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In addition, do what you can to support bees. Here are some simple suggestions from Nat Geo. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/05/150524-bees-pollin

• coliveira 6y ago
  This is an example of typical modern thinking that believes we can solve problems such as global warming and bee extinction by doing individual actions. This is completely nonsense. Either we do this as a public policy or there is no solution.
  • NateEag 6y ago
    Your comment is an example of typical programmer thinking that says "only a perfect solution is worth releasing". I have been guilty of that error countless times. An individual's actions will not solve a society's woes, but they don't need to. If they help a little bit where they are, they can be worth doing. Furthermore, individuals trying to help does not preclude larger-scale solutions. The people attempting individual actions could even contribute to the larger-scale or policy-based solutions.
    • coliveira 6y ago
      I am not advocating for a "perfect solution or nothing". I advocate for solutions based on public policy, even if they're partial. But I object to individual solutions, because they're no solution at all. It doesn't matter how many people do little actions, if there are a few big actors (say multinational corporations) exploiting and polluting the environment, the result is worse than zero! It is just like taking as aspirin to "help cure" a cancer that is destroying the body. And in fact focusing on doing these little things is a net negative, because it distracts from the big actions that need to be taken to fix an urgent problem.
      • Nzen 6y ago
        This worldview discounts the political awareness that such actions can foster. Someone who replaced their crabgrass lawn with native meadow has a daily embodiment of their value system. When such a person hears about murder hornets, is this person somehow less likely to contact his/her representatives about the issue than the person who kept a typical lawn, in your assessment ? That's the only way I can see this as a net negative, rather than neutral or trivially positive. Or, given that the described standpoint suggests I have enough attention for either planting a meadow lawn or supporting 'big action', why are you wasting it telling us about this, instead of naming names of the big actors to write to our representatives about and avoid electing representatives that hold a favorable position toward them ?
      • NateEag 6y ago
        Nzen already responded to this pretty thoroughly. I'll just add two points: 1) Individual good actions virtually never outweigh large-scale bad actions, but the world is actually worse off if individuals do not take those little positive actions. Little polluter + big polluter yields more pollution than big polluter. 2) Taking the small positive actions is actually a lot of what helps people work on the huge, difficult problems. Humans are more effective when our psychology is a unified self rather than in conflict with itself, and taking small, positive concrete steps helps us keep ourselves in alignment with our big-picture goals and ideals. I guess both of those fit into the abstract observation that you're bifurcating - people don't have to choose between individual concrete actions and contributing to policy efforts and other high-level approaches. By all means, if you see someone explicitly saying they choose one at the expense of the other, say something. When they don't say that, though, don't assume that's what they're doing.
  • wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Individuals can make the problem get worse more slowly, which can buy time for public policy to come into effect.