EU agrees on total ban of bee-harming pesticides

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/27/eu-agrees-total-ban-on-bee-harming-pesticides

1022 303 8 years ago

morsch• 8 years ago

Finally.

The scariest news I heard last year was not the North Korea nuclear testing, but the insect mass collapse by 82%. This is insane. We need to seriously reconsider the use of all insecticides, not just the bee-harming ones.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-...

Angostura• 8 years ago

It is scary. The good news is that I would expect this measure to have at least some beneficial effects for other bugs.

senorjazz• 8 years ago

appropriate image

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/48/e3/00/48e300bd908c68932c86...

Lxr• 8 years ago

Any idea where that is?

hanniabu• 8 years ago

What's more worrisome is that I haven't heard of this and haven't seen it on the news, yet I've seen reports on Kim Kardashian's fragrance bottle being shaped like her and Kanye private texts with John Legend about Trump. And these are on so-called "news" stations, it just blows my mind....

abritinthebay• 8 years ago

It was on national news... for like a day.

Most people seem to know about it but not how serious it is.

DelightOne7• 8 years ago

Its not actionable either I think. Or What would you have done? Voted differently? Started an argument on reddit or here? Write an app? Whats the impact of that.

castle-bravo• 8 years ago

A paranoid person might conclude that there's an industrial scale effort to distract the population from any issue that might be even tangentially related to their real interests; e.g. their survival and that of their children.

thaumaturgy2• 8 years ago

I've seen reports on Kim Kardashian's fragrance bottle being shaped like her and Kanye private texts with John Legend about Trump

As a start, I'd encourage you to choose different news sources, because I've no idea what you're referring to here and your comment on HN is the first I've seen of it (and thanks for that).

I'm not being facile here; we need more people to stop consuming pop-culture "news" as a good first step towards solving important and difficult problems. Media will report on the subjects that people read, watch, and talk about. So, avoid the garbage.

justbees22• 8 years ago

This article was on the front page of The Guardian for much of yesterday, and is the fourth on the subject so far this year. They had something like 20 articles last year[1], it would be very difficult to miss.

(I was about to praise them for not writing more about the latest celebrity baby, but they have, damn them. I was trying to go as long as possible without learning his name, and there it is in the "most read" section.)

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bees

blanderman• 8 years ago

Maybe they've been catching most of the members of each species that are susceptible to the type of trap they use leaving only trap resistant specimens in the wild to breed.

lostlogin8• 8 years ago

Windscreen resistance and the car avoidance genes have been selected for?

mattmanser2• 8 years ago

Doesn't it look like the initial reading was the anomaly? Like the 1989 number is twice as big compared to 1991.

In 1991 they could have reported "insects numbers drop 50% in two years!!!!".

I mean there's a definite decline, but it doesn't look like an imminent collapse.

bitL2• 8 years ago

Last year when I left my kitchen window open at around this time, in a couple of hours I had dozens of flies everywhere. This year - silence. Way less birds as well. When I visit my parents that retired to a village valley without any industry, insects of all types are everywhere.

Arnt2• 8 years ago

The decline is really noticeable. (I live in Germany.) You can go bicycling in the countryside in summer and never get any insects in your mouth. You can drive your car and not wipe off your windshield.

If you look at the graph you can adda trend line for poor years and one for good. Both point steeply downwards, say -30%/decade. Extrapolate to human lifetimes, and you get a 96% drop in one human lifetime. Wow.

singularity2001• 8 years ago

Anecdata: growing up, all blossoming cherry trees here had hundreds or thousands of bees in them. now there are a dozen bumble bees. that is beyond 'imminent collapse' and beyond sad.

Someone send all people at Monsanto who hid the evidence to jail.

YeGoblynQueenne2• 8 years ago

> Doesn't it look like the initial reading was the anomaly? Like the 1989 number is twice as big compared to 1991.

There's variation between years but a clear downward trend that leads to a significant reduction overall.

Intuitively, if that was money, someone would be pulling their hair out by the handful.

Eupolemos• 8 years ago

Dane here: last year, all the insects at my mom's farm were gone. No cherries, very few apples - worst harvest we've ever experienced. The buzzing is simply gone and it is chilling.

It is like being in a silent city; wrong.

tptacek4• 8 years ago

The actual report that's based on largely pins the reduction on habitat loss.

thaumaturgy2• 8 years ago

The paper by Hallmann et. al. studied insect biomass in nature-protected areas in Germany over a period of 27 years. They didn't refer to "habitat loss" in their paper, but do refer to "land use" as a broader generalization describing the overall biodiversity of foliage in areas surrounding the insect traps.

They measured a number of variables during the study (different aspects of weather and climate and land use), but failed to find a single explanatory variable to match the trend they were seeing. They proposed that the cause was something they weren't measuring.

Abstract: "We show that this decline is apparent regardless of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline."

