{"id":54,"date":"2007-06-11T23:01:05","date_gmt":"2007-06-11T21:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/wordpress\/?p=54"},"modified":"2007-06-11T23:01:05","modified_gmt":"2007-06-11T21:01:05","slug":"earth-day-cometh-and-earth-day-goeth-and-where-have-all-the-bees-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=54","title":{"rendered":"Earth Day Cometh and Earth Day Goeth – And Where have all the Bees Gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is from Sea Shepherd<\/a> founder Paul Watson<\/a>, written for Earth Day this year.<\/p>\n

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and
\nI’m not sure about the former.
\n– Albert Einstein<\/p>\n

(1879 – 1955)<\/p>\n

Earth Day is almost here. I don’t believe in Earth Day myself. I think
\nit’s a little silly to devote one single day of the year to being
\nconcerned about the environment, but I suppose one day is better than no
\nday at all.<\/p>\n

Having been an environmental activist since 1968, I have seen the<\/p>\n

movement go up and down like a roller coaster in popularity. It was big in
\n1972 with the Environmental Conference in Stockholm which I attended and
\nit became big again in 1992 with the U.N. Environmental Conference in Rio
\nDe Janeiro that I also attended. I remember that the priority issue in
\n1972 was the danger of escalating human populations but by 1992, that
\nconcern was not even on the agenda.<\/p>\n

Well we are approaching the end of another 20 year period and it looks
\nlike ecology is in vogue again thanks to global warming and a few<\/p>\n

other scary things. Green is once again popular.<\/p>\n

I can always tell when the environment is getting to be faddish again.
\nMy indicator is the number of lectures I am booked for around this time of
\nyear. It reached its peak in 1992, practically disappeared for awhile and
\nnow it’s coming around again.<\/p>\n

What worries me is that the movement is constantly being sidetracked
\nby the issue of the day.<\/p>\n

It’s global warming now. When we were trying to warn people about
\nglobal warming and climate change twenty years ago, no one was
\ninterested. Now it’s become the “in” issue and the big organizations are
\ntapping the public for donations to address the problem although no one
\nhas come up with anything that makes much sense. But global warming is
\ngood for business if you’re one of the big bureaucratic organizations
\nwhose primary concern is really corporate self
\npreservation.<\/p>\n

Greenpeace is even telling people that they can slow down global
\nwarming by (and I kid you not) “singing in the shower”. Yep, you see all
\nyou have to do is run the water, then get wet, shut the water off, and
\nsing in the shower as you lather up and then open up the faucet and rinse
\noff. Ah, so simple to save the world.<\/p>\n

The problem is that these big organizations are too politically
\ncorrect to address the ecologically correct solutions.<\/p>\n

Instead they are baffling everyone with abstract concepts like carbon
\ntrading and carbon storage or trying to sell us a new hydrid Japanese car.<\/p>\n

Even Al Gore with his Inconvenient Truth totally ignored the most
\ninconvenient truth of all. I’ll get to that in a moment.<\/p>\n

But let’s look at the number one cause of global greenhouse gas
\nemissions.<\/p>\n

First and foremost it is human over-population, the very same issue
\nthat was the priority concern at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the
\nEnvironment in Stockholm.<\/p>\n

It’s 6.5 billion people folks.<\/p>\n

Remember in 1950, the world population was 3 billion. It’s now more
\nthan doubled.<\/p>\n

6.5 billion people produce one hell of an annual output of waste and
\nutilize an unbelievable amount of resources and energy.<\/p>\n

And this number is rising minute by minute, day, by day, year by year.<\/p>\n

And most of the people having children have no idea why they are even
\nhaving children other than that’s what you do. Most of them don’t
\nreally love their children because if they did they would be very much<\/p>\n

involved in trying to ensure that their children have a world to
\nsurvive in.<\/p>\n

Unless over-population is addressed, there is absolutely no way of
\nslowing down global greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

But how do you do that within the context of economic systems that
\nrequire larger and larger numbers to perform the essential task of
\nconsuming products?<\/p>\n

Corporations need workers and buyers. Governments need tax-payers,
\nbureaucrats and soldiers. More people means more money.<\/p>\n

I’ve said for decades that the solution to all of our problems is
\nsimple. We just need to live in accordance with the three basic laws of
\necology.<\/p>\n

First is the Law of Diversity. The strength of an eco-system lies in<\/p>\n

diversity of species within it. Weaken diversity and the entire system
\nwill be weakened and will ultimately collapse.<\/p>\n

Second is the Law of Interdependence. All of the species within an
\neco-system are interdependent. We need each other.<\/p>\n

And the third law of Ecology is the Law of Finite Resources. There is
\na limit to growth because there is a limit to carrying capacity.<\/p>\n

Human populations are exceeding ecological carrying capacity.<\/p>\n

Exceeding ecological carrying capacity is diminishing both resources
\nand diversity of species.<\/p>\n

The diminishment of diversity is causing serious problems with
\ninterdependence.<\/p>\n

Albert Einstein once wrote that “if the bee disappeared off the<\/p>\n

surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life
\nleft. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more
\nanimals, no more man.”<\/p>\n

That is the Law of Interdependence.<\/p>\n

Forget global warming folks. The disappearance of the honeybee could
\nend our existence as human beings on this planet far sooner than we think.<\/p>\n

