Feeling Connected

 “Sadly, we live in a world where if you do good things, there are no financial rewards. If you poison the earth, there is a fortune to be made.”
― June Stoyer

Professor J,

The theme of your last post was connection. Something that discourages me when talking to people about the myriad of problems we face is how little understanding there is of just how connected everything is. Lots of people tend to think of our problems in little compartments that don't affect anything else. It may be our fatal mistake.

But I'm encouraged today. First this week I read that Obama has banned much of the militarized weaponry that has found its way lately into the hands of local police departments. Something we (and a lot of other people have been discussing). Then yesterday the White House took action to reverse our country's declining honeybee and monarch butterfly populations. Yes, yes, it's a small start but something is better than nothing.

Most people have little understanding (or did until recently) just how closely we've tied our corporate food culture to the honeybee. Bees are now shipped around the country to pollinate crops on massive commercial farms, a practice that weakens the colonies. Under normal conditions, in the wild, or the backyard apiary bees are free to forage from a variety of plants. They know what protein is a specific need at any given time. On a farm where only soybeans or corn are being grown they are forced to feed on only one source. It's unhealthy for them.

But now we need them to do just that. Corporate farming has created an unnatural situation and unless we are willing to do without a large number of the foods we are use to the practice needs to continue until corporate farms begin to diversify crops. A proposition that would make planting and harvesting more expensive. And those feisty pesticide lobbyists (do I even have to say Monsanto?) have kept our government from doing what the European Commission did in 2013, ban neonicotinoids, at least for two years while more research was done.  It's not the only problem but it's a huge part of it.

Many things that people were doing even when they moved to cities like keeping chickens and bees or collecting rainwater are making a comeback. But there are about a third of the beekeepers in the US as there were a few decades ago. I read once that rain barrels went out of fashion when modern laundry detergents and shampoos made them less necessary. But if we are talking connections then our transient lifestyles and mobile careers make things like investing time and energy in a property beyond landscaping for resale value less appealing.

People are overwhelmed with the magnitude of problems we face but rarely realize how much of a difference could be made by doing something small like planting milkweed for monarchs or a variety of plants for bees. Research repeatedly shows that time outdoors eases depression and that sitting for long periods of time is as bad for our health as smoking. We could be taking better care of ourselves and the planet, not to mention securing our own sources of food by doing some very small things. Simple things. If the negatives are all connected then so are the positives. Beginning by wanting to solve one problem we might see a cascade of positive effects.