Season 2, Episode 1: The Plight of the Humble Bee

URGENT EVOKE 1

// 001-2 PLIGHT OF THE HUMBLE BEE

Welcome to Season 2 of the Evoke Network. As an Agent, it is your job to bring attention to the most critical issues in the world by learning, acting, and imagining a new future. This is your first mission of the Season,
complete with instructions below. Congratulations, and good luck in the coming
weeks. We are counting on you!

-Alchemy

THE PROBLEM:

Bees. They may seem small, and insignificant apart from the fact that they give us honey. But there’s another side to this species- a very important trait which we can no longer ignore: their role as pollinators.
For the past decade journalists have talked lightly about the possibility of
the extinction of our bee populations worldwide. Now it’s time for you to do
something, before it’s too late, since about one-third of the human diet comes from
insect- pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of
that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/10/are-bees-the-ne.html) But the bees are mysteriously going
extinct, and Albert Einstein once predicted that if bees were to disappear, man
would follow only a few years later. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1545516/Honey-bees-in-US-facing-ext...)

Three of the 19 UK species are already extinct and a further nine are on the critically endangered list (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1314012.stm). If you add retailers’ profit to farm gate prices, their value to the UK economy is in
the region of £1 billion a year, and 35% of our diet is directly dependent on
them. It is an equation of stark simplicity. No
pollination: no crops…The US has lost 70% of its honeybee colonies over the
past two winters. Losses in the UK currently are running at 30% a year — up
from just 6% in 2003.”

THE MISSION THIS WEEK:
Stop talking, and take action today to fight the extinction of bees while protecting human food security globally.

Other resources:

Extinction of Man?

Colony Collapse Disorder

On the brink of extinction