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bees
Why I Was Arrested for Protesting Citigroup's Funding of Climate Chaos
I am here today to say to Citi that if you won’t listen to the data of scientists, you will need to listen to the bodies of scientists blocking your doors.
Jun 13, 2024
Editor's note: The following is a speech read by Sandra Steingraber before being arrested outside Citigroup’s New York City headquarters on June 12, 2024.
My name is Sandra Steingraber. I have a PhD in biology, and I’ve worked as a scientist my whole adult life.
Here are two things biologists are worried about.
The first thing is happening in the ocean. When fossil fuels are burned and CO2 fills the atmosphere, some of it falls into the sea.
When carbon dioxide touches water, it turns into carbonic acid: H2CO3.
Acid makes calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dissolve. Seashells are made of calcium carbonate. So fossil fuels are turning our oceans into pits of acid, and animals made of shells are starting to dissolve.
I did not become a biologist to write eulogies for the species I study.
All together, the babies of animals with shells are called zooplankton.
Zooplankton are the basis of the marine food chain.
If you dissolve their parents, zooplankton disappear—along with the fish who eat them.
One half of the world’s human population depends on fish for protein. The pH of the oceans is now on track to crash the world’s fish stocks. As a biologist I worry about that.
Now let’s go on land and look at bees. Bumblebees also have babies, and they need to stay cool. So adult bees beat their wings like a thousand little ceiling fans to cool the bee nursery. But they can’t keep up due to more intense heatwaves. Baby bees are dying. Populations are crashing.
Bees help plants have sex. Bees turn flowers into fruits, nuts, vegetables. One-third of the food we eat is made for us by bees. And they do it for free. It’s called an ecosystem service.
If we lose the bees, crops fail. This is how the ecological crisis becomes a human rights crisis. Biologists are worried about this
I have studied climate change since 1982. I’ve testified. I’ve sent letters to the White House. I’ve met with the science adviser. I went to the Paris climate talks. But CO2 levels just reached a new high, and Citigroup is financing the arsonists.
Citi has poured $396 billion dollars into the fossil fuel industry just since 2016.
So, I am here today to say to Citi that if you won’t listen to the data of scientists, you will need to listen to the bodies of scientists blocking your doors. Today my body is a data point. And all together, all these data points on this blockade line make a trend. The trend is that when extinction rates accelerate, scientists get louder.
My message to Citi CEO Jane Fraser: I did not become a biologist to write eulogies for the species I study. I am morally obligated to use my knowledge to defend life against extinction and oppose those who finance it.
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Stopping the ‘Insect Apocalypse’ in the Garden of Capitalism
If neonics are so dangerous, what is the Environmental Protection Agency doing about it? Not very much, as it turns out
Jul 02, 2023
I was reading about bumble bees recently—specifically, their looming demise, thanks to human greed and ignorance—and started thinking about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We should have eaten from it!
Well, we did, but then apparently upchucked everything we learned and, in the process, fooled ourselves into thinking that technology has allowed us to recreate the Garden of Eden from which we’d been banned. You might call it the Garden of Capitalism, in which humans can take what they want without consequences, forever and ever and ever. This seems to be the myth at the core of dominant global culture.
But of course there are consequences, which we officially refuse to let ourselves see. For instance, 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 “neonics”), which wreak their own special hell on the planet’s ecosystems.
Like cluster bombs, land mines, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, “they persist in the environment,” almost as though—forgive the analogy—commercial farming is like an ongoing war on nature.
Neonicotinoids “are the most widely used insecticides in the world,” she writes. “Unlike traditional pesticides, which are typically applied to plant surfaces, neonics... are absorbed and transported through all parts of the plant tissue.
“ ...Modeled after nicotine, neonicotinoids interfere with insects’ 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 cluster bombs, land mines, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, “they persist in the environment,” almost as though—forgive the analogy—commercial farming is like an ongoing war on nature.
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 their danger, which is why Center for Food Safety, along with the Pesticide Action Network North America, are suing the agency. As van Saun writes, “almost half of all U.S. farmland is planted with pesticide-coated seeds,” but the agency refuses to regulate them.
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 “insect apocalypse.”
And indeed, it begins to appear that the EPA has a mission that transcends “environmental protection.” It may well be that this agency—part of a governmental culture that supports and benefits from wealth and war—has a mission that is more about official denial of the dangers of planetary exploitation. The EPA’s refusal to acknowledge the damage caused by neonics is just a small part of it.
“Critics accuse the EPA of being inappropriately cozy with the pesticide industry, and biasing its decisions to favor companies selling pesticides,” the Guardian writes. “Several EPA scientists came forward last year, publicly alleging that EPA management routinely pressures EPA scientists to tamper with risk assessments of chemicals in ways that downplayed the harm the chemicals could pose...
“The scientists complained, among other things, that key managers move back and forth between industry jobs and positions at the EPA.”
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—and revering—the eco-reality (also known as nature) in which we live.
And beyond that, can we not create a culture that faces the paradoxes of life with a certain level of openness and a continued interest in learning? Life is not something to be reduced to simplistic opposites: win vs. lose, good vs. evil. There is darkness within all of us, but we can’t let it determine our fate or shape our understanding of the world. Yet I fear this is the nature of “modern,” as opposed to Indigenous, culture. 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.
This is what things look like when exploitation prevails...
The opposite viewpoint—apparently the indigenous viewpoint, which European land-grabbers called “savage”—isn’t quite so simple. The natural world, while rife with struggle, can’t be reduced to “survival of the fittest.” Rather, it exists in a state of complex cooperation among all concerned—plants, animals—and evolves via the interdependence of all life.
As Rupert Ross wrote in his remarkable book about Indigenous culture, Returning to the Teachings: “The Lakotah had no language for insulting other orders of existence: pest... waste... weed.”
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’t do it. The change has to be cultural. It has to be spiritual.
Believe me, if we fail to change who we are and the bees—the pollinators—disappear, we’ll all feel the sting.
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Why We Are Fighting to Save the Pollinators From Neonics
We all eat, and we all rely on honeybees and other pollinators to create and sustain our food supply. This is a battle humanity cannot afford to lose.
Jun 27, 2023
One of every three bites of food we eat comes from a crop pollinated by bees. This bee-powered nourishment includes apples, blueberries, tomatoes, bananas, avocados, cashews, and almonds–a harvest of more than 130 fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Yet, all this is imperiled by a severe decline of bees and other pollinators worldwide.
A shocking new study just found that mass pollinator loss has already caused half a million early human deaths a year by drastically reducing the global supply of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Between April 2018 to April 2019, the managed bee population in the U.S. decreased by a stunning 40.7%, which experts call "unsustainable."
Why is there such a crisis with these vital spark plugs of our food and fiber? An overwhelming number of scientific studies link these bee declines to pesticides, demonstrating the far-reaching impacts toxic chemical pesticides have on our environment. These bee-harmful pesticides have many long-term detrimental effects and pose an increased risk to fragile ecosystems.
While there are many tactics being used to stop toxic pesticides and protect pollinators and other species, courts are one of the best–and sometimes only–hope for creating meaningful change on the ground.
The pesticides most directly linked to pollinator declines are a group of systemic insecticides called neonicotinoids. These "neonics," as they're often called, are the most widely used insecticides in the world. Unlike traditional pesticides, which are typically applied to plant surfaces, neonics are systemic—meaning they are absorbed and transported through all parts of the plant tissue.
Honey bees and other pollinators are exposed to these toxic chemicals through pollen, nectar, dust, dew droplets on plant leaves, and in the soil where many native bee species nest. Modeled after nicotine, neonicotinoids interfere with insects' 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.
Neonicotinoids are especially dangerous because they persist in the environment and can accumulate quickly–causing contamination of surface water, groundwater, and soil, endangering species that inhabit these ecosystems. This contamination has created widespread harm to aquatic invertebrates, such as mollusks and crustaceans, both vital to aquatic habitats; and evidence shows neonics have potential long-term impacts on waterfowl, rangeland birds, and other wild animals.
Imagine a world with no apples, melons, squash, broccoli or almonds. Three quarters of the crops we consume rely on pollinators, and if we're going to save them from extinction, scientists agree–we must ban the pesticides largely responsible for their demise.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)–which was created to protect our health and the environment from chemicals such as pesticides–continues to approve and register pesticides that are known to harm and kill pollinators such as bees and butterflies.
Last June, a federal court ruled that EPA's reapproval of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, was unlawful for all uses. It even rebuked the agency for ignoring real-world evidence of cancer risks from glyphosate, and for failing to consider impacts to endangered species. While the court ordered EPA to redo its human health and ecological risk assessments by October 2022, the agency blew its deadline and now says it won't complete this vital review until 2026. Meanwhile, pollinators will continue to suffer harm from this toxic pesticide, one of the most widely sprayed in the U.S. and the world.
Equally disturbing is the ongoing proliferation of unregulated pesticide-coated seeds, which are quietly decimating our bees, birds, and butterflies. Just one GMO corn seed coated with neonicotinoid pesticides contains enough pesticide to kill over 80,000 bees or one songbird. Pesticide giants like Monsanto have been selling these deadly seeds with no safety testing or regulation for decades. Now, almost half of all U.S. farmland is planted with pesticide-coated seeds. And despite a Center for Food Safety petition to EPA and our subsequent lawsuit against EPA for denying that petition, the agency refuses to regulate these seeds. Without regulation under national pesticide laws, there is no balancing of the vast harms they cause against their minimal or nonexistent benefit, and for those that may be allowed, there are no instructions to the farmers planting them about how to mitigate impacts or safely dispose of unused seed. With the vast majority of neonic use going to seed coatings, it is illogical and unlawful for EPA not to uphold its duty to protect our environment and people from this unnecessary pesticide use.
To save these essential pollinators, habitats, and biodiversity, we must continue to take these corporations–and the government agencies created to regulate them–to court.
The list of EPA failures goes on. Use of a little known super-pesticide made from one of the same ingredients as Agent Orange is skyrocketing across the United States. Now sold under the name Enlist, it threatens hundreds of endangered species and is linked to Parkinson's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and other reproductive problems in humans. The pesticide industry's excuse for this revival of an old and dangerous pesticide is the widespread resistance of weeds to the pesticide Roundup. This resistance stems from Monsanto's push to convert all commodity crops (like corn, soy, and canola) to genetically engineered, glyphosate-resistant varieties — encouraging the indiscriminate spraying of glyphosate upon them. Natural evolution of weeds means development of a resistance to glyphosate, and the chemical companies are now trotting out older, deadlier chemicals to deal with the problem of their own creation. Despite these deadly risks, in 2022 EPA reapproved Enlist for seven more years.
While there are many tactics being used to stop toxic pesticides and protect pollinators and other species, courts are one of the best–and sometimes only–hope for creating meaningful change on the ground. Often, the only way to halt corporations from using toxic chemicals, and usurping democracy and regulatory integrity, is through litigation.
To save these essential pollinators, habitats, and biodiversity, we must continue to take these corporations–and the government agencies created to regulate them–to court. We all eat, and we all rely on honeybees and other pollinators to create and sustain our food supply. It is a moral and ecological imperative that we do everything possible to sustain them.
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