Björn Wiman: What does Stefan Löfven today to secure honeybee buzz?

”It is our task to preserve the Swedish nature for our children and grandchildren”, inskärpte prime minister Stefan Löfven, in his government declaration recently. He talked about the magic of Swedish old-growth forests, and if lärkans drill. And he talked about ”the buzz of the honey bees”.

May saw the prime minister the industrious steklarnas rules of procedure as an embodiment of democratic socialism – each bi in and out of the hive with nectar and pollen, to the voice and solidarity of the working of the organism they constitute. Or so he thought in the 1700 talszoologen Jan Swammerdams the study of how God even in the smallest of the bee elements ”hides the overwhelming miracle.”

simply from the reality. In the week a report was published in the journal Biological Conservation, the first global review of the research shows that shows that the world is heading towards a mass extinction of not only bees but all insects. The researchers suggest that the insect species die out in a hitherto unknown speed and that if this development continues, the total amount of insects on the earth will be halved in 50 years and be completely lost in 100 years. Among the causes are climate change, but also a too intensive agriculture and the extensive use of pesticides. The report is in line with earlier warnings about a historic sixth massutplåning of life on earth.

Read more: New report: the Dramatic reduction of the world's insects

Why is the death so serious? Therefore, that insects account for 70 percent of the planet's living species and plays a crucial role for a large part of the rest of the fauna and flora. Not least, the bees, which accounts for part of the vital processes of pollination of the plants that provide us food. A world without bees, bumble bees and other pollinators is a world without food. A world without life. The insects ' death is an existential question – in every sense of the word.

Nevertheless (or just therefore) it is as if society is completely lamslaget the face of the kind of news which report on the insektsdöden. In SVT's ”the Current” get a researchers tranquil answer questions about ”What can we, as individuals, can do to save insects?” Plant a plant? Buy organic food?

Just as in the case of the climate crisis is, of course, only the individual steps hopelessly inadequate. It's like we collectively forget to look in the right direction,

Sure you can ”we” do it. But just as in the case of the climate crisis is, of course, only the individual steps hopelessly inadequate. It's like we collectively forget to look in the right direction and take immediate responsibility at the highest political level. It is not the scientists who should solve this, it is society's leaders. Insektsdöden is – like for example the hole in the ozone layer or the plastic in the oceans – a problem in which concrete policy interventions can achieve quick and decisive difference. Everyone knows what the problem is and what needs to be done. Stefan Löfven held his hand over the honeybees in the regeringsförklaringen. What does the prime minister of the day to secure their continued buzzing?

the finest of the novels is the ”Bee history” of the Norwegian author Maja Lunde, in a beautifully and credibly portrays the transition to the new age of man is about to create on earth. In the novel is just the bees ' death is the triggering cause of a civilisationskollaps. It starts with the real their demise in the united states in 2006-2007, 40 years later, there are no bees at all left on the earth, and 2098, the majority of the world's population wiped out by starvation and war, at the same time, the climate change run amok.

One of the novel's three parallellhistorier unfolding in China 2097, where you handpollinerar fruit trees – something that happens in reality already today. Already in the 1980s disappeared, the bees and the bees in one of the most famous fruktdistrikten in China, where the peasants instead, climb around in the trees and pollinate themselves, just as the Tao in Maja Lundes novel.

But it is also the Tao, which, by reconnecting to the story of teeth of hope that still pervades the ”Bee history”. The novel revolves around the same question as Stefan Löfven raised in regeringsförklaringen: What is it that we as parents leave on to children and grandchildren? The family's world is, just as the beehive, the little world, which in turn affects the larger world – and vice versa. ”Bee history” leads to an insight: ”to be able to live in the wild, with nature, we must alienate ourselves from nature in ourselves... Education is to defy ourselves, to defy nature, the instincts...”

the world is found in Lars Gustafsson's little masterpiece ”A biodlares death” from 1978. Here are the modern man's dilemma single of the protagonist, the retired yrkesläraren and the beekeeper Lars Westin, ”the Weasel” – he receives a message from the medical examination, that he never bother to open. ”Vesslans” way to manage their own cancerbesked feels linked with the way humanity receives the big ödesbeskeden if insektsdöd and klimatkollaps. We know so well what the brown envelope containing where it is located on the hallbänken. But we open it never and refuses thus to undergo adequate treatment.

In one of his dreams lifts the Westin instead of the cover to one of their hives and find that the bees turned into intelligent, technically advanced beings from outer space – refugees from a civilization of wise insects that he could converse with.

What are they saying to him?

”We begin again, we do not give up.”

Read more by Björn Wimans chronicles of the climate crisis – and about the book ”Late on earth. 33 thoughts on the world's biggest news” .