And the honey bee is in fact now disappearing. Why? We don’t know why.
\nIt could be genetically modified crops, I could be pesticides or it could
\nbe that our cell phones are interfering with their ability to navigate.<\/p>\n

Whatever the cause the fact is that they are disappearing. All around
\nthe world bees are disappearing in a crisis called Colony Collapse Disorder.<\/p>\n

And bees pollinate our plants. Everywhere on the planet, bees are hard<\/p>\n

at work making it possible for you to live and enjoy life.<\/p>\n

We hold on to our place on this planet by only a toehold. If anything
\nhappens to the grass family, we are screwed. If the earthworms
\ndisappear, we are in big trouble. If the bees disappear, well
\naccording to Albert Einstein who was considered somewhat smarter than most
\nof us, we will have only four years. Just enough time to get a college
\ndegree to discover that everything you learned is relatively useless when
\nsitting on the doorstep of global ecological<\/p>\n

annihilation.<\/p>\n

We are cutting down the forest and plundering the oceans of life. We
\nare polluting the soil, the air and the water and we are rapidly
\nrunning out of fresh water to drink.<\/p>\n

Only corporations like Coke and Pepsi have figured out that water is
\nmore valuable than gold. That is why they are bottling it in plastic
\nbottles and selling it. This week I saw a bottle of water in my hotel room<\/p>\n

that I could have drunk for only $4.<\/p>\n

Unbelievable. That means that water is now being sold for more than
\nthe equivalent amount of gasoline. I hope that I’m not the only one who
\nthinks this is insanity.<\/p>\n

Now for Al Gore’s really inconvenient truth. In his film he does not
\nmention once that the meat and dairy industry that produces the bacon, the
\nsteaks, the chicken wings and the milk is a larger contributor to<\/p>\n

greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry. You see, Al may
\ndrive a Prius but he likes his burgers.<\/p>\n

This is why the big organizations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club
\nwill not say a thing about the meat industry. Last year I saw
\nGreenpeacers sitting down for a baked fish meal onboard the Greenpeace
\nship Esperanza while engaged in a campaign to oppose over-fishing.<\/p>\n

When we pointed out that our Sea Shepherd ships serve only vegan<\/p>\n

meals, the Greenpeace cook replied, “that’s just silly.”<\/p>\n

We see what we want to see and we rationalize everything else.<\/p>\n

The oceans have been plundered to the point that 90% of the fish have
\nbeen removed from their eco-systems and at this very moment there is over
\n65,000 miles of long lines set in the Pacific Ocean alone and there are
\ntens of thousands of fishing vessels scouring the seas in a rapacious
\nquest to scoop up everything that swims or crawls.<\/p>\n

This is ecological insanity.<\/p>\n

The largest marine predator on the planet right now is the cow. More
\nthan half the fish taken from the sea is rendered into fish meal and fed
\nto domestic livestock. Puffins are starving in the North sea to feed sand
\neels to chickens in Denmark. Sheep and pigs have replaced the shark and
\nthe sea lion as the dominant predators in the ocean and domestic house
\ncats are eating more fish than all the world’s seals combined. We are<\/p>\n

extracting some fifty to sixty fish from the sea to raise one farm raised
\nsalmon.<\/p>\n

This is ecological insanity.<\/p>\n

Yet the demand for shark fin is rising in China. Ignorant people still
\nwant to wear fur coats. In America, we order fries, a cheeseburger and a
\n“diet” coke.<\/p>\n

Ecological insanity folks.<\/p>\n

Last week a reporter called to ask me if I had really said that earth
\nworms are more important than people. I answered that yes I had. He then
\nasked how I could justify such a statement.<\/p>\n

“Simple,” I answered. “Earthworms can live on the planet without
\npeople. We cannot live on the planet without earthworms thus from an<\/p>\n

ecological point of view, earthworms are more important than people.”<\/p>\n

He said that I was insane for suggesting such a ridiculous idea when
\npeople were made in the image of God, and earthworms were not.<\/p>\n

What we have here of course is a failure to communicate between two
\nradically different world views. His which is anthropocentric and sees
\nreality as human centred and mine which is biocentric and sees reality as
\nincluding all species equally working in interdependence. He sees us as<\/p>\n

divine and better than all the other species and I see us as a bunch of
\narrogant primates out of control.<\/p>\n

But that’s my two cents worth for Earth Day 2007.<\/p>\n

Consider the humble honey bee and remember that the little black and
\nyellow insect you see flitting busily from flower to flower is all that
\nstands between us and our demise as a species on this planet.<\/p>\n

We better see to it that they don’t disappear.<\/p>\n

May be freely published and distributed
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

He of course gets in some digs at Greenpeace (he was a Greenpeace founder, but left in 1977 after disagreements on tactics), but the two main points he mentions are overpopulation and meat. Overpopulation is not an issue I’m too concerned about. Most developed societies are seeing shrinking populations, or will soon. It’s also people in developed countries that do much more damage. 1 American can do as much harm as 100 Chadians, so all people are not equal, and a focus on the raw numbers isn’t helpful.<\/p>\n

Meat is a different story. If we eat meat, or fish, we are undoubtedly taking away from the next generation. It’s simply not sustainable. I particularly like the quote about the biggest marine predator being the cow \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is from Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson, written for Earth Day this year. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. – Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) Earth Day is almost here. I don’t believe in Earth Day myself. I think it’s a little silly… Continue reading Earth Day Cometh and Earth Day Goeth – And Where have all the Bees Gone?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fire-social","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}