17
Jun
Be a Hero for Pollinators: Ask Your U.S. Rep to Co-Sponsor the Saving America’s Pollinators Act
(Beyond Pesticides, June 17, 2019)Â During Pollinator Week, starting June 17, ask your elected representative in Congress to support pollinators by co-sponsoring Saving America’s Pollinators Act (SAPA). If they are already a cosponsor, use the occasion to thank them for their leadership on this critical issue.
With the ongoing saga that is the pollinator crisis, we know who the villains of this story are: Bayer, Syngenta, Croplife America, and other multi-national companies that produce, promote, and protect pollinator-toxic pesticides.
But where are the heroes?Â
Pollinator Week should be a week-long celebration of pollinators and the benefits they provide for people and the environment. Unfortunately, we must point out that the wrongdoers are running the show, and our fluttering friends are disappearing.
Chemical corporations use this week to greenwash their products by sponsoring outreach events that completely ignore their role in unprecedented pollinator declines. Don’t be fooled by their disguise.
We know that real solutions won’t come from a masked crusader. It won’t be a singular superhero that saves the day. In order to fight the fiendish forces behind the global insect apocalypse, we need a mass mobilization of everyday heroes. Heroes like you can inspire good in your elected officials.
By introducing this critical piece of legislation, U.S. Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Jim McGovern (D-MA) have begun the fight to protect pollinators in the face of the vested economic interests of chemical companies, chemical service industry, and an unresponsive U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And as a result of pollinator heroes like yourself, they’ve already enlisted 52 cosponsors to join the effort.
The Saving America’s Pollinators Act (H.R.1337) will not only cancel specific bee-toxic pesticides, it will reshape the EPA process for permitting pesticides to be used in our communities and homes in the first place. Current law is filled with language that allows chemical lobbyists to unduly influence EPA decisions and loopholes that favor pesticide dependency instead of incentivizing alternatives like organic practices and products.
Under SAPA, pesticides that pose risks to pollinators will undergo a higher level of review by a board of unbiased pollinator experts. If these experts, who will not have conflicts of interest with the chemical industry, determine a pesticide is too toxic, then it will be removed or never allowed on the market in the first place.
SAPA creates a sustainable model for pollinator protection, including an annual, ongoing review on the health of pollinator populations. In the face of an EPA captured by chemical company corruption, SAPA will become an important tool to prevent ongoing chemical crimes against pollinators and the environment.
Stay tuned to Beyond Pesticides Facebook and Twitter for more heroic actions you can take during Pollinator Week 2019.
please help
June 17th, 2019 at 3:40 pmPlease support our pollinators by co-sponsoring and voting for Saving America’s Pollinators Act.
June 22nd, 2019 at 10:56 amThank you.