The Dandelion Effect

The Dandelion Effect

06 March 2019

02:46

We all remember as children picking up dandelion seed heads and delightfully  blowing them up in the air. We used to jump with joy watching the seeds floating with their parachutes , usually flying some distance before landing on the garden  patch or the roadside.

Have you thought of negative, unforeseen and unintended consequences of our momentary burst of joy?

Here are some of them:

1. The hundreds if not possibly thousands of needless "weeds" sprouting from the seeds will  require maybe hundreds of manhours of manual labour by gardeners to remove. Some of the seeds will potentially fly hundreds of kilometres before landing.
2. In order to save on labour, the ecologically unaware worker will use herbicides, which may or may not be carcinogenic, to eliminate the rapidly growing dandelion plants . The poisonous herbicide leaks into the potable water systems and 20/30years later cases of cancer arise in the population.
3. The cancer cases cause extra burdens on the public resulting in personal bankruptcies or in case of socialised medicine, huge cuts in non-oncological health budgets.
4. If the water supply has been compromised to a large degree a vast proportion of the public will be affected leading to labour shortages on the one hand, and budget shortfalls due to reduced tax receipts on the other. Inevitably, the country's finances will deteriorate to such an extent that a financial crisis will occur.
5. Furthermore. bees and other insects will be adversely affected by the herbicides which will result in vast damage to the ecosystem.

 

Modern industrial societies have literally thousands of "Dandelion Effects" where simple pleasures or conveniences result in negatively life changing or even nation changing results. It is  possible previous civilizations collapsed due to unforeseen consequences of similar effects. It is generally surmised that one of the reasons for ancient Rome's collapse was due to the introduction of lead  for piping drinking water.

Those are the negative effects. The following are positive effects:

 1.     Dandelion roots have medicinal properties. If they can be harvested commercially, they can be foraged by the  public. Similarly, other medicinal plants and herbs can be literally  spread around the meadows, the flowers of which can provide sustenance to our insect friends.

  2.    The deserts of the planet, after due diligence, can be seeded with various drought resistant weeds which after several generations  will generate the required topsoil for agriculture use.

Thus positive Dandelion Effects should be sought after and negative ones eliminated from society .