48 hours to ban bee killers
avaaz.orgThis is of utter importance, I HOPE everyone of my followers KNOW the consequences of bees going extinct. (Edit because of my mistake, sorry:) The bee is the main pollinator to crops and plants on our planet, and without them, it wouldn’t take very long until we lost major portions of our vegetation today, because they would die out. Without them, we would basically doom our world to end. It’s a very simple fact. Please help and sign the petition.
I know some of you might scoff at this and go “so what, I hate bees” or “I’m deathly allergic”. Well, my mother and brother are both severely allergic to bees, and guess what? My father is a bee-farmer. They still get by splendidly and help out with the work. As long as you’re careful, there is no problem with bees. The fact remains, if we didn’t have bees, we wouldn’t have vegetables or greens or any plants. And with no plants, animals can’t survive, and in the end, we will sit here, with no ways of sustaining life.
I don’t care how silly I sound, this is very important to me.
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http://www.avaaz.org/en/hours_to_save_the_bees/?cbXvCbb
Quietly, globally, billions of bees are dying, threatening our crops and food. But in 48 hours the European Union could move to ban the most poisonous pesticides, and pave the way to a global ban that would save bees from extinction.
Four EU countries have begun banning these poisons, and some bee populations are already recovering. Days ago the official European food safety watchdog stated for the first time that certain pesticides are fatally harming bees. Now legal experts and European politicians are calling for an immediate ban. But, Bayer and other giant pesticide producers are lobbying hard to keep them on the market. If we build a huge swarm of public outrage now, we can push the European Commission to put our health and our environment before the profit of a few.
We know our voices count! Last year, our 1.2 million strong petition forced US authorities to open a formal consultation on pesticides — now if we reach 2 million, we can persuade the EU to get rid of these crazy poisons and pave the way for a ban worldwide. Sign the urgent petition and share this with everyone — Avaaz and leading MEPs will deliver our message ahead of this week’s key meeting in Brussels.
5 disturbing trends you should pay attention to in 2013
theweek.com“Perhaps you’ve heard stories about how close many of our most well-known animals are to extinction: 97 percent of the world’s tigers have been wiped out in the last century and the World Wildlife Fund warns the remainder could be gone in a decade or two. Ditto for elephants, sharks, and even the tiny honeybee, which is essential for pollinating our food sources.
But these are just the high-profile examples. Escaping the broader public’s attention, warns the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) is the possibility of ‘30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century.’ Not just animals, but plants that are critical for human life. Rain forests, coral reefs, grasslands, tundra, and the polar seas — these critical, life-enhancing ecosystems that humans take for granted are all at risk. It is, the CBD warns, the ‘worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.’ Granted, some of this is natural, but human behavior — habitat destruction, pollution and yes, global warming — is accelerating the process.
Although few Americans have knowledge in basic sciences, it hasn’t stopped us from challenging or dismissing the peer-review findings of those who do. We don’t want to invest in addressing a slow-moving catastrophe like this because it’s just too hard to focus or acknowledge something that isn’t top of mind. ‘If honey bees become extinct,’ Albert Einstein noted, ‘human society will follow in four years.’ If you’re smarter than Einstein, Mr. Armchair Expert, tell me why he’s wrong.”
The extinction crisis, and four other disturbing trends you should pay attention to in 2013
5 Butterfly Species Just Vanished While No One Was Looking | Mother Jones
motherjones.com
An entomologist hired by the state of Florida to find any surviving members of five rare butterflies species spent six years on the search instead of the two without finding any.