Results: "There was substantial variation in trapped insect biomass between habitat clusters (see Materials and methods), with nutrient-rich grasslands, margins and wasteland containing 43% more insect biomass than nutrient-poor heathland, sandy grassland, and dunes. Yet, the annual rate of decline was similar, suggesting that the decline is not specific to certain habitat types (S5 Fig)." "On average, cover of arable land decreased, coverage of forests increased, while grassland and surface water did not change much in extent over the last three decades (S3 Fig). Overall, adding land use variables alone did not lead to a substantial improvement of the model fit..." "These interactions, which were retained in our final model (Table 4), revealed higher rates of decline where coverage of grassland was higher, while lower declines where forest and arable land coverage was higher."

Discussion: "In light of previously suggested driving mechanisms, our analysis renders two of the prime suspects, i.e. landscape [9, 18, 20] and climate change [15, 18, 21, 37], as unlikely explanatory factors for this major decline in aerial insect biomass in the investigated protected areas." "Agricultural intensification [17, 20] (e.g. pesticide usage, yearround tillage, increased use of fertilizers and frequency of agronomic measures) that we could not incorporate in our analyses, may form a plausible cause. The reserves in which the traps were placed are of limited size in this typical fragmented West-European landscape, and almost all locations (94%) are enclosed by agricultural fields. Part of the explanation could therefore be that the protected areas (serving as insect sources) are affected and drained by the agricultural fields in the broader surroundings (serving as sinks or even as ecological traps)."

i.e., they're finding that habitat type is insufficiently correlated with the observed effects, and suggesting that some other effect related to nearby agriculture is the predominant cause.

The paper is free to download and very readable: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

paganel• 8 years ago

There's also lots and lots of other factors at play, including other advances in agriculture. Case in point, the Eastern-European village where my parents now live. It is located in the Danubian plain, on one of the most fertile soils of this planet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem).

There hadn't been many investments in mechanization up until 5-10 years ago (I'm talking about my parents' village), which meant that the seasonal agricultural works were carried out by 30- or 40-year old communist-era tractors or by actual manual labor by the local people. That meant, for example, that there was usually a time interval of at least a couple of weeks between the land getting plowed and the seeding operation (not a native English speaker, too lazy to search for the exact technical terms). That in turn meant that there was a time window of at least 2-weeks for birds like crows to hunt and eat the insects and mice that the plowed terrain would "reveal" to the open air.

But, as I said, that started to change in the last 5 or so years, when, after some capital-intensive investments, the local farmers started using GPS-equipped state-of-the-art tractors which only leave a day (at most) between when the plowing and the seeding operations happen. So, that means that the crows now only have one day (at most) to hunt and eat for insects and mice, while previously they used to have at least 2 weeks. And the new tractors and combine harvesters are also a lot more efficient, as in they don't leave that much grains on the ground during harvesting (the old communist-era combines were not as efficient) which also means less food for mice and crows, which means less mice and crows, which is bad.

And there are countless other stories like these, all negative when it comes to the ecosystem that surrounds us.

avip• 8 years ago

The previous HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15502074 has lots of interesting links and anecdotes.

[E: if you ever wanted to know how data and anecdote differ, dive into that thread]

dawnerd• 8 years ago

Guess all the bugs came to my house, this year has been absolutely awful for far and its just now starting to warm up. Not really looking forward to the spider invasion this summer.

I don't get why people go crazy with poisons. I just do some minor house perimeter treatment but try to make sure it wont run off. I keep everything else natural.

PeterStuer3• 8 years ago

We live in the countryside. It"s scary how few bees there are this year. Everything is in bloom and usually the plants are buzzing with bees. This year you just see the occaasional bumblebee or wasp.

bwb• 8 years ago

I saw a few scientists on a thread in reddit point out that those numbers are misleading, as the way they collected the data was suspect and it was driven by amateurs. I didn't verify but quite a few chimed in that it wasn't a great study...

DenisM• 8 years ago

We could start using more GMO products, bred to resist insects without killing them.

freeflight4• 8 years ago

They'd still die as they can't feed off the GMO plants.

bencollier49• 8 years ago

Most GMO products are altered to be resistant to powerful weedkillers, meaning farmers use loads more, which leaches off into rivers and destroys ecosystems. Using more of this sort of GMO is a terrible idea.

mac01021• 8 years ago

How does a ban like this tend to work? The chemicals can no longer be sold in stores? Or you can buy it but are not allowed to apply it to your fields?

athenot• 8 years ago

In the past, this has been done in phases: forbid applications, reduce availability, then make it illegal.

toyg2• 8 years ago

FTA: "will mean they can only be used in closed greenhouses."

So you will be allowed to buy it, but you cannot use it on open fields.

TeMPOraL3• 8 years ago

I hope it'll be enforced, not like incandescent lightbulbs, which, months after the ban, became available again in every store as a light source "for basements and garages", with a label that says "do not use at home!".

