So I became an accidental environmentalist writing this book.
Here is an excerpt from my latest release Verities of an Electric Mule Chapter 27: Polar Bears and Bees.
Chapter 27:
Polar bears and bees
Jack assigned me a report on climate change. Investigating an interesting story on polar bears, I researched an article in 2011 about a melt off in the polar ice regions which resulted in a substantial percentage of polar bears drowning. The majestic white bear, planet earth’s apex predator ended up stranded, distressed, and dead. My argument was that dirt, heat and chemicals were being blown up into the upper atmosphere. These particles and leftover chemicals we’re traveling to the Polar Regions cooling down and then falling on the earth. Dark particles had enough dirt to absorb sunlight. The additional absorption of sunlight caused the ice caps to melt. This was affecting the habitat of the polar bear.
In connecting the dots on this story, it circled back to China. In the previous couple of decades China had built a multitude of coal burning power plants with no concerns for particulate matter. My journalistic hunch was that China’s coal pollution had rained down coal ash on the polar caps and created a melting effect, like black soot used to melt off snow on driveways.
I took an educated guess to corroborate (although it wasn’t publicly stated) after the event of the polar bear drownings the US government took notice, made a concerted effort to communicate with China. China made dramatic emissions improvements in their coal plants. The US administration then took a harder line on coal plant emissions. I’m not so sure China did all this out of the goodness of their heart for the polar bears or if the particulate matter pumping out of their coal plants was affecting the local population. Europe had similar experiences during the late1800s using too much coal in fireplaces inside high population areas.
A viewer from Australia was so impressed she sent in a $100 donation, quite a feather in my cap for those reporting efforts to help save the environment. I lived for months just off that compliment.
I had free range on climate change topics after that. I became an accidental environmentalist. My next report needed to relate to the fumes coming out of internal combustion engines as poison. I researched the story about the early industrial age. The story prep detailed using small internal combustion engines on equipment for manufacturing plants. Early factories used ICE equipment such as forklifts.
The small engines exhausted (besides smoke and soot) carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and the other noxious chemicals from burning fossil fuels inside of buildings. People thought invisible exhaust fumes dissipate in large buildings. THEY DON’T DISSIPATE.
It made people sick and have illness overtime.
The hook to the story was that there’s poison pouring out of your gas exhaust. A person can go into a garage, start their car, and commit suicide by inhaling the fumes in a couple of hours. In perspective, a person could place the car in a large gymnasium and run the exhaust fumes and suicide would occur in a couple of days.
You ended up dead in both scenarios. Just one took more time. Let’s relate to the fact that the atmosphere is finite. We’re poisoning ourselves.
We will not die next week or probably even the next decade. If we keep pouring poison out of pipes, 100 years from now, poison will fill up our atmosphere.
At that point, it’s lights out for the entire human race, mass self-extinction. Do you know why world leaders call it Climate Change? They can’t publicly state what it is, self-extermination.
Humans on earth don’t think their actions result in negative consequences because the consequences don’t show up in a single lifetime.
The person doing the damage doesn’t see the results.
The following generations do.
A good explanation of this is discussing DDT. It was a pesticide used in the 70s before anti-bug zealots knew the widespread of facts poisoning the environment. It was a wonder pesticide.
People could pour it around the house. People could spray it on the bushes. Every bug in the environment disappeared.
That seemed great to all the people that had enough bugs in their life. Other animals up the food chain ate the bugs to survive. The breakthrough in this ecological disaster was when people noticed the birds weren’t singing and the frogs weren’t chirping.
The absorption of the poison in the bugs killed both the bird and the frog. DDT the so-called miracle pesticide invented and spread by man killed species.
To make matters worse, up the food chain animals Eagles and Hawks fed on small birds and frogs. The DTT entered their reproductive system and created eggs that couldn’t hatch, stopping reproduction.
No species can survive if reproduction stops.
Hear the buzz
Beekeepers and like-minded ecologists began noticing a decline in the bee population over the last couple decades. Bees are those wonderful little things the fly around and land on flowers spreading pollen, creating reproduction of the plant. Bees assist in producing food sources for humans. Bees also produce a product called honey. These are essential to life on the planet. Long term decline of the bee population will affect food supplies. Humans need food. Ecologists have raised the alarm, no one really listens.
We’re all on Instagram or Facebook, looking at photos of food, but don’t see the bee.
I relate the conditions of decline to the advancement of the zero-turn motor and its ability to swipe off clover before it blooms.
This is another example of the unintended consequences of our technological advance.
The lawn mower guy is happy. His lawn looks great. He has a right to mow his lawn. No one tells him what to do with his lawn mower or his lawn.
Add to that weed killer to remove dandelions and bees have nothing to eat. Environmentalists started recording a syndrome called colony collapse. Today the public is being told the same thing “they” told us on DDT. lead, asbestos and cigarettes. “Nothing to see here” Keep that in mind, your part of the hive.