EPA's Scientists: Don't approve this pesticide. EPA: Science can die in a fire, we do what we want.

Things I love keep dying.

they just look so happy, and they're always so busy getting stuff done....

First Bats, now bees: mass die-outs are in vogue more now than ever before for a number of reasons, but the unexplained and scary emergence of colony collapse disorder--the swift deaths en masse of entire bee colonies threaten to affect us more than any other die out, period. Even if you're sting-aversive or they really freak you out, the fact remains that bees are still responsible for pollinating every land plant that feeds us (or feeds the things that we eat, for you carnivores out there). They're the biggest part of the agricultural process that we haven't been able to automate, and they're arguably the most important. 
They die, we don't eat. Awesome.

Which is one of the reasons why this news item makes Maggie Koerthe-Baker (a boingboing contributor that I love) really, really mad. 

The other reason is that it's basically proof that the Environmental Protection Agency, charged with protecting the environment, is okay with pissing in the eye of science to cowtow to big chemical companies.

From Grist:

"An internal EPA memo released Wednesday confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which Bayer racked up €183 million (about $262 million) in sales in 2009. Clothianidin has been widely used on corn, the largest U.S. crop, since 2003. Suppliers sell seeds pre-treated with it....Clothianidin gets 'taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen and nectar,' according to Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), which leaked the document along with Beyond Pesticides. That effect makes it highly toxic to a crop's pests -- and also harmful to pollen-hoarding honeybees, which have experienced mysterious annual massive die-offs (known as "colony collapse disorder") here in the United States at least since 2006."

While this is definitely not the only cause of colony collapse, more and more evidence is pointing to pesticides being the largest cause. 

Maggie drops her usual playful, hilarious tone and lays it out nicely thus:

 "Leaked documents now show that EPA scientists noticed the problems with the research Bayer gave them, pointed those problems out, and explicitly stated that this evidence didn't count as proof that bees weren't being harmed. And then the EPA approved the pesticide anyway. This leaves me furious. Pesticides, in and of themselves, are not inherently evil. But it should be just as obvious that some will be dangerous and we have to make choices and balance risks against benefits, based on scientific evidence. If the agency that's supposed to be handling that job is ignoring evidence and just approving everything? Well, we're pretty screwed."

Personally, I like to eat. I like to eat a lot more than I like dead bees. And I like to eat way, WAY more than I like swelling Bayer's bottom line, I don't care how much Aspirin saved me from blood clots that one time.

Come on, EPA. Pull up your socks.