SCHiM• 8 years ago

Seems like a teethless piece of legislation then :/

mathieubordere• 8 years ago

Great news

exabrial6• 8 years ago

From a family of hive owners: Not sure this will have any sort of meaningful impact except raise prices elsewhere... It's a grand gesture, but the science just isn't there. The real problems are mites, which we do not have any sort of effective treatment for, and decreased biodiversity as African bees continue to push into North America.

pedrocr• 8 years ago

Do you have an opinion on the treatment-free option? The idea that you can adapt the bees through selection to make them resistant enough to mites seems interesting and there are quite a few success stories. Probably none on a large commercial scale though.

olliej4• 8 years ago

There are actually a few such programs going on in America. I’m aware of strains where the bees bite off the limbs of mites, and some that are more aggressive towards them.

There is at least want breeder that has managed to get queens that seem to result in mite free hives

(Edit to clarify: resistance to mites isn’t really the problem - the problem is that the mites are very effective at spread more or less all viruses that harm bees, and the feed on the larvae just for good measure. Basically you want bees that actively fight infestation so that they don’t have to become resistant to every single disease)

roel_v• 8 years ago

The consensus in the scientific community is that resistant breeds are the real solution, the question is what to do until then. Every apiculture research group has at least some people working on varroa resistant breeds, and questions like whether local breeds (in Europe) are better suited to combat varroa themselves.

The whole 'no treatment' controversy is about beekeepers who treat and those who don't in the same area. On the one hand, there are those who treat and create weak colonies, on the other there are the non-treaters who might infect those weak colonies. It's sometimes bitter.

kokey2• 8 years ago

I've seen how healthy the bee populations are at the wineries around Cape Town. The Africanized bee seems to handle the varroa mites quite well and also somehow seems unaffected by widespread neonicotinoid use.

mikro2nd• 8 years ago

Have you tried open-bottomed hives? The mites that get groomed off the bees fall to the ground where they're vulnerable to predators and can't crawl back up to the top of the hive to re-infest the bees. Supposedly solves the problem. I confess I have not tried it myself yet, but I'm still learning, working on a very small scale in a very benign climate and have not yet experienced any significant mite problems, so ymm(likely)v.

exabrial6• 8 years ago

Nice! We have very rough winters in Kansas (driving, persistent wind and no humidity), so it won't work year round, but it may work for our summers

lostlogin8• 8 years ago

It helps, but you have to treat too where I am. Your bees over there have a degree more tolerance to the mites than ours as they are relatively new here in New Zealand.

olliej4• 8 years ago

Varroa are the big problem for /honey bees/. Honey bees are not the most significant pollinators (they’re technically fairly innefficient pollinators compared to other bees - bumble, carpenter etc)

The vast majority of pollination is via non-bee insects, but just reducing the destruction of wild bees will help at least.

As for mite treatment you may want to look into oxalic acid, although it’s not technically approved for use in hives (despite being less harmful than regular mite pads)

bjelkeman-again• 8 years ago

Regulations vary. Oxalic acid and formic acid are allowed and commonly used in Sweden, for example. We can also use thyme based extracts. We prefer cutting out drones, but we find it is not sufficient in our hives, so we complement with the other methods as required.

exabrial6• 8 years ago

This recently popped up on HN which is extremely promising: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-19137-5

narrator• 8 years ago

What would convince you that neonicotinoids kill bees? A study recently done at Purdue University perhaps?[1]

Pesticides are absurdly politicized. The amount of ridicule and PR flak pesticide critics get is insane.

[1] http://pollinatorstewardship.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/...

exabrial6• 8 years ago

Indeed, so sad, because as things become politcal, it goes from science to pop culture, and lies become truths because they are repeated so often.

Thanks for the link to the study. I had not read that one yet. To give a counterpoint, this article on slate I thought was very convincing in the other direction: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

tptacek4• 8 years ago

What is it that you think that Purdue study says? It doesn't contradict anything that the parent comment said. Their comment seems like a pretty straightforward recitation of the situation in the US: feral honey bees --- an introduced, non-native species --- were eradicated by the Varroa destructor mite, decades ago.

lostlogin8• 8 years ago

I don’t dispute that the spray kills bees. Honey bee numbers are so high here that the numbers are causing problems (decreased honey harvests, disease outbreaks and worker shortages). Honey bees are not in decline her in New Zealand.

bambax• 8 years ago

into North America

The article is about Europe.

lostlogin8• 8 years ago

Honey bee numbers are the highest they have ever been here in New Zealand. The numbers are so great that honey takes per hive are decreasing and disease levels are high. Despite the diseases, honey bees are doing just fine. The bit that matters more though, is that native bees are struggling. http://www.afb.org.nz/beekeeping-in-nz

jsilence• 8 years ago

there has been a very positive perspective in mite treatment with a simple lithium salt. have no reference at hand, but it should come up with a google search. correct dosage still has to be researched, but it all looked very promising.

filoeleven• 8 years ago

You may want to look into Paul Stamets’ research into this. He’s the mushroom guy, and he’s doing a pilot study with beekeepers, giving bees diluted extracts from certain kinds of mycelium. As of the last talk I heard him give about it, none of those colonies have collapsed.

