"Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?" asks The Independent. Perhaps so -- and there could be disaster on the way:
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world -- the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon -- which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe -- was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
It's called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and it is now a serious problem in the U.S. and Europe: "The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, 'man would have only four years of life left'."
Are cell phones to blame? More research needs to be done, but it looks like a distinct (and rather troubling) possibility.
And it would serve us right. As stewards of the natural world, we suck. And in our efforts to conquer that world, as opposed to living in harmony with it, we are destroying ourselves.
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