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by Sudophysics 1985 days ago
A society of advanced apes with a penchant for destroying their environment decides that a species that is necessary for their survival is better off dead because they don't care for a weird thing called science.
7 comments

Smugly declaring that your side is based in the "science" and the other side isn't doesn't automatically make it true. The question of whether to allow a pesticide that kills bees is a public policy question, not one of science, though science can certainly be used to inform decisions.
Of course, but you don't seem to have picked up or entertain my implied sentiment and position that public policy is great at best and deception at worse and people often vote against their own interests due to lack of educated individuals, with agreed upon facts and goals, as well as critical thinking being a cultural, societal, worldwide human "common".

For a successful civillization reality must take precedence over public relations for Nature cannot be fooled.

People are just fing resistant to change and we've really made a mess in a lot of ways not good for the hive or the bess and unbound externality called willful ignorance is burning away at the roots of society, jeopardizing the tree of consciouness.

It's more than a travesty.

Public policy?

Which world are you living in?

Sooner or later it becomes a question of survival.

Hard to have a policy when the public is dead.
If we could only remember the old “Four Pests”[1] campaign. Ah, grand old optimistic campaigns of the triumph of people over nature!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign

We'd rather have cheap sweet things than expensive sweet things. Then we'll come up with a cheap solution for the consequences that causes even more problems, and on and on.

It seems like most of the problems we have as a society are because we choose expedient solutions rather than careful solutions to problems.

Vote with your dollar and buy organic. It’s not cheap, but it sends a message.
This approach appears to work since we thrive as a species.
We're only about 200 years into such decision making having the ability to effect things so quickly on a macroscopic scale. Your statement amounts to standing on the crest of the wave and saying "see we're fine!" Unaware of the potential fall and disregarding the harm that short term solutions have already caused.
What are you comparing us to? We don't have a control group for intelligent species.
Why do you consider intelligence somehow special over big teeth or ability to change color at will?
Because intelligence is a more general purpose tool that can be used to overcome more specialized advantages.
Honey bee's are not native to Britain, and are not in any danger of disappearing because, like chickens, sheep, cows, and other livestock, we control their population; when demand or price of honey bee's is high beekeepers produce more, when it is low they produce less: https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/04/17/bee-apocalypse-was-neve...
Not sure how you came to that conclusion after reading that article. It states that honeybees (Apis mellifera) possibly originated in Asia and spread to Africa and Europe about 300,000 years ago.

Additionally, it is likely that honeybees are native to Britain: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250278609_Are_honey...

The greater issue here though is that if honeybees are affected, there are likely many other bee species and insects that are affected that we _aren't_ protecting.

>likely many other bee species

I don't know specifically about Britain, but most bee species are solitary, and without a hive, they're not as vulnerable to disease, or poison transferred back to their home. Other types of bees accidentally exposed would likely only die themselves, not quickly spread it to and kill other populations.

2nd sentence of 2nd paragraph says: "honeybees, which are actually not even native to North America, Europe or Australia" guess it depends on how you define "native"
I don't think the UK wants the bee species dead. I think we/they just take for granted the resiliency of the environment we live in.
That, or they reason that if they live in a house that's burning down, adding another flame won't make a difference.
More like: I don't think the UK wants the bee species dead. I think business interests just want money now more.
I guess I agree with you in general, but you're simplifying the issue so badly that you still deserve my downvote.
Arguably it's the success of science that has allowed us to destroy our environment. Back in the middle ages we didn't have much leverage over nature.

The problem we have is that there's lots of us and we're pretty insatiable.

We had lots of leverage over nature in the middle ages. By that point Britain had little woodland left, and what remained was often managed. People were digging ditches and creating hedgerow as a boundary.

Larger mammals like bear, lynx, and wolf were extinct or on their way out. Large birds of prey were aggressively persecuted. There was even land reclamation as far back as Roman times.

Humans have been dominant over wildlife in Britain for a long time. There are probably American zip codes areas that have more untouched landscape than the whole of britain.