There’s a whole 20-year story that led to him testing this, starting with noticing when his bees spent a few days pushing wood chips aside to get at Garden Giant mycelium and licking it, which puzzled him.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2017/06/05/can-a-...

scruple• 8 years ago

Also ants and robbing behaviors. Mites and ants cover the overwhelming majority of hive loss that I have personally witnessed (non-commercial, of course, and in SoCal).

marze• 8 years ago

Why take chances with something as important as bees.

Good job Europe.

kokey2• 8 years ago

I suppose this is the one of the reasons farmers in the UK will be glad that the UK is leaving the EU, because the neonicotinoids are mainly used as seed coverings on rapeseed (which is the crop that most of the vegetable food/cooking oil is made from) and winter cereals to prevent seeds and seedlings from specific insects and the pesticide has broken down within weeks, long before the time bees do their rounds and is never sprayed on the crops. It also prevents the use of a lot of other known to be harmful pesticides and increased spraying.

Also, all the studies in the UK that I have seen could not determine any statistically significant impact of neonicotinoids on the bee populations, because it was impossible to detect due to the much more significant impact of a season's weather on honey bees. It really feels like politics is leading the science here and I suspect this will come out in the courts.

tom_mellior2• 8 years ago

all the studies in the UK that I have seen

Care to share your research?

jimnotgym• 8 years ago

I suppose this is the one of the reasons farmers in the UK will be glad that the UK is leaving the EU

This is only true if UK farmers don't want to sell food to the EU (it's biggest market). We are already hearing the term 'regulatory alignment' being used, which seems to mean 'you have to follow the rules but don't get a say in them anymore'

Zenst• 8 years ago

The UK backed the vote and fully supported it as well as being vocal about it at the time.

YeGoblynQueenne2• 8 years ago

The UK (well; Michael Gove) has promised to back a total ban on neonicotinoids:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/09/uk-will-...

The UK will back a total ban on insect-harming pesticides in fields across Europe, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, has revealed.

The decision reverses the government’s previous position and is justified by recent new evidence showing neonicotinoids have contaminated the whole landscape and cause damage to colonies of bees. It also follows the revelation that 75% of all flying insects have disappeared in Germany and probably much further afield, a discovery Gove said had shocked him.

Like I say, that was Michael Gove who said that. So we'll never know for sure until we know for sure.

pjc503• 8 years ago

farmers in the UK will be glad that the UK is leaving the EU

Well, apart from not having any idea whether they'll get subsidy payments or how they'll be able to sell to Europe yet.

ciconia• 8 years ago

About bloody time. I live in the country side and can see what's happening, though where I live nature is doing ok. City folks though have no idea how bad things are.

rjsw• 8 years ago

City dwellers can see the effects too, even if they only drive between cities on motorways, their windscreen won't have nearly as many dead bugs on it as in previous years.

kevmo• 8 years ago

I'm driving across the country right now, and I actually did notice that there seem to be far fewer bugs on windshields than I remembered during similar trips as a child. I just chalked it up to things being more vivid from my childhood memory, though -- are there really that many fewer bugs?

notadoc• 8 years ago

Smart for many reasons, the USA should do the same. Though because of lobbying and industry/gov revolving doors that seems highly unlikely to happen. Instead we'll probably be told "the science is undecided" and that we must "debate" the "science" for a few decades, and then eventually someone will politicize bees and pesticides with some nonsensical focus group generated slogans like "entitled pollen queens" and "plant-helping juice" so that half the country suddenly hates bees and loves pesticides, insuring nothing ever gets done about the problem.

tptacek4• 8 years ago

In North America, honey bees aren't wildlife, they're livestock. Banning substances to protect them would be a little bit like banning substances to protect beef steers. You could imagine it being reasonable, but the bar for harm would be set pretty high --- especially since the people applying the pesticide are also in large part the people bearing the brunt of its impact on bees.

bgorman2• 8 years ago

In North America bees are mostly an agricultural tool. Honeybees are the only reliable way to polinate large numbers of crops effectively. Bees will be trucked around all over the country for an entire growing season - always heading where pollinating is needed. The threat isn't so much with our bees as it is with our ability to continue industrial agriculture.

firethief• 8 years ago

NA does have native pollinators that are also suffering though.

mistrial92• 8 years ago

very noticeable and definite reduction of insects, spiders and birds over the last two decades in SF Bay Area.. mass spraying of the insecticide Malathion over the area was definitely a turning point, among many factors

http://www.unz.com/print/CalJournal-1981apr-00137/?View=PDF

hahamrfunnyguy2• 8 years ago

Good. Better to bee on the safe side then continue using them.

eBombzor• 8 years ago

I am guessing this ban includes diatomaceous earth?

