FORGET CLIMATE CHANGE—-HUMANS ARE MORE THREATENED BY COLLAPSE OF INSECTS AND THE ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM!
I read today (February 10, 2019) in the Guardian (on line) of another fearful report about how our chemically based agricultural system is destroying the planet. “Plummeting insect numbers threaten collapse of nature.”, The Guardian, February 10, 2019. The report documents studies in Germany, Europe, and Austrailia s well as the USA which conclude that 40% of insect species are declining in numbers and a third are endangered . The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles.” They note that the total mass of insects is falling at a precipitous rate of 2.5% per annum. At that rate insects could vanish within less than a century—(40 x 2.5 = 100!) in the next four decades or by 2060!
We all hate bugs, they sting, they bite, they make the outdoors unbearable as well as gnaw away at our corn, soybeans, vegetables and other food crops—so why should we be concerned?
Because they are the underlying basis of the food chain which undergirds the entire terrestrial ecosystem. Over hundreds of millions of years bugs and plants have evolved together. The demise of insects mean: no plants, no amphibians, no reptiles, no birds, no mammals and along with that— no humans!
Why are insect populations collapsing? Humans dominate the ecosystem now. And we are a species foolishly determined to make over the natural world to our own liking—but Mother Nature can not and will not cooperate with us. She has other ideas on how her system works and we persist in ignoring her dictates, determined to generate an unstable parallel man-made world To raise this unnatural world and control it we have dumped greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, polluted its soil and oceans with radioactive wastes, soiled it with by-products of petroleum, created oceans of plastic debris and chemical poisons designed to control plants and animals we term“pests”. But our unnatural parallel world is crumbling about our ears— and the frightening decline in insects is the canary lying feet upward in the floor of the miner’s cage. For Earth to survive we must stop poisoning our beautiful and singular planet with lethal products —there is no alternative.
When the agro-chemists at Monsanto, Bayer and Dupont get finished with our only home, our planet, there will be no bugs to pester us but no food, to eat, no safe water to drink, and no clean air to breathe . This is real and and imminent threat. We must stop drowning the planet in tons and tons of neonicitinoids and glyphosate (Roundup) if we are to survive as a species into the next century.
At present the chemical industry produces (as per 2010 data) about 20,000 tonnes (or 20 million kg or 44 million pounds of the most common neonicotinoid insecticide (imidacloprid) annually ( a persistent systemic poison which cripples insect nervous systems and leads to death). It is in use world wide. Imidacloprid (and many other brands like it) have become the most used and ubiquitous insecticide worldwide. It is found everywhere, polluting almost every farm field soil and the water which drains from these fields . It is carried by the streams and rivers into bays and near-shore marine environments too. The collapse of bee populations world wide is well documented as well as the demise of marine crustaceans in these waters such as the Blue Crab (Callinectes sapidus) Read about its terrible extensive use of this pesticide and it misuse worldwide as well as its carcinogenic nature. Look up neonics! With so much of this poison in our soils and waterways what does one expect but widespread insect decline!
Rachel Carson predicted a “silent spring” more than 50 years ago in her 1962 classic of that name! Sadly we still have not learned the underlying lesson of her book and her life’s work. The anti nature chemists and charletans only changed the evil poisons they are creating and selling to destroy our planet. These modern chemicals are even more pernicious and stealthy.
Either end the chemical poisoning of our world or face the prospect of extinction not just for bugs but for life as we know it.
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