony collapse disorder in countries where these chemicals are still largely absent from their agriculture (although there is a risk that, if they are banned country by country in the rich nations, the chemical companies will try to foist them on poorer nations, spreading the contamination). If the decline is not arrested, the brutal truth is that it will not be long before a domino effect could follow with significant declines in food production in the northern hemisphere when food prices are already at record levels. No one can realistically guess how far the process could go and the serious social, economic and health problems that could result.

A two year old North American study, as yet unpublished but seemingly verified by recent work by French scientists, confirms the adverse toxic impact of nicotinoids (including a specific type called Imidacloprid). A range of experiments have shown that, even with tiny dosages which cannot eventually be traced in their bodies, bees exposed to nicotinoids are very substantially more likely to contract illnesses which kill them. Although the pesticide itself may not destroy them, there appears to be a strong link between it and bee deaths, perhaps through damage done to the immune and/or nervous systems.

The pesticides are used to target mites attacking agricultural crops, but once a plant is treated with them, they are highly invasive, seeping into the plants' structure rather than remaining as a coat on the surface. Consequently, bees taking pollen from the plants, even sometime after the pesticide treatment, are likely to be ingesting the toxins and, by then feeding the pollen back into their hives, spreading its effect to other bees, including unhatched larvae and the Queen Bee.

The German company Bayer is the largest manufacturer of nicotinoids, which were deployed over a quarter of Britain's agricultural land last year. Bayer insist these are safe "when used correctly" - even although the tests they have used previously to establish this safety stamp have been criticised by some in the scientific community as not valid.

But perhaps one of the most troubling aspects of this has been the lobbying Bayer has done with the British Beekeepers' Association to try to head off criticism of nicotinoids - the Co-op has banned their use on its suppliers' farms and the Soil Association has petitioned to make them illegal. As well as supplying speakers to run sessions at last year's BBKA conference to reassure about the supposed safety of nicotinoids, Bayer have managed to secure BBKA endorsement of some of its products as bee-friendly, in spite of the strongly voiced reservations about the toxins impact on bees voiced by some very well-qualified BBKA members.

The BBKA has been criticised by members over its financial relations with the agrochemical industry in the past, but in the wake of the latest furore it had now promised to break these off. However, the fact remains that, although nicotinoids and their derivatives have been banned in many European countries, they remain widely used in Britain and the USA. Bayer and other manufacturers such as Syngenta remain busy at work justifying the continued use of their products.

International action by the Food &Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations is urgently needed to arrest the spread of these dangerous chemicals and tackle the decline in pollinator populations. Further confirmation of the study's findings is needed, but in the meantime, nicotinoids should be prohibited internationally as a precaution. Our biosphere and the creatures that inhabit it (humans included), all linked in ways so complex we cannot even begin to comprehend, are too fragile and too precious to put at any further risk simply for the sake of the shareholders of agrochemical giants like Bayer and Monsanto.

There is a quote attributed to Einstein, that claims:

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” 

The words, contrary to myth, are not his and they may exaggerate the speed of impact - but in a world with such incredible co-dependency between the species, we ignore their salutary warning at our peril.

What was wrong about "What the Green Movement got wrong"?

Channel 4 in the UK has just shown a very lengthy, two-part mockumentary provocatively titled "What the Green Movement Got Wrong" . Unlike a previous programme of this ilk, The Great Global Warming Swindle, it did not particularly challenge climate change, but rather tried to show that green campaigns, when successful, have done more harm than good. Three examples:

- malaria in African slums could be reduced by making the chemical toxin DDT available to spray inside houses "in small quantities", but campaigns by Greens in the 1980s to have DDT stopped from being heavily used in agriculture had led to outright bans of DDT in many countries. This in turn left people living in squalid shanty towns vulnerable to mosquito bites and malarial infection - all because of the greens. At least, that was what the scientist Dr Florence Wambugu, who had previously worked for agri-chemical giant Monsanto, was given free rein to argue. (The programme skated over the fact that Greenpeace dropped its opposition to small scale use of DDT nearly a decade ago).






The real solution to malaria - DDT powder or slum clearance?

  On the other hand, just how safe is DDT, even at low levels and especially over any protracted period? Rather than DDT, wouldn't proper investment in clearing the slums and providing decent accommodation to the people living there be better?

- genetically modified food: the successful green campaign in the European Union to ban the sale of genetically modified (GM) foods was contrasted with how widely used it is in the USA - 70% of foodstuffs in many regular restaurants in the USA are GM and declared "delcious" by a contributor. Meantime, African farmers were shown harvesting low nutrition sorghum, grown as it is resistant to drought. Much better if they could grow GM crops designed to provide better nutrition in such bad climatic conditions.

Yet, given the contrast between the health of the average American and that of the average EU citizen, perhaps the jury is out on this for now. And as for the farmers, would a better solution not be found in reforming the trade system that denudes Third World countries of its food? GM could have untold consequences for other crops.

- nuclear power: Mark Lynas, who has written powerful articles on global warming, including the book "Six Degrees", visited Chernobyl, wistfully reflecting on the dreadful legacy of the 1986 disaster. It was an old reactor, he concluded. The new ones would be much safer, he was sure. The nuclear industry had cleaned up its act since 1986 - the implication being that Chernobyl and Three Miles Island could never happen again.

More than that, because the greens had spearheaded a reaction to these disasters which led to the cancellation of planned nuclear reactors, governments instead commissioned more coal powered electricity, leading to millions of tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. A former Greenpeace activist, Patrick Moore, was put up to denounce the "anti-science" of the green movement. But there again, he is now a paid lobbyist for the nuclear power and logging industries, so could he be trusted to say anything else?

Another view, summarily dismissed in the programme, would be that given the hugely uneconomic cost of nuclear reactors, governments have shied away from building the things. The argument presupposes a choice limited to coal or nuclear, ignoring the clean alternatives - such as solar, wind and waver power- which greens argue for in place of both these different but dirty and dangerous forms of energy production. It is bizarre to hold the green movement responsible for the decisions of others.

Channel 4 devoted 2 hours to this misleading polemic. Like previous efforts in this field, it was full of holes, half-truths and dissimulation. Greenpeace set out the very real corporate lobby interests of those contributing to the programme in the guise of "new environmentalists", allegedly able to see the science and weigh up realistically what is needed for the future. Others in the green movement were portrayed as wild-eyed evangelists, proselytising for a mythical past and hostile to anything modern. "The greens can dish it out, but they can’t take it," Lynas smirks, evidently revelling in his self-assigned moniker of "turncoat".

Lynas may or may not still have as alarming views of our likely future as he has expressed often enough, but if he thinks his efforts this evening in any way will assist the long battle to stop global warming, he is sadly deluded. Even if a complaint to OfCom, the broadcast regulator, of being badly misled by the producers from one of the contirbutors is upheld, at least some damage will have been done.

Channel 4 has a remit to be controversial and, of course, any and all sides of any debate have a right to be aired. But there needs to be a distinction between what is presented as documentary fact and what is simply the personal opinion of individuals - in the latter case, where is the balance? Will the green movement now be given two hours to put a counter-case? Or will this supposedly objective film be left standing for unquestioned use as propaganda by those who wish to carry on as usual?

Everyone involved in this enterprise should be searching their consciences. Self-publicity and audience ratings can come at a high cost to others - and to the planet.

Channel 4 - what is it up to?