Civilization Collapse Disorder?

Michael Schacker's "A Spring Without Bees" is an alarmist book about an impending global food crisis caused by the - wait for it - collapse of beehives.

Ridiculous?

Not necessarily. Before reading this and other books on the bee crisis, I rather stupidly assumed that honeybees were good for honey, and that was it. In reality, honeybees are important pollinators of vegetables, fruits and nuts. And they are disappearing. During the 1990's, the varroa mite killed off a large portion of managed honeybees all around the world, and virtually all feral honeybees in the United States. For the past ten years, another mysterious disease has been running amuck among honeybees: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). If the world's honeybee population shrinks even more, food prices might soar, leading to severe strains on an economy that isn't exactly booming.

Other pollinators are also threatened. The alkali bee pollinates alfafa, used as food for cattle. When the alkali bee population in the Western United States began shrinking, perhaps due to pesticides, they could be replaced by Canadian leafcutter bees. But now, these too are disappearing, due to parasites. Otherwise, habitat destruction or toxic chemicals seem to be the main reasons for sharp drops in pollinator populations: birds, bats, butterflies and bumblebees. One formerly abundant species of American bumblebee, Bombus occidentalis, is seriously threatened (Schacker believes it might already be extinct).

The author claims that the cause of CCD has been positively identified: the insecticide IMD. A large part of the book is devoted to proving this point. Other authors are less sure, and believe that the ultimate cause is still unknown. Naturally, the company producing IMD also denies responsibility. According to Schacker, the honeybees came back in France when IMD was banned by the government. He also claims that organic beekeepers (who obviously don't use IMD) don't have CCD. One hole in the argument is that Africanized "killer bees" aren't struck be CCD either. Are they immune to insecticides?

If pollinators start dying off all over the line, the result would indeed be what Rachel Carson called "a fruitless fall". Or even foodless! Colony Collapse Disorder might become Civilization Collapse Disorder, to use the author's words.

I don't deny that the ecological crisis is real, complicated and difficult to solve. But where should we look for solutions? To Schacker, the only solution is organic beekeeping...and organic farming. The author believes that this is a viable option. I don't. Can all agriculture the world over, or even in the United States, really go organic? I'm pessimistic. Shacker claims that organic farming is profitable because "green" products sell for more, but how many people can afford to pay more for their food? The argument sounds hopelessly parochial: welcome to prosperous American suburbia!

Michael Schacker blames "the mechanistic model of the universe" for our present predicament. Instead he wants more ecological and holistic thinking. Schacker seems to be a New Age-inspired Green, perhaps even an Anthroposophist. However, the author himself applies "mechanistic" reductionism when he attempts to pinpoint the exact cause of CCD. Indeed, the "machine model" is a methodological device enabling scientists to understand the material causes of co-evolution, thus making it *easier* to get a clue about what is going on ecologically speaking. I'm not a materialist either, but it's unclear how ecology would be enhanced by a vaguely "spiritual" method of research? Schacker is confusing reductionism as a method (which is often necessary in science) with reductionist materialism as a metaphysical standpoint, which is something else again.

I'm not saying "A Spring Without Bees" is a bad book, but personally I don't resonate with everything the author is saying. Perhaps I'm simply less optimistic? In the end, I give his work three stars.