A U.S.-based, transglobal corporation, Monsanto, is ACTIVELY trying to DESTROY rural bee-keepers in southern Mexico. The Mexican bee-keepers have fought back and won what is probably a temporary reprieve from Monsanto's goddamned GMOs and toxic pesticides. But Monsanto is succeeding elsewhere in its efforts to DESTROY small farmers and especially non-toxic, traditional farmers.
The TED talker ignores this plain case of Bees vs. U.S. Corporate, in Mexico, and talks ever so sincerely and heartfully about rural beekeepers in India and Pakistan.
Maybe she doesn't even know about the Mexican bee-keepers' fight. I'll give her that benefit of the doubt. MANY of us get drenched with corporate propaganda from the corporate press, and also suffer black holes in our brains of non-information where information should be. But this TED talker ALSO way downplays the EPA's utterly irresponsible and disastrous abandonment of "the cautionary principle" on bee colony collapse (and everything else). She also gives credence to Monsanto disinformation about a virus causing bee colony collapse--a virus that hasn't done any such thing for ten thousand years! (That was their first effort to stave off recognition of the real culprit--toxic pesticides.)
She makes a "feel good" appeal about bees, but fails to even touch on the critically important matter of transglobal corporate-run agriculture and its venomous ATTACKS on local farmers, organic farmers and traditional farmers (often Indigenous, with thousands of years of knowledge of safe practices); and she ignores the critically important POLITICAL forces that we need to address, to stop the DEATH OF OUR PLANET.
If we all just love bees, and put bees on our roofs and educate students about bees, all this misery of a DYING PLANET will go away.
I'm not against loving bees--I do!--and, while I don't have bees on my roof, I have nurtured good bee habitat in my garden, which is full of foraging bees and other pollinators. And God knows I'm all for educating students and others about bees. But it's not enough--not nearly enough, not even close--to solving the toxic pesticide death of bees and other corporate assaults on the living world.
I'm not against having a positive attitude. We definitely need to look to what we can do, rather than just lamenting the state of the planet and cursing the profiteers who are killing it. But that positive attitude and positive work MUST include a recognition of the bad actors who are involved, what they have done and are doing, the tremendous power they have in every sphere of influence, and their control over our government, our laws, and our regulators.
Bee colony collapse is THE type-case of horrible Corporate Rule. To ignore that reality in a "talk" about bees is rather stunning, but I'm afraid that this sort of thing is characteristic of the TED Talks.
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