Bees, to be specific.
Did you know that everything you eat is dependent on a tiny insect that you seldom see? And that global warming is threatening their very existence?
I should know, I keep mason bees as a hobby. Last year, they all died.
You were probably thinking of honeybees, but the number of honeybee hives is declining the US for two reasons. One, the global price of honey plummeted in recent years, driving many US apiarists out of the the business. And two, the varroa mite is devastating the remaining hives. The fewer the honeybees, the more reliant we are going to be on alternative pollinators.
But global warming threatens mason bees, and other native pollinators. Whence go the bees, so goes our food.
I've heard it been said from global warming deniers that even it global warming were true, it won't be so bad. Many parts of the US will become more arable, for example.
This argument complicity accepts global warming. And it obviously ignores the dire predicament that previously above-water locales will face. Island states and nations will be the worst off, but anybody who has seen "An Inconvenient Truth" knows that that Florida will become an archipelago and the my native San Francisco bay will become a great inland sea. (My only consolation is that at some point my home will be bay-front property. That's when I plan to sell!)
But our food supply will not be safe either. Even if previously non-arable lands start enjoying longer growing seasons, this does not mean that food can actually be grown there.
And the reason is simple: plants need water, soil, sun, AND pollinators. Take away the last and you get healthy plants that don't bear fruit. Apples, cherries, even wheat rely on pollinators. For the meat lovers in the audience tonight, you might like to know that alfalfa, the staple food of livestock, relies heavily on a tiny bee called the alfalfa leafcutting bee. Global warming threatens to harm all native pollinators. And those that survive will find their life cycles drastically altered.
(Pictured right: Male osmia californica. Isn't he cute? )
For example, my mason bees emerge in the spring, timed somewhat with the cherry and apple blossoms. Other mason bee species fly later, some fly earlier. The point is, they're timed to begin their brief flying cycle sometime after the cold stops and the blossom starts.
If it gets warmer earlier, they will emerge earlier. But just because it's warmer out, doesn't mean the trees are going to bloom. Plants can be much pickier. For example, if it starts raining, the bloom will be delayed.
Last year, it was an unseasonably warm winter. That sped up my bees' emergence. Then it did something it never does in California (especially in the Bay Area). It rained. And it rained. And it rained.
I'm not whining about the rain; this is drought country. But now the bees were awake but they couldn't fly; you try buzzing you wings in the rain. They couldn't fly on the overcast days in between; you try flying without the sun and you're cold-blooded. Rough winds did shake the darling buds of May, errr March; again, you try flying in the breeze if you weight only a few grams.
They starved. (Cue taps)
If it had been cold like it is supposed to, the bees would have emerged with the end of the rains, not the beginning.
In my meager garden--and the surrounding plots--fewer blossoms were pollinated, and thus the end-of-the-season crop was smaller. The early emergence and rain affected the native ecosystem as well. My bees can only do so much.
We're suburbanites, and we don't depend on our fruit trees. But farmers do. If the pollinators aren't timed with the blossoms, the crop will be smaller. The warmer temperature gets, the more that native pollinators are going to emerge earlier. While a species may survive, they'll be feeding off of different food sources and not necessarily the flowers of our trees.
Don't count on honey bees to make up the difference, either. And even with more hives we would still have trouble. Entomologists are coming to understand how dependent we are on pollinators already in the ecosystem.
Did you know that honeybees are poor at pollinating tomatoes? Bumblebees are much better at that. Honeybees also aren't so good at pollinating the orchard their hive has been placed in, but one five miles away is going to do quite well. Mason bees are great at pollinating spring blossoms (cherries, apples, apricots, peaches, nectarines, pears, and even almonds if you can time their emergence right). There are a slew of local bugs out there in your garden--ants included--which are pollinating your flowers.
In short, our food supply is interdependent on a host of bugs most of us pay little attention to. When they disappear, so does our food.
Global warming isn't the only reason local wild bee population are declining. There is also the destruction of their nesting habitats, pesticides, and fewer native plants (which they prefer). Global warming will only make it worse. Arable land, contrary to the nay-sayers, will become more scarce, forcing us to convert more wild land into agriculture. Some bugs will thrive in on a warmer globe, making pesticide use more common.
This winter, I converted a used wine fridge into a bee cooler. (I asked some of the garden insects if they would like to hibernate on the white wine setting, but they declined.) While I can coddle my bees, we can't refrigerate all the bugs on the planet. It would be easier if we slowed down global warming, then reversed it. The bugs which our food supply is dependent upon will appreciate it.