I don’t believe you can actually get rid of bed bugs without it.

pjc503• 8 years ago

No, it's just neonicotinoids, not everything that could concievably kill a bee.

endymi0n• 8 years ago

I must admit I find the EU pretty progressive and thought-leading lately - ironically using the tool progressives despise the most: Regulation.

When they banned all filament lightbulbs, everyone was saying how bad it would be for the economy, but the industry was just forced to innovate and just a couple years later everyone is 95% on LEDs.

Farmers will cope - and the demand they create for new solutions will accelerate supply much faster than any voluntary solution.

plopz• 8 years ago

Its funny how you say everything is sunshine and rainbows with lightbulbs, but just yesterday I was reading comments here about how its impossible to find lightbulbs with good temperature anymore.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929470

Faaak• 8 years ago

I don't know where you buy your led light bulbs but here in switzerland you usually have three choices (white, warm white, and something yellow-ish). I find the warm-white nuance quite pleasant.

Then, if you still want another colour, internet is here for you.

the84723• 8 years ago

On amazon you'll find a plethora of LED bulbs with their color temperature in kelvin, CRI (or R-alpha), lumens and directivity listed. I have picked a wide range of different ones for different needs. A few years ago there was limited choice but the palette has broadened since then.

The item titles, often listing incandescent equivalent wattages and fuzzy categories like warmness, are kind of irrelevant. You need to look at the fact sheets.

DubiousPusher4• 8 years ago

No way. Tons of warm, white or cool bulbs. You just have to try a few and be sceptical of the kelvin rating. Trust me, the wife and I are very picky about color temp.

PhasmaFelis• 8 years ago

Well, if you have extremely specific desires for light temp.

Tepix2• 8 years ago

Buy good LED lights with a CRI of >95. They are not hard to find.

stfp• 8 years ago

Amen, except on "the tool progressives despise the most: Regulation" - you're thinking of libertarians.

da_chicken• 8 years ago

That or neoliberalism (aka, Thatcherism) using the meaning that Wikipedia uses for that term < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism >.

lemoncucumber• 8 years ago

ironically using the tool progressives despise the most: Regulation

They do? Are you sure you're not thinking of conservatives?

oconnor663• 8 years ago

Yeah I don't know what progressives they've been hanging out with...

PeterStuer3• 8 years ago

Neo-liberals and Anarchists, which are very close in ideology

exabrial6• 8 years ago

I wouldn't be so quick to pat them on the back about that... First came CFLs, which put literal tons of mercury in landfills. ...not to mention their terrible power factor almost negated any efficiency improvements.

LED solves many of these issues thankfully,

samstave• 8 years ago

How much [toxic stuff] goes into making LEDs? If any?

We shall, in short order respectively have trillions of LEDs in landfill.

Old LEDs were a dollop of glass/plastic over the device, but sme/rgb LEDs are a bit more complex than the old LEDs of the past.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC2• 8 years ago

not to mention their terrible power factor almost negated any efficiency improvements.

A power factor is not what you think it is (has zero to do with efficiency).

herbst5• 8 years ago

There was or may still is a guide on a official eu website what you are supposed to do when you break a CFL at home.

It involved having special full body clothing, removing all other people from the room/place and other creepy things.

Once I've told people that they happily bought the then 50$ led bulbs. Usually at least.

entee7• 8 years ago

Yes but what will those new solutions be? Will they be better? How will we know? Most likely scenario: they'll be replaced by some other chemical that on the surface may be better, but will be far less understood by virtue of being new. We may well find out years later that it was worse on a whole host of criteria, and may even be worse on the "don't kill the bees" criteria after larger scale/more research.

It's easy to assume banning the thing we don't like will yield better outcomes but that's not necessarily the case. If we want to get rid of chemical risk, we'll have to get rid of chemicals. If we do that, we'll have to seriously re-evaluate our agricultural systems and be likely willing to accept higher prices.

sbov• 8 years ago

This reminds me of what happened with BPA. The chemical companies use to replace BPA is at least sometimes worse than BPA. But no one seems to care.

cortesoft• 8 years ago

Getting rid of chemicals? Umm, everything is a chemical. What does that even mean?

pjc503• 8 years ago

If we want to get rid of chemical risk, we'll have to get rid of chemicals

Ah, you've seen the EU chemicals directive. http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_en.htm

the84723• 8 years ago

In the past we have generally managed to find safer alternatives for most substances.

CFCs, lead solders, DDT, leaded gasoline, radium paints, mercury lamps, cadmium paints, microplastics in cosmetics, ...

Sure, the first iteration of regulation of may have unintended consequences, but they are often smaller than the original issue and can be compensated for with another iteration. The process takes many years, but on average things are improving.

georgebarnett• 8 years ago

“We shouldn’t do anything because it might not be the right solution” has is not a productive outlook.

andrewjl2• 8 years ago

The solution to this is to ban by default, and put the onus on the company developing the solution to prove it is safe. There are many drawbacks to this, BUT it does address the root cause of your concern.

CaptainZapp• 8 years ago

The difference is the precautionary principle, applied in the EU.

You can read up here:

https://ensia.com/features/banned-in-europe-safe-in-the-u-s/

The quintessential difference is explained in this qutein this quote:

"A key element of the European Union’s chemicals management and environmental protection policies — and one that clearly distinguishes the EU’s approach from that of the U.S. federal government — is what’s called the precautionary principle.

This principle, in the words of the European Commission, “aims at ensuring a higher level of environmental protection through preventative” decision-making. In other words, it says that when there is substantial, credible evidence of danger to human or environmental health, protective action should be taken despite continuing scientific uncertainty.

In contrast, the U.S. federal government’s approach to chemicals management sets a very high bar for the proof of harm that must be demonstrated before regulatory action is taken."

bhnmmhmd• 8 years ago

I understand this is an important decision by EU, but I just can't fathom the reason this news got so upvoted here on HN. Am I missing something? Can anyone elaborate on this?

tom_mellior2• 8 years ago

Insects, bees especially, pollinate plants. Without pollination many plants do not reproduce. Without plants reproducing, humans starve. Killing all the bees is therefore a bad idea amounting to collective suicide. Many people here on HN care about not being killed.

phil248• 8 years ago

The bee problem was a huge mystery for a lot of years and got a ton of press until researchers finally figured out that - Surprise! - it was all the literal poisons we saturate our landscapes with that was killing them of.

ThurmaUman2• 8 years ago

It's probably the hope that it would generating conversation about new discoveries rather than drawing out the loonies (which is all it has done).

adamsea2• 8 years ago

Aren't progressives fans or regulation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism

"Progressivism is the support for or advocacy of improvement of society by reform.[1] As a philosophy, it is based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition. Progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from uncivilized conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society.[2] Figures of the Enlightenment believed that progress had universal application to all societies and that these ideas would spread across the world from Europe"

forty• 8 years ago

Yes, that's my understanding as well. It could depends on what country you are though. For me left wing means progressive and social and right wing means liberal and conservative. I guess in some countries the progressive are also the liberal, in which case the previous comment make sense

bendbro• 8 years ago

ironically using the tool progressives despise the most: Regulation

I've always pessimistically thought progressives rely exclusively on regulation to succeed at their goals. What situations make you say otherwise?

downandout• 8 years ago

That was my first thought when I read this comment. Progressives tend to believe that the government knows best (e.g. please tell me what size soda I should be allowed to buy), while conservatives tend to believe that the free market will naturally regulate itself (e.g. amusement parks will voluntarily keep their rides safe, because people won’t buy tickets otherwise). There are pros and cons to both sides. But it is simply inaccurate to say that progressives “despise” regulation - they love regulation and would do far more of it if left to their own devices.

hn03• 8 years ago

Antitrust to break up monopolies?

rbanffy2• 8 years ago

Mandating minimum standards on safety is one. Making non-key characteristics more similar to ease price comparison and enhance competition is another.

solarkraft• 8 years ago

ironically using the tool progressives despise the most: Regulation

"Progressives" are in the US most often characterized as proposing an overreach in regulation, so I find it weird that you call it something they don't want.

Political terms are hard.

I for one, as an EU citizen, strongly support and am proud of the pro-human (often by being pro-environment and limiting companies) politics of the EU (GDPR, bans of overly toxic substances, USB for smartphones ...).

briandear2• 8 years ago

USB for smartphones? How is the government telling people what kind of ports to have a good thing? The market should make that decision, not a regulator. Toxins kill stuff, a lack of USB could be considered and annoyance if you think USB is important.

USB regulation is precisely the definition of “progressive” overreach. I don’t want any government dictating my device specifications (unless those specs are designed to reduce health risks or radio interference.)

car_invasion• 8 years ago

US is progressive in capitalism (one that comes to mind is Uber), EU in socialism.

freeflight4• 8 years ago

Political terms are hard.

It ain't helping that the definition of these terms often hinges on where you are talking about something because the local context can be very different for these terms, like American Libertarianism vs European Libertarianism [0]

Add to that how most people still only use the traditional left vs right axis, while imho something like the Nolan chart which also accounts for an authoritarian/libertarian axis for left and right, is a way superior model to account for the finer differences of political movements and especially parties.

I guess "progressivism" suffers from a similar issue. In Germany, it's pretty much never used to describe a particular political movement, German Wiki describes it as a "countermovement to conservatism", but in very broad terms. I guess it's a synonym for "the left"? Which in the US traditionally has been mostly defined/associated with regulation, at least by US conservatives.

[0] https://greyenlightenment.com/american-libertrianism-vs-euro...

sbenitoj• 8 years ago

To be clear the widespread use of LEDs has caused significant health issues for many people, especially shift workers, due to disrupting their circadian rhythms and decreasing their sleep quality.

With that said, even though I’m against regulation as a means to effect change, I can’t say I’m upset about fewer pesticides being used on our food, it’s literally poison.

closeparen2• 8 years ago

The loss of incandescents made human habitats into colder, harsher, less welcoming places. We’re turning our nighttime cityscapes bright blue. We’ve almost completely erased the joy of coming home to warm soft lighting from the human experience (and no, the piss-yellow emitted by “warm” LEDs isn’t a substitute). We aren’t stuck with darkness, at least, but something very real and valuable was lost and not replaced.

arrrg• 8 years ago

Regulation is the core task of the EU, more or less its reason to be.

There are many squishy goals the EU has, but its core and non-squishy task is to create and take care of a common market among all member states. That relates to boring and straightforward things like tariffs (just don’t have them, duh), but also to other trade barriers, like differing regulation between different member states. (If a French company can’t sell their wine picker without modification in Spain because of mutually exclusive regulation in the two countries then that’s a trade barrier and the EU aims to get rid of it by harmonising the regulation in France and Spain and all the other member countries.)

As such the EU also takes over the continuing duties of regulating companies from the member states. It is no surprise that much of what the EU does relates to regulation, since that is its reason to be.

_o_3• 8 years ago

Yes, and this is how the normal state should behave. US messed it up big time by giving control to the corporations, but if you do some thinking: managers get their rewards based on some time based results. If they achieve better "money bases" results by screwing up customers or anyone else, they still profit. The corporations don't care if they poison half of world population as long as they profit. Make another war, few hunderd thousand killed? No problem, we made money. The only institution that can stop this insane logic is state and EU Commission is really suprisingly good in acting in good of EU cityzen, quite oposite in regard to what US is doing - acting for the corporations. I am sorry for US. People there got gang raped without the lubricant, but they are still too much brain washed to figure it out and are still living in fantasy world of "american dream", we have a saying "nation will write its own desteny by themself" and it fits for the US nicely, but I think years od dumbification are paying the toll.

amriksohata• 8 years ago

Though I like this new regulation and I live in the EU. The EU creates a lot of useless waste and red tape, just look at the EU cookie law

ben-schaaf• 8 years ago

The cookie law only affects you if you'd otherwise be tracking your users/visitors. So if you're just using cookies for login sessions and other primary functions of your site you don't need to ask for permission. And honestly, I'm happy to be aware of the tracking websites do.

jacquesm• 8 years ago

I don't have a cookie banner on my site. I decided I didn't need the cookies and I didn't need the tracking either.

The EU only creates a lot of waste and red tape if you want to ride close to the line, if you decide to go with the spirit of the law rather than the letter it actually reduces waste and red tape.

If you want to give a real example of waste then the VAT rules would come to mind, the cookie law was meant well but the majority of the web operators decided they were going to pass the burden on to the consumer instead of to actually take the hint. And if they had taken that hint the GDPR most likely wouldn't be here tomorrow.

epigramx• 8 years ago

It also made the old bulbs extremely cheap for a while which was hilarious.

hutzlibu2• 8 years ago

"When they banned all filament lightbulbs, everyone was saying how bad it would be for the economy, but the industry was just forced to innovate and just a couple years later everyone is 95% on LEDs."

First they started by mandating enviroment and if broken, human "friendly" mercury lamps as a replacement. And even without the regulation, LED's were about to make the breakthrough. And since energy(money) saving is a factor for many people, I would argue it would have come anyway. Maybe even some time later, but with people willingly accepting it and without hating the EU for mandating light for them which was ugly and dark. Because the common energy saving lamp at that time was a catastrophe aesthetically and practically.

But this is different, pesticides are activly damaging the enviroment for everyone. Classic case for what regulation was invented - and this should never get mixed up with regulations which mandate certain energy savings to everyone. This is something people do anyway, if not for the global effect, but for their wallet. So you can maybe assist progress in that area, but never mandate it as people will then start to hate energy saving because now they are forced to do it by the evil government.

cs02rm02• 8 years ago

When they banned all filament lightbulbs, everyone was saying how bad it would be for the economy, but the industry was just forced to innovate and just a couple years later everyone is 95% on LEDs.

And now we hear from a study in the EU that LEDs cause cancer. Yay.

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/ehp1837/

ethelward• 8 years ago

From what I understand, they found a correlation between disturbed circadian cycles and hormone-caused cancers, the mean of lighting doesn't seem to play a role.

hackbinary2• 8 years ago

> I must admit I find the EU pretty progressive and thought-leading lately - ironically using the tool progressives despise the most: Regulation.

Who said it is necessary for 'progressives' hate regulation? Progressiveness, I think, is a contextual thing. Capitalism, free-marketism, socialism, theocracism, and indeed any political and social movement can all advocate progressivism toward their own ideologies.

So, in my view, progressivism has more to with general change to an idealogical view, whatever that idealogical view is, and not got anything to do with change to a certain idealogical view. As in one person may view a change being progressive, eg reduction in regulation, and another might view that change as being regressive, eg removal of regulation of toxic chemicals into a river system.

hedora• 8 years ago

I think you’re confusing corporatists (more commonly called neocons or neoliberals these days), and progressives.

Corporatism is the idea of government by corporation. In practical terms, this means that government functions should be privatized, and all laws that restrict companies repealed. Puerto Rico is a great example of how this plays out in practice.

People also frequently confuse conventional libertarianism, which argued that monopolistic/large corporations are simply an arm of the state, and present day libertarianism, which is basically just corporatism.

walshemj• 8 years ago

But it also lead to the rise of diesel cars not all the EU's technical regulations work very well - cookie laws for example.

throwaway84742• 8 years ago

Wouldn’t the bugs just eat all the crops then? I mean, sure they can just import their potatoes from eg Egypt, but guess what, those potatoes will be sprayed against the Colorado potato beetle, because without that the crop has no chance at all.

bufferoverflow2• 8 years ago

I think we can develop robots to kill the bugs on the crops. With like lasers. It doesn't seem like complex problem.

Seems it's much better than spraying insecticides that end up everywhere.

MattBlissett2• 8 years ago

This weekend (and another in May) has the City Nature Challenge[1], which encourages people to photograph wildlife -- that definitely includes insects! -- and upload the photos to iNaturalist[2], where naturalists will help to identify them. Although I find people usually help identify whatever I photograph all year.

The observations can then be used in research, since iNaturalist sends their data to GBIF.org (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility). For example, this paper[3] used 120429 records from GBIF, which very likely included some records originating at iNaturalist.

I haven't read the paper in any detail, but the researchers probably started from something like this query [4] of hundreds of thousands of bee records, before filtering further.

[1] http://citynaturechallenge.org/

[2] https://www.inaturalist.org/

[3] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.03.023

[4] https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/search?taxon_key=1357156&tax...

slang800• 8 years ago

Last time the EU tried banning pesticides it did nothing to help with bee populations. These regulators have no clue what they're doing.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/01/27/pests-invade-e...

lyschoening• 8 years ago

The "Genetic Literacy Project" is funded by a right-wing religious foundation that mixes religion and science to advance theological opinions.

If you open the original Guardian article, you have to look no further than the third paragraph to read why the EU concluded that the previous ban was not enough.

briandear2• 8 years ago

At my house in France, I am building some outdoor fountains. I notice large numbers of bees dead in the water just a few weeks ago and on an ongoing basis. Since I’m in the middle of agricultural land, pesticides were the likely culprit — at least according to my gardener. There is also a disturbing lack of birds. There are birds, but far fewer than I would expect compared to rural areas in which I have been that aren’t in the middle of cherry orchards and vineyards.

This seems, a first glance, a good decision. I’d much rather the EU doing this sort of regulation instead of chasing CO2 boogeymen by banning high powered vaccum cleaners or banning certain types of tea kettles.

dghughes• 8 years ago

I just buzzed through that story but I recall hearing on one of the radio science shows here in Canada about bee and neonicotinoids. It's not just that neonicotinoids harm bees if they happen to come in contact with it but bees are actually strongly attracted to neonicotinoids on plants. There is something about it that bees are drawn too. It doubly bad for bees.

jk2323• 8 years ago

I consider this good news.

May I recommend an article by Taleb:

The Precautionary Principle https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.5787.pdf

Contrary to some of the posters here, I don't think there is STRONG evidence that neonicotinoids are causing this but there is some evidence. Bases on the Precautionary Principle it is a good idea to ban this kind of pesticides for now.

Gnarl3• 8 years ago

When those pesticides are gone and the bees are still dying, then they'll have to stop ignoring the effects of microwave radiation on insect life, bees, bats etc.

kaybe2• 8 years ago

Do you have any sources or data for this claim?

Gnarl3• 8 years ago

Many scientific references collected here: https://ehtrust.org/science/bees-butterflies-wildlife-resear...

AIX2ESXI• 8 years ago

It seems that the EU is ahead of the curve to other governments in terms of regulations. Perhaps other governments will notice when Europe's bee populations recovers and the threat of unpollinated crops no longer looms over them.

AtomicOrbital• 8 years ago

Loss of bees is just the tip of the iceberg ... insects generally have largely vanished even from the countryside here in upstate New York ... in NYC going back to the Nile Virus scare from 20 years ago the city has been performing routine aerial insect spraying so today there is a noticeable lack of any insects, no mosquitoes no flies no butterflies ... problem is this total drop off of insects has also happened hundreds of miles from the city ... as a child I used to see tons of flying insects on any country hike however today I see a tiny fraction of those insect species ... this is hard evidence

EU agrees on total ban of bee-harming pesticides

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