It’s a summer weekend, and your neighbours discover a wasp nest in their loft. Horror strikes. Fearing for their safety (not to mention a planned barbecue), they reach for the phone and within 24 hours the nest has been nuked with toxic chemicals. Your neighbour hadn’t actually been bothered by a wasp all summer, but that fact didn’t occur to them.
Your neighbours are not nature-hat- ing monsters. They are simply a product of their—our—culture. We are taught to rescue bees and fear wasps, even though both can sting. We know bees are important pollinators in natural and farmed habitats, and reports of declining numbers trigger alarm. Western environmentalists fear what the “Beepocalypse” could mean for humans—as do farmers in rural China, who are already hand-pollinating their fruit trees using paintbrushes, because of what pesticides are doing to bee populations.