You not knowing what that means is a good thing. That's where you and all the industrial production chain should start PRIOR to deciding that one toxic chemical really ought to be used in place of ten others, etc. A proper foundation for any use of industrial, planet scale chemistry is: I don't know what the effect will be.
That's why I'm not narrowly focused on neonicotinoids at all, and didn't mention them in my post. I'm focused on the entire supply chain, from legos to legumes. It should all be looked at with a big dose of critical skepticism.
From there, understanding the difference between growing beans and dumping weird plastic molecules into the ecosystem is pretty fundamental to knowing what is and isn't a natural party of our ecology. That's the wisdom that should sit at the top of our supply chain.
"PRIOR to deciding that one toxic chemical really ought to be used in place of ten others"
Points 1 and 2 from "5 Simple Chemistry Facts That Everyone Should Understand Before Talking About Science[1]" apply here.
1) Everything is made of chemicals, and
2) There is no such thing as a toxic chemical, there are only toxic doses. Let me say that again: all chemicals are safe at a low enough dose, and all chemicals are toxic at a high enough dose.
The idea that we can live in a world in which humans do no harm is untenable. Almost every single action we perform does some harm to some thing, and picking and choosing which things we can harm and which we cannot is rather arbitrary. Further, the idea that proving that "my chemical" does no harm is quite an impossible task, no matter how noble the chemical. H2O is responsible for innumerable floods, drownings, mudslides, erosion, etc. If your test fails for water, I think it's safe to say that your test is broken.
If you and I are responsible for a man who is exposed to doses of radiation everyday and I stand up and say, you know, we shouldn't have this guy exposed to radiation because it could be lethal, and you say, hoooold on, there's no such thing as lethal radiation, just lethal doses of radiation ... then I gotta wonder who you are working for!
Because both our points are that you gotta know how much radiation he is getting, and not according to some chart generated by someone who is benefitting from the labor from a distance, but actually what the effect of the dose is over the course of the guy's life.
We agreed about dose, but you don't tell me that I'm in the wrong for saying "halt work", by saying " but it's a question of dosage " and let the guy keep working while you do a 20 year study! You protect him first!
I disagree. The point isn't that no research should be done, but that nothing is safe. Your point was
"So we can also stipulate that the onus is on an the producers and beneficiaries of all the toxic mess of industry, to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their profit isn't coming at a permanent cost to the full realization of planetary health and sustenance."
That is an impossible task. Water is not safe. Oxygen is flammable. The number of things we can do that are not harmful to anyone or anything is closer to zero than you think.
If you set the bar at impossible, and I lower it to something achievable, it is bad form to evaluate my reasonableness as duplicitous.
Oxygen is not flammable (neither is fluorine... every other element is, in the sense that it forms stable compounds in exothermic reactions with oxygen.)
Oxygen is, however, fairly toxic (2 atmospheres partial pressure starts to get pretty dangerous after relatively short times.)
You are indeed correct, and had I taken more care, I would have stated that oxygen encourages flammability... which is still not entirely correct, but closer.
But you destroy your own point. Everyone on earth is exposed to "doses of radiation" every single second. It's just a small enough amount of radiation as to be benign.
That's why I'm not narrowly focused on neonicotinoids at all, and didn't mention them in my post. I'm focused on the entire supply chain, from legos to legumes. It should all be looked at with a big dose of critical skepticism.
From there, understanding the difference between growing beans and dumping weird plastic molecules into the ecosystem is pretty fundamental to knowing what is and isn't a natural party of our ecology. That's the wisdom that should sit at the top of our supply chain.