{"id":772945,"date":"2023-07-05T07:29:35","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T11:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=772945"},"modified":"2023-07-05T08:04:55","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T12:04:55","slug":"neonics-its-time-to-stop-the-insect-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=772945","title":{"rendered":"‘The Novichok of Bees’: Neonicotinoids – It\u2019s time to stop the insect apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Neonicotinoids are the most widely used insecticides in the world. Modeled after nicotine, neonicotinoids interfere with insects\u2019 nervous systems, causing tremors, paralysis, and eventually, death. Neonicotinoids are so toxic that one corn seed treated with them contains enough insecticide to kill over 80,000 honey bees. And, like depleted uranium, they persist in the environment.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

ROBERT KOHLER:<\/strong> Amy van Saun, an attorney for the nonprofit Center for Food Safety, writing about the shocking disappearance of bees and other pollinators of much of the food we eat (fruit, vegetables, nuts), notes that one of the primary causes is the ever-increasing use of pesticides, in particular, something called neonicotinoids (or \u201cneonics\u201d), which wreak their own special hell on the planet\u2019s ecosystems.<\/em><\/p>\n

Neonicotinoids \u201care the most widely used insecticides in the world,\u201d she writes:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike traditional pesticides, which are typically applied to plant surfaces, neonics . . . are absorbed and transported through all parts of the plant tissue.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c. . . Modeled after nicotine, neonicotinoids interfere with insects\u2019 nervous systems, causing tremors, paralysis, and eventually, death. Neonicotinoids are so toxic that one corn seed treated with them contains enough insecticide to kill over 80,000 honey bees.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And, like cluster bombs, land mines, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, \u201cthey persist in the environment,\u201d almost as though \u2014 forgive the analogy \u2014 commercial farming is like an ongoing war on nature.<\/em><\/p>\n

If neonics are so dangerous, what is the Environmental Protection Agency doing about it? Not very much, as it turns out, despite scientific evidence of its danger, which is why Center for Food Safety, along with the Pesticide Action Network North America, are suing the agency. As van Saun writes, \u201calmost half of all U.S. farmland is planted with pesticide-coated seeds,\u201d but the agency refuses to regulate them.<\/em><\/p>\n

The result, according to a U.N. report, is that cropland is approximately 50 times more toxic than it was a quarter of a century ago, at the beginning of the 21st century, and the world is currently experiencing an \u201cinsect apocalypse.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And indeed, it begins to appear that the EPA has a mission that transcends \u201cenvironmental protection.\u201d It may well be that this agency \u2014 part of a governmental culture that supports and benefits from wealth and war \u2014 has a mission that is more about official denial of the dangers of planetary exploitation. The EPA\u2019s refusal to acknowledge the damage caused by neonics is just a small part of it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCritics accuse the EPA of being inappropriately cozy with the pesticide industry, and biasing its decisions to favor companies selling pesticides,\u201d the Guardian writes…<\/em><\/p>\n

This is when I started hearing an alarm go off in my head: Cultural malfunction alert! Cultural malfunction alert! This is what things look like when exploitation prevails: when grabbing all the goodies you can is at the cultural core, rather than something a bit more complex, such as understanding \u2014 and revering \u2014 the eco-reality (also known as nature) in which we live…<\/em><\/p>\n

There is darkness within all of us, but we can\u2019t let it determine our fate or shape our understanding of the world. Yet I fear this is the nature of \u201cmodern,\u201d as opposed to indigenous, culture.<\/em><\/p>\n

Humanity, over the past few millennia, has moved its sense of reverence away from Mother Earth and essentially to Father Sky, rather than continuing to revere both. As a result, Mother Earth is ours to do with as we choose…<\/em><\/p>\n

The natural world, while rife with struggle, can\u2019t be reduced to \u201csurvival of the fittest.\u201d Rather, it exists in a state of complex cooperation among all concerned \u2014 plants, animals \u2014 and evolves via the interdependence of all life…<\/em><\/p>\n

Back to pesticides then. Back to weed killers. Back to climate change and the apparent inability of the polluters who purport to be in charge of Planet Earth to address it adequately: Superficial change won\u2019t do it. The change has to be cultural. It has to be spiritual. <\/em>SOURCE…<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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