Unreal realists

I recently wrote to a friend of mine enthusing about Meg Wheatley, describing her, among other things, as a “real realist”. To which my friend very sensibly replied, “what is an unreal realist”. My rather puny response was “For start all those hard headed people, who talk about “the bottom line”.”
On Saturday I encountered an article in the Guardian’s weekend magazine, “Last flight of the honeybee?”. I still haven’t recovered. Among other follies it described was that apparently three quarters of the honey bees in the US are shipped to the orchards of California’s Central Valley for three weeks each year to pollinate the almond flowers. We are talking here of a $1.9bn a year industry that supplies 80% of the world’s almonds.
Even if there wasn’t a threat of honeybees disappear altogether, which is apparently a real concern, this practice seems utterly bizarre – but no doubt there are hard headed, realistic reasons for doing things this way and for continuing the practice in the face of losing the bees that do the work. (Why am I reminded of the cod in Canada’s Grand Banks and the realists, who despite warnings, went on fishing them?)
So maybe my current nomination for the title unreal realists would be the Almond Industry of California, along with the rest of us, who happily go along with these disconnects between systems and consequences.