My spouse is an entomologist, and she gets asked about this constantly. Colony collapse disorder is a real thing, that’s been around for centuries, but no it isn’t in any sense a catastrophe for our food supply. And it did not get worse this year, incidentally, according to the EPA at least.
That’s just mass media hysteria. Selling papers by inciting fear.
Always keep in mind that before European honeybees were introduced to this continent, it was not a barren wasteland. There is no shortage of native pollinators.
See, this is why these questions aren’t helpful. This one is rife with a false premise already.
Fun fact - unless you buy a gun FACE TO FACE from another owner who resides in the SAME STATE as you, you MUST go through an FFL (store with a federal firearms license) AND a back ground check.
So unless you arrange a face to face meet up, ALL online gun sales go through an FFL and a back ground check.
Nearly everyone selling guns at a gun show is an FFL and you are required to go through a back ground check.
In an older Dept. of Justice study, 80% of criminals in person go their guns from a friend/relative or black market source. <1% got them from gun shows. In a new study, 79% of criminals convicted claim the gun was not theirs. Either they stole it, or it technically belonged to so someone else.
In short, most criminals are already not using the existing system/process that already precludes most of them from owning guns.
“Hello, my question is for either candidate. If I were to ask the other candidate which of the two doors to go through, what would his or her answer be?”
There are crops that don’t need bee pollination, especially native crops, as you say. But we grow a significant percentage of non-native food crops now, as witnessed by the 80% pollination number.
It’s not that I think all the bees in the country will somehow die before the next harvest. It’s the cumulative effect of the choices we’re making that cause pollution and other toxins, up to climate change, all of which have been implicated in colony collapse, and all of which point to the likelihood of a significant loss in food supply in our future. Humans can go 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food, and something like 50,000 years without money.
So yeah, I stand by the assertion that the potential collapse to our economy by a severe and extended food shortage would be even more catastrophic than the financial collapses we’ve experienced in recent times. And colony collapse is a well-known warning sign of that danger.
You would think that climate change would be on the top of NARWHAL’s list, but they just can’t help it. They have to ask the candidates if they “feel horny.”
taking the most popular questions just means taking the blandest, lowest common-denominator bullshit. The same thing these market-metricked-to-death news organizations are already doing. Either that, or, as others have pointed out, some internet shenanigans question that’s fun for being lulzubversive, but not particularly interesting.
I don’t have a monumentally better idea offhand, but a couple thoughts. If the third party candidates can’t debate, at least let each ask a couple of questions of the candidates, and hold their feet to the fire on facts. Short of that, taking questions from academics in fields relevant to the election season, and letting them hold the candidates would probably be enlightening.
But really the format of the debates needs to improve more than the questions themselves. If anything strays outside of policy, zap 'em, as others have suggested.
I think this is an excellent idea. No 3rd-party candidate has any hope of being elected this year, but ideally if 9% or whatever of voters support Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, the ideas that they embody should at least influence, in some small way, the policy of the mainstream candidates. Kind of a nod towards the preferential voting system other countries use.
And while I am not real concerned about the plight of the non-africanized European honeybee, nor am I a proponent of non-native crops, I have to agree with your point about colony collapse being a very strong warning sign. Bees are probably a pretty good indicator species for environmental degradation that is directly harmful to humans.
