Just in case global warming isn’t enough environmentalist-induced guilt for you, then here’s another, from “librit” over at Ezra Klein’s blog:
At the top of the list is a request that we start considering some of our smallest critter-neighbors, the bees. Albert Einstein either did or didn’t have this to say about bees:
“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.”
And while some bloggers are busy devoting time and bandwidth to proving or disproving that it was indeed Einstein who made that dire prediction, I’d like to point out that regardless of who said it, bees are in trouble.
And so, therefore, are we….
Regardless of your politics, I hope you’ll think about the bees this weekend, as well as the many ecosystems–all interdependent, all quite fragile and easy to disrupt–that keep our planet and our species grooving along.
Yes, the bees are disappearing. Of course, if you look at the article, the problem appears to be confined to the United States. I’m not surprised, as environmentalists have a track record of predicting gloom and doom that usually don’t come true. Here are a few of their more stellar moments:
-Rachel Carson, the patron saint of the movement, whose scientifically unsound book, Silent Spring, claimed that DDT caused cancer in humans (no, it doesn’t). This led to a near worldwide ban of DDT. Cancer rates didn’t improve because of it, but the incidence of Malaria did, killing millions.
-Paul Ehrlich, who predicted massive worldwide famine during the 1970s and 1980s in his book Population Bomb. How’s that working out for you, Paul?
-Remember the Alar scare of the late 1980s? Turns out to have been a hoax perpetrated by the likes of the Natural Resource Defense Council. Didn’t help at all with lowering cancer, but banning Alar did make fruits like apples more expensive.
-Remember noted oceanographer Ted Danson’s prediction circa 1988 that we had only ten years left to save the oceans? Well, it’s about 19 years later and they are still there.
So, do yourself a favor this Earth Day. Don’t believe all the gloom-and-doom hype. Tell yourself the Earth isn’t fragile, because it isn’t. Get a reasonable perspective on global warming by going here and here.
And do celebrate. First, fill up your car with gas-best if done at an Exxon. Second, find some both plastic and disposable and throw it away. And third, go eat a steak and have lots of peppers and onions with it so that when you get home you can add some methane to the atmosphere.
