The Environment and the Holocaust

By David Dawson

If you were going down the street and saw a fight taking place on the other side, would you rush over and intervene?  Probably not, and what has a street fight got to do with the environment or the Holocaust, I hear you asking.  Well, read on.

Firstly the fight.  Most people sit passively in front of their TV watching hockey fights (or wrestling or some such) whilst the referee sorts out the fighters.  We are inured to not doing anything ourselves: it is not our responsibility.  Unfortunately this attitude is typical in Canada in many areas of our life.  We have grown accustomed to leaving “it” to some government agency – Welfare, Child & Family Services, Police, food safety and many many more.

Most people will be familiar with the Holocaust during World War 2 (or more recently the genocide in Rwanda).  The hateful rhetoric of Hitler and his cronies demonized the Jews such that 6 million Jews were carted off like animals and slaughtered by the Nazi regime.  Meanwhile the world just stood by and watched it happen.  True, a few kind people helped some Jews escape or hid them in their houses.

It is always easier to do nothing – that is normal human nature.  We automatically see the safe or easy option.  However there are some circumstances where taking the easy option and doing nothing is clearly wrong – as in the Holocaust and now with the environment.

Today (2014) we are in a similar situation to Hitler and Nazi Germany at the time of WW2.  The chemical companies put out endless advertising about their ‘harmless’ products: the bureaucrats who approve them and the farmers who use them are sucked in by the continual propaganda, and we, the general public are left to live in a chemical soup.  A few people are concerned and are trying hard to spread the word to a generally apathetic public, but the majority of the population doesn’t seem to care.  For many years the tobacco companies told us lung cancer had nothing to do with the chemicals in their cigarettes.  Now we know otherwise.  Do you really think the huge increase in many other types of cancer has nothing to do with the agricultural chemicals we are exposed to every day?  And do you really think that the huge decline in insects and insect eating birds has nothing to do with the widespread use of insecticides, most notably the nicotine based ‘neonicotinoid’ type?  If you do think that, you are living in dreamland.

Just a note and reminder about the neonicotinoid class of insecticides: almost all corn seeds, all canola seeds and all soybean seeds are coated with this insecticide at the time of planting.  About 20% of the insecticide is absorbed into the plant through the roots where it protects against possible pests, and the other 80% remains in the soil.  It takes about 12 years for that 80% to break down in the soil but during that time more crops are grown in the same field and with each successive crop the amount of chemical in the soil builds up higher and higher.  Research by University of Saskatchewan biologist, Professor Christy Morrissey has shown that “upwards of 80 to 90 per cent of the wetlands are contaminated,” and “in some cases we have peak concentrations that are 100 times or more higher than those benchmarks of safe levels”.  If it takes 12 years for the chemical to break down in the soil, how long does it take to break down in the plant?  I suspect that the silage fed to cows and the grain fed to pigs and chickens must contain significant amounts of the chemical, but no one likes to talk about that possibility.

To give readers an idea how strong this neonicotinoid insecticide is, there is enough of the chemical on one single grain of corn seed to kill 80,000 bees.  In two years of studies by Health Canada the majority of samples of dead bees, pollen, soil and nearby vegetation was contaminated with neonicotinoid insecticide, and Health Canada itself has said, “current agricultural practices related to the use of neonicotinoid treated corn and soybean seed are not sustainable”.  However, in spite of all the negative research, approval has just been extended until the end of 2015 and possibly 2018.

Are you going to be like one of those people who just stood by doing nothing and watched as 6 million Jews were murdered?  Or have you got the guts to do something?  Incidentally, being a pacifist doesn’t mean doing nothing.