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U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

washingtonpost.com

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Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#191

Post by Houshalter »

Retric wrote: post #190
Houshalter wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are optimizing towards energy use, we could theoretically make robots or tractors that are solar powered. But this isn't an issue at all. Farm equipment does not consume that much fuel, and fuel isn't that expensive.

The energy costs of fertilizer and pesticides are the problem not the cost of robots/tractors. All fossil fuels are going to be gone within 5k years. Humans are several times that old and presumably humans will want to survive that. Sure, we can kick the can on this one, but it is a long term problem.

In 5-20 years we will be able to grow food 30x cheaper in highly efficient bacteria and algae tanks: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/31zo1r/a_future...

Who knows what we will be able to do in 5,000 years. I wouldn't worry about it.

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#192

Post by politician »

lisper wrote: post #152
politician wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't upvote you. Bravo.

Thanks, but why can't you upvote me?

I don't want to endorse your position as a monopoly owner of both air and water, and yet I want to reward you for boldness. There isn't a button for that.

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#193

Post by lisper »

politician wrote: post #192
lisper wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but why can't you upvote me?

I don't want to endorse your position as a monopoly owner of both air and water , and yet I want to reward you for boldness. There isn't a button for that.

> I don't want to endorse your position as a monopoly

I really don't think you need to worry too much about that.

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#194

Post by rjmunro »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #94
floatrock wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would we need to address neonicotinoids at all? Unintended consequences of large-scale ecological engineering perhaps. Sure, commercial beekeepers can increase prices and the neonicotinoid users can accept it as an indirect cost of their choice of pesticide, but what about the large chunk of the ecosystem you're engineering which is not directly tied into commercial interests, but on which we still depend? Seem…

One of the shortcomings of "free market systems" is they historically fail at pricing ecological consequences... look at the fight around putting a cost onto carbon emissions. Actually, this isn't a shortcoming of the market as such. It's a failure in conjunction of our incomplete recognition of private property rights. By preventing certain types of property from having private ownership, we don't allow the market t…

Why can't the government be the entity that owns air and water and recovers damages?
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