A World Without Bees Argumentative Essay

Imagine a world without bees. It might seem like it would be nice, a world without an annoying, stinging pesty insect. Because of industrial agriculture, we are on our way there now. The United States, and other countries, need to make a treaty to ban the use of neonicotinoid, a type of chemical used on plants, and insecticides because these chemicals are mentally and physically disabling bees; causing more and more bees to die; and without these bees, we won't have any food. Bees are an important, if not the MOST important part of creating food. In order for plants to actually produce a crop, they need to be cross pollinated with other plants. Neonicotinoids, chemicals used to control pests on plants, are widely use in industrial agriculture (Morelle). With the use of neonicotinoids on plants, bees are exposed to this chemical which “[causes] an immediate hyper-activation - so an epileptic type activity - [which is] preceded by neuronal inactivation, where the brain goes quiet and cannot communicate any more” (Morelle). There are major side effects of bees being neurally deactivated; they wouldn’t know which plants to go to, and without knowing where to go they wouldn’t go anywhere. Therefore they wouldn’t be cross-pollinating and the plants

Many people argue that “the global bee population has remained remarkably stable since the widespread adoption of neonics in the late 1990s” (Entine), this is true on a global scale. It’s only in more local and industrial scenarios that neonicotinoids are being used, such as the United States which is a huge supporter of industrial agriculture. Many people believe that since the world’s bee population isn’t fluxuating that there isn’t a problem. But “since the introduction of neonicotinoid-containing pesticides, honey bee loss has reached a record high” (Shepherd). There is strong evidence to support the fact that neonicotinoids are damaging bees, but not a global scale. Imagine a rice