Carbon and bees - We don’t see the wood for the trees

This week as our Government, already mired in the intractable abortion civil war, realised that they will have to deal with another deeply divisive moral/social issue — right-to-die legislation — two other issues that will have a far, far greater impact on humanity’s future and wellbeing flitted across the news pages without provoking the kind of Pavlovian fury abortion or euthanasia routinely generate.

Neither dealt with Europe’s record and escalating unemployment figures or our crushing debt, but both could, in time, make the abortion and euthanasia debates seem like quaint but tragic diversions that prevented us dealing with the well-signposted threats to our way of life. Our feeble track record in dealing with these matters, our lemming-like refusal to face the consequences of our inaction, suggests the kind of denial a heavy smoker might invoke to dismiss cancer warnings.

In recent days the awkwardly named Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) met in Bonn and heard that, despite more than two decades of trying to cut them, global carbon dioxide emissions teetered on the threshold of 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in 3 million years. Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory recorded CO2 levels of 399.72ppm last week.

In plainer terms, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 “are exceeding levels never experienced in human history”, despite all of the international commitments to prevent that situation. The latest of those essential commitments was made at the Durban summit in December 2011 and “reaffirmed our shared goal of keeping the global temperature increase below 2° Celsius to avoid potentially devastating impacts”. Whether this ambition is realised or not may have a greater impact on humanity than any other phenomena active in the world today. This, as the conference heard, is more than an environmental issue, as promises to compensate developing countries for not using ever-greater quantities of carbon fuels have not materialised thus adding another layer of friction to the process.

As in nearly every other issue that defines human activity, the evolutionary ambition that animates homo sapiens, and manifests itself through insatiable appetites, seems to push inconvenient truths to one side in pursuit of objectives palpably unsustainable.

That principle was seen again on Monday when farming and pharmaceutical interests united to oppose a temporary European Commission ban on insecticides alleged to cause serious harm to bees. This is another issue that highlights that the objective to feed a constantly growing world population is at least as dependent on science as it is on husbandry. As we have to double food production in the coming decades, science will constantly break barriers to help us reach that target but our great challenge will be to ensure any collateral damage caused by new science will not outweigh the advantages it confers. This is an age-old dilemma but in the case of bees, the irreplaceable catalyst of nearly all plant life and agriculture, the stakes are as high as they could be. Because of that, we should protect bees with the urgency we should treat increasing CO2 emissions. But then there are so many things we should do. Then, all of a sudden, it’s too late.