Societal Collapse - will we do it too?

Originally posted by PinkFloyd
I don't consider "mass extinctions" to be crises; I consider it evolution.

Would you consider a man-made "mass extinction" (that just might almost but not quite include the human species) to not be a “crises“ but merely “evolution”?

Originally posted by peacablekingdom
It ain't lookin' good. What scared me recently was a show about the decline of bee populations. Without them, no pollination takes place; therefore, no food. This show said, at the current rate of decline, pollinating bees will be gone by 2032. Why did my wife and I just have a child?

I can claim to be almost an “expert” in food production and I think this is being just a bit too pessimistic here:

“no bees” does not mean “no food”.

That is because, for starters, many crops such as wheat, oats, barley, rice, sweet corn, maize, millet etc are monocotyledon crops and, like most monocotyledon plants, they don’t need insects to pollinate them because they are wind pollinated.

Also, most non-seed dicotyledonous crops don’t need any type of insect pollinator to actually produce food: potatoes are a good example because their tubers are propagated vegetatively (it is a common gardener’s myth that I have heard that their tubers come from their flowers -they don’t). Also, tomatoes, despite being flowering plants, don’t need insects for pollination at all! (they are one of the few exceptions).

Also, many crops that produce flowers rely on insects other than honey bees for pollination and reproduction: carrots and parsnips are good examples because they rely almost exclusively on hoverflies to pollinate them to produce seeds for the next crop.

As for those crops that do mainly rely on honey bee pollination (such as apple trees): even if every single honey bee was killed, this would leave a huge niche for other types of pollinators to multiply and take their place. In particular, bumble bees would start to fill that niche and do the job just as well.

As an absolute last resort, people can be employed to manually pollinate the flowers: I have seen this done on an apple farm; the labour costs doing it this way is very expensive but, look on the bright side, it creates jobs!

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I can claim to be almost an “expert” in food production and I think this is being just a bit too pessimistic here:

“no bees” does not mean “no food”.

That is because, for starters, many crops such as wheat, oats, barley, rice, sweet corn, maize, millet etc are monocotyledon crops and, like most monocotyledon plants, they don’t need insects to ...[text shortened]... labour costs doing it this way is very expensive but, look on the bright side, it creates jobs!

I just noticed my misprint but too late to correct it:

I said:
“MOST non-seed dicotyledonous crops don’t need any type of insect pollinator to actually produce food:”

When I meant:
“MANY non-seed dicotyledonous crops don’t need any type of insect pollinator to actually produce food:”