Fee's World

Pope Francis has published his encyclical

and the 192 page document holds a lot of good stuff, that, hopefully, is going to be taken on board and will begin the change that is needed in this world we live in.

I’m not about to summarize the encyclical … that would be a lengthy blog post. Instead I just want to say that he has covered a lot of topics from global warming to the issue of water, (even covering the pollution of the oceans), and the effects on the poor and developing countries.

It’s pretty read more

Do you remember the blog post I did recently about Pope Francis and the environment? … well, in it I said that the rockin’ Pope was going to be issuing an encyclical (see end for definition), about the environment and humanity’s relationship with nature.

Well, be prepared, read more

What’s in the news at the moment …. that is, world news, is the G7 meeting that’s just ended in Germany.

A quick definition of G7 = The Group of Seven is an informal bloc of industrialised democracies – the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom – that meets annually to discuss issues such as global economic governance, international read more

For those readers who don’t live in New Zealand, let me clear up something about this country.  We are not clean and green as the advertisements say, we are dirty and trashy. This was brought home not that long ago by our own Environment Minister Nick Smith saying read more

Today I read an article about how, none other than the President of the United States … Obama, has come out in defense of the honey bee.  Read the article here Now, don’t get me wrong, I think this is amazing, however, just how much “saving” it will actually do is debatable. Last June (2014) the White House created a task force to find ways to save the bees. See, even though big corporates run the western world, I will say that Obama at least has enough savvy to realise that if the bees go … so does life as we know it. And the extinction of the bees (and other pollinators) is getting all too close. So the task force has come out with a 10 year plan. In a nutshell this is it:

1. Bump monarch butterfly numbers to 225 million.
2. Reduce winter honey bee colony losses by about half.
3. Make 7 million acres of land more pollinator-friendly.
4. Research how to minimize bees’ exposure to pesticides.
5. Re-evaluate the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides.

Perhaps they can achieve the increase in monarch butterfly and maybe they can reduce the winter honey bee losses.  They definitely can make 7 million acres of land more pollinator-friendly. But the last two???? They already know that neonicotinoid insecticides and pesticides are the number one killer of bees – see my bog post here=&2=& And how many bees will die while they do their research?=&3=& Of course we know that the White House is organic and has it’s own bees.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons the President took this stance. However, he’s not gone far enough and groups are now by-passing the President and asking the First Lady to help as reported by the Washington Examiner.

A letter provided by Friends of The Earth asks that Michelle Obama use her influence with the administration and support a ban on these chemicals. Let’s hope she can be a mother for the bees and defend them. This is a critical situation and a lot more urgency is needed ….. the bees can’t wait much longer.   You can help by choosing organic or spray free whenever you can.=&4=& =&5=&

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