On Mar 19, 2010, at 5:27 PM, Christoph Reuss wrote:
Japanese honeybees have developed a fairly effective defense against
the Asian hornets.
Replacing European honeybees by Japanese honeybees is not something
the
beekeepers would want to do, i.a. because the latter produce less
honey.
True. But with the Asian threat and - at least in the US - significant
colony collapse disorder(s), there may be little choice in the matter
long-run.
There have been several
instances in which Africanized bees have been imported to North
America via shipping containers.
But these few punctual incidents are not sufficient to populate a
large area --
for that, it took the migration from South America northwards.
The same is probably true for the newest Asian immigrants (hornets).
It is relatively unlikely that a few punctuated incidents will be
enough to create an on-going problem. But, it is possible.
Does this mean humans should not be active? Not a very
practical outcome at this point.
Distinction between useful and harmful activities, and relating gain
to
risks, is obviously necessary. "Free" Trade is useful only for a few
rich grabbers, while the vast majority (and the environment, i.e.
future
generations) loses big time.
Chris
Here, we agree. But there will necessarily be ongoing, widespread
disagreement on which activities are useful and which are harmful. I
keep returning to this idea of how to distinguish between useful and
harmful activities in my thinking. This seems to me to be the crux of
the problem, and I see no easy solutions to it. Much of the time any
given activity will be both useful and harmful. So, it becomes a
question of how to balance the good with the bad in particular
situations/circumstances/products.
Barry
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