The Insect Apocalypse Is Here What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth? NYT

[bronxiteforever]

New York Times
Brooke Jarvis
Nov. 27, 2018


The current worldwide loss of biodiversity is popularly known as the sixth extinction: the sixth time in world history that a large number of species have disappeared in unusually rapid succession, caused this time not by asteroids or ice ages but by humans. When we think about losing biodiversity, we tend to think of the last northern white rhinos protected by armed guards, of polar bears on dwindling ice floes. Extinction is a visceral tragedy, universally understood: There is no coming back from it. The guilt of letting a unique species vanish is eternal.

But extinction is not the only tragedy through which we’re living. What about the species that still exist, but as a shadow of what they once were? In “The Once and Future World,” the journalist J.B. MacKinnon cites records from recent centuries that hint at what has only just been lost: “In the North Atlantic, a school of cod stalls a tall ship in midocean; off Sydney, Australia, a ship’s captain sails from noon until sunset through pods of sperm whales as far as the eye can see. ... Pacific pioneers complain to the authorities that splashing salmon threaten to swamp their canoes.” There were reports of lions in the south of France, walruses at the mouth of the Thames, flocks of birds that took three days to fly overhead, as many as 100 blue whales in the Southern Ocean for every one that’s there now. “These are not sights from some ancient age of fire and ice,” MacKinnon writes. “We are talking about things seen by human eyes, recalled in human memory.”

What we’re losing is not just the diversity part of biodiversity, but the bio part: life in sheer quantity. While I was writing this article, scientists learned that the world’s largest king penguin colony shrank by 88 percent in 35 years, that more than 97 percent of the bluefin tuna that once lived in the ocean are gone. The number of Sophie the Giraffe toys sold in France in a single year is nine times the number of all the giraffes that still live in Africa.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html


I can’t do this article justice. Read the whole thing and continue the fight to save our lives and our earth’s precious and fellow passengers.

[Moostache]

1. No one seems to put these pieces together...

We are all well and truly fucked...it is starting to accelerate and once it hits terminal velocity no one is prepared for the horrors we may live through. I am nearly 50, so my time horizon on this planet is somewhere between 20 and 40 more years. I used to believe I would die before the worst impacts of climate change became universally obvious ... I am losing hope of that now.

[bronxiteforever]

4. I noticed a substantial