Honey supply under threat in Australia as native flowers fail to bloom
www.abc.net.au
After four consecutive dry winters, beekeepers in Western Australia are warning of diminished hives and biodiversity loss as fewer flowers bloom and pollen dries up.

In today’s news of a continually deteriorating environment (depressing story before this was more roads being built)

The native bushland on Western Australia’s central coast would normally be bursting with springtime blooms but after four years of increasingly dry winters, only a handful of plants are starting to bud.

  • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa
    3·
    19 days ago

    Na, honeys crap, lets open more gas fields instead! /s

    I hadn’t thought about flowering plants having varying degrees of pollen before. Makes sense.

    This is an incredibly sad business. There mightn’t be much we can do about rain, (cloud seeding apparently isn’t always feasible), but this State needs to have environmental scale water production facilities to replenish the water tables across this State. I commented in a different post about the fact that I’m sick of WA having ‘mega’ projects, but this is a mega project i think we have to take on.

    • ⸻ Ban DHMO 🇦🇺 ⸻MEnglish
      2·
      18 days ago

      environmental scale water production facilities to replenish the water tables across this State

      So Coca-Cola can get it for free?

      • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa
        2·
        18 days ago

        Lol, not really. I actually think the best thing for Coca Cola to do is set up their own desal plant. Or more likely do a joint venture with the State government on one. It would remove their collection as negative publicitiy (if they consistently match or beat standards of water corp), and in a very small way be net positive for on land water.

        The way I see it this State has no choice but to massively ramp up desalination and irrigation infrastructure throughout the bush and wheatbelt. I can’t see any other way we have to slow and maybe hold off the cumulative effect of the falling rate of rainfall across the southwest.

        If that means Joint Ventures with water users like coca cola, then it should be considered.

        • Hanrahan@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
          2·
          18 days ago

          It would remove their collection as negative publicitiy

          How ? Desal is massively energy intensive and toxic to the environment.

          • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa
            1·
            17 days ago

            Yeah, massively energy intensive. I say these things with the implicit assumption that they’d use renewables. Sorry my bad, i should just say that.

            I’ve previously read reports from the desal plant in Cockburn, where the water corp seem to have managed the discharge quite well, as far as salinity levels in the Sound were concerned.

            It would remove their collection as negative publicitiy

            The key thing about Coca Cola at the moment is they’re taking from the scarce underground water resevoirs around Perth for bottled water at bargain basement prices. We know that most, not all, of these aquifers are drying out. So this is the negative publicity coca cola has been getting this year. And rightly so, if you ask me. So a desal plant would remove that issue, as well as give them greater control over their own production.