2021's Presidential Hot Topics

At tonight's presidential debate between US President Trump and former Vice President, Joe Biden, the candidates have their last chance to detail how they would meet the challenges the country will face in 2021 and beyond. What are those challenges? The Foreign Policy Association has released the following list of the global issues their groups will be discussing when they meet remotely next year. It would be interesting to see if you can check off any of these issues discussed at tonight's presidential debate. 1. The role of international organizations in a global pandemic. 2. Global supply chains and national security. 3. China and Africa. 4. Korean peninsula. 5. Persian Gulf security. 6. Brexit and the European Union. 7. The fight over the melting Arctic. 8. The end of globalization. The US presidential candidates touched on all of these topics, except the supply chain, which is complicated by moral as well as economic and political considerations: and Brexit and the EU, which is not of much interest to US voters. COVID-19 and China were discussed, but not in relation to international organizations or Africa. North Korea, with an economy crippled by sanctions and crop damage from unusually punishing typhoon rain, needs help, maybe from China, but possibly from selling weaponry to would-be nuclear states using hard-to trace cryptocurrency. The future of the oil industry discussion involved both the Persian Gulf and the effect of climate change melting in the Arctic. The future of globalization involves jobs, always a subject of US presidential debates. For information about how to engage in the Foreign Policy Association's discussion groups, go to fpa.org.

Sky-based Networks Aid Earth-bound Travel and National Security

For centuries, wise men and ship captains have relied on stars to guide their way. When China's Long March 3B Rocket launched a final satellite from the Xichang Satellite Center on June 23, 2021, the completed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) became a new network in the artificial skies mentioned in an earlier post. Besides serving China, the BDS is expected to court customers along China's Belt and Road Initiative project throughout Asia and Africa. Earlier, the European Union had allowed China to use its Galileo network of navigational satellites even though China was not an EU member. Once China learned what it could about a satellite system, it went off on its own. A short time later, the UK announced, on July 3, 2020, it would join with Bharti Global, India's mobile network operator, to fund a $1 billion purchase of the bankrupt OneWeb startup that had invested $3.4 billion in its satellite project. With satellites manufactured in Florida, Arianespace had helped launch 74 satellites out of a planned 650 for OneWeb. As of November, 2020, the government of the UK and India's Bharti Global own OneWeb, including its 74 satellites already in space. A Russian Soyuz rocket is scheduled to launch another 36 onconnect nearly all of the Earth's land and sea surfaces. December 17, 2020. Bharti Global's 425 million customers in India demonstrate the commercial and operational expertise that company brings to OneWeb's ultimate connection with nearly all of the Earth's land and sea surfaces. Nowadays, satellite constellation networks represent more than aids for travel, navigation, port traffic, sea rescues and precision timing, they offer broadband internet communication across the world, and they are an essential national security asset.

World's Food Supply Needs Bees & Bees Need Help

One study found 40% of bee and butterfly pollinators are in decline around the world. As if bees didn't have enough problems with the neonicotinoid type of insecticide that has been causing their colonies to collapse since 2006, now they have to deal with the effects of climate change. When spring-like warming occurs too early, flowers can bloom before bees are ready to make their rounds. Crops of at least 140 nuts, fruits, and vegetables can suffer from a lack of pollination.

     In the US, clocks are about to be moved an hour ahead this weekend to signal the beginning of daylight saving time and the time to get seeds for planting flowers and food crops on commercial farms and in backyards, rain gardens at the curb, and community plots. The Sierra Club has been sending members packets of what the organization calls a "Bee Feed Flower Mix." These packets contain seeds for bee-tasty nectar and pollen from forget-me-nots, poppies, asters, blue flax, white sweet alyssum, lavender, fleabane daisies, and purple coneflowers. What is important is the seeds in these packets are Untreated.

     Untreated seeds are important because treated seeds, such as corn and soybean seeds, are coated with neonicotinoid insecticide to kill pests as soon as the seeds sprout. Frequent exposure to neuro-toxic pesticides that spread through a plant's leaves, pollen, and even nectar damage a bee's nervous and immune systems. While insects destroy plants, so too are strawberries, avocados, peaches, almonds, and other crops lost due to a lack of pollination by bees.

     Presented with a decade of evidence about simultaneous bee colony collapse and neonicotinoid use, the European Union suspended the use of neonicotinoid in 2013. In the US, the Department of Agriculture continues to study the problem, and the Saving America's Pollinators Act of 2015 failed to get out of a House of Representatives subcommittee.

     US consumers and farmers began to take matters into their own hands. There have been consumer campaigns against stores that sell neonicotinoid-treated plants. Gardeners started to grow bee-friendly flowers and to leave woody debris, leaf litter, and bare soil where bees can breed. You can find more on this subject in the earlier post, "Be Kind to Bees."

     Some farms also began to meet the bee health challenge. Besides planting vegetables, an organic farm couple in Minnesota planted flowering dogwood and elderberry hedgerows to attract bees, butterflies, and other insects that pollinate their crops. General Mills, a company that uses honey, fruit, and vegetable ingredients requiring pollination, is working with the Xerces Society and the Department of Agriculture to preserve pollinator habitat on 100,000 acres of US farmland. A plan to grow flowers and shrubs in narrow strips around crop fields is designed to restore seven million acres of land for pollinators in the next five years. But for farmers who usually grow single crops, a shift to diversify with flowers that attract pollinators is not easy. It requires analysis of farm land, how wet and dry it is, for example, and which plants will not attract the insects that could destroy their farm's crops.

     The battle to save bees, and the world's food supply, continues.