The city’s resistance to preserving honey bees undermines any prior climate action efforts.
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Most Philadelphians I talk to are unaware of their Mayor’s commitment to the climate action movement.
The majority of taxpayers know where Mayor Michael Nutter stands on stop-and-frisk and a fair funding formula for Philadelphia’s schools, but what’s lesser known is that in 2014, Mayor Nutter, along with the Mayors of Houston and Los Angeles, formed the National Climate Action Agenda, which called for national and international bonding emission reductions agreements, establishing stronger inventory standards and reporting, committing to a set of local actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and growing the carbon offset market by removing barriers to municipal projects.
Those who call Philadelphia home, I suspect, also aren’t too familiar with how integral Mayor Nutter was in getting the Office of Sustainability to be a permanent fixture of government.
I sat just feet from the Mayor in City Hall when he looked into television cameras and urged voters to vote yes on a ballot question regarding the permanency of the Office of Sustainability.
I also covered Mayor Nutter’s press conference where he announced the Energy Reduction Race, a citywide competition to save energy in Philadelphia’s largest buildings.
To say the least, Mayor Nutter has lead, most times without fanfare, on issues germane to the climate action movement.
So it came as surprise to me when I read that the Nutter Administration was resistant to regulating the extermination of honeybees, a proposal by 4th District Philadelphia City Councilman, Mr. Curtis Jones Jr., who last year mentioned to me that he was growing his knowledge of the environment and climate change, particularly because his Councilmanic District is prone to flooding.
According to CBS Philly, Councilman Jones is concerned that residents all too often call in exterminators when they find a bee hive on their property and the exterminators aren’t trained to remove the hive without killing the bees.
Councilman Jones, under the influence of President Obama’s call to preserve honeybees and their bee hives, wants exterminators in the Philadelphia area to complete two hours of mandatory training on the non-lethal removal of honey bees.
Though both the President’s plea and the Councilman’s proposal are labeled recent, the impending extinction of honey bees isn’t. In fact, in 2014, when Mayor Nutter was advancing efforts in the climate action movement, Techbook Online was, too.
A 2014 Echoing Green Climate Fellowship Semi-Finalist, Techbook Online published a number of E-Books to promote environmental advancement. One of the titles, “Climate Change: Causes & Effects,” published in the form of comic journalism, features an original character called Hardly Honeybee, a sad looking insect who, like in real life, faces extinction due to climate change.
And prior to 2014, the French National Institute for Agronomic Research in 2008 published a paper remarking about how honeybees and the crops they pollinate are in danger.
The publication in part stated:
“Climate change can impact honey bees at different levels. It can have a direct influence on honey bee behavior and physiology. It can alter the quality of the floral environment and increase or reduce colony harvesting capacity and development.”
Despite all the studies and data available on this subject, Mr. Manny Citron of the City’s Managing Director’s Office, who admittedly is unaware of climate change’s impact on honeybees and the President’s effort to save them, said the Nutter Administration opposes the idea, because it goes beyond the purview of The city’s Animal Care and Control Team and because a state agency already certifies exterminators.
The resistance in this case from the City undermines prior climate action efforts, and it’s a stark change in attitude from an Administration so focused on getting the “green thumbs” up from peers around the world.
Unlike Councilman Jones, who described himself as a poor boy from West Philly who’s wheelhouse of information doesn’t include environmental knowledge banks, I’m very educated on climate change’s impact on plant and animals, and the need to mitigate extinction, and thus I urge the City to reconsider its position.
Honeybees, specifically, their honey, contribute an estimated $117 billion per year to the U.S economy and around 35% of agricultural crops depend directly on pollinators. 84% of cultivated plant species are involved with the activity of honeybees.
The Councilman’s proposal may need tweaking, but it certainly shouldn’t be tossed aside and forgotten by the Administration nor taxpayers, as honey bees are now an endangered species and precautionary measures at every level of government must be taken.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™