Navigating the US Government – Whose Job is it to Protect the Bees?

Looks like I am starring in the movie, Dumb and Dumber 3!

Whose Job is it anyway?  That became my big question of the day – is it the EPA’s job – to ban pesticides or is it someone else’s job to protect bees?  Are these mutually exclusive responsibilities? Let’s see what we can find out…….  Just in case you are like me and made some basic assumptions about the EPA, and the role of other Government agencies as well, you may want to follow along on my journey…….

Lots of titles are misleading, aren’t they?  And, I, as a basically under-educated citizen, don’t have a good understanding of the way our government works.  So, I have set off on a little journeyman’s look at our problem with the bees.   Question of the day – is it even possible for me to educate myself in this regard?  um…. answer, I don’t know.    I have now come upon potential overlaps and conflicts of 4 departments of the US government in this regard: EPA, Fish and Wildlife, Interior and Agriculture.  Yikes…….

Yesterday, I embarked on a little exposé of my own of the EPA.   In my quest for learning a la Deeda Blair (see post on 6/18/2013), I decided to take a stroll into the bowels of the Federal Government.  Folly, you say?  Perhaps.  But, I truly want to know how this process works and to try to see why the government fails so often to see the forest for the trees, among other issues they apparently have.

I am well aware that there are many larger issues on the docket in our country than the plight of the bees.  While, if you consider this issue and it’s long term implications, it can get a bit scary, I am guessing people just don’t have a concept of what would happen if we indeed lose our pollinators.  Maybe some scientist has already come up with a man made pollinating concept and the bees will be allowed to become extinct???  I don’t know.  As I often say here, “I am no ______” , and rightly, I am no scientist of even an apiarist, but I do care about the bees and want to help in some small way, if I can.

Ok, so we have global warming, we have hunger, and more closely aligned with the farming issue, we have droughts and floods. There are toxic spill issues and water purity issues.   I am even willing to acknowledge that pestilence is an issue.  This I know.  I remember learning about the lowly boll weevil and how it decimated the cotton crops in Alabama decades ago.

So anyway, back to the bees.  I supposed I needed more background information before I went off like a whirling dervish into the land of class neonicotoid pesticides.  And so, I will.

If I had to ponder in my own naive way, I’d have to acknowledge that that EPA probably has a delicate balancing act to navigate on a daily basis.  As always, the tension arises between commerce and the good of individual species (species becomes key here).  Yet, it seems to me, on a bottom-line basis, that the Environmental “Protection” Agency, should indeed have as its number one mission “to protect”, no?

And so, I lifted out of their mission statement:

created for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress created for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress

(keep your eye on that word “human” as it becomes central……. and consider the possibility that protecting humans by virtue of the potential elimination of the pollinators of farm crops which feed our population is not covered, conceptually, under this phraseology or intent, may in fact make it irrelevant to the mission of this Department…….)

Oh dear, and so we immediately come upon that wonderful body charged with governing by the people and for the people who recently have descended into some black hole of controversy and partisanship and seem to have forgotten the concept of moving forward on behalf of the good of the people. (sometimes I liken Congress to a tornado – an individual body of randomly formed energy with no constructive purpose and whose collateral potential is only in the realm of destruction.)   Perhaps they think that debating the definition of “good” in this sense ad infinitum will, in the long run be a better idea than to make any progress on anything in the short term, i.e. our lifetime (my lifetime is relatively limited – maybe 30 years more if I am lucky?)  But anyway, I  would like to see the gifts of humanity actually push themselves forward on a few things before I expire, but I digress.

and so, cheating a bit, I lifted this from Wickipedia, and not the EPA’s actual documents – it gives a general synopsis:

The EPA has its headquarters in Washington, D.C., regional offices for each of the agency’s ten regions, and 27 laboratories. The agency conducts environmental assessment, research, and education. It has the responsibility of maintaining and enforcing national standards under a variety of environmental laws, in consultation with state, tribal, and local governments. It delegates some permitting, monitoring, and enforcement responsibility to U.S. states and Native American tribes. EPA enforcement powers include fines, sanctions, and other measures. The agency also works with industries and all levels of government in a wide variety of voluntary pollution prevention programs and energy conservation efforts.

The agency has approximately 17,000 full-time employees.^[4] and engages many more people on a contractual basis. More than half of EPA human resources are engineers, scientists, and environmental protection specialists; other groups include legal, public affairs, financial, and information technologists.

Ok, yikes, 17,000 employees?  Are these people tripping over each other somewhere trying to get something done?

So, just in case you are interested, here is a synopsis of the EPA’s accomplishments in their first 40 years – ending in 2010:

http://afgelocal704.org/issues/u-s-epas-accomplishments-over-past-40-years/

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Here is their organizational structure:

Office of the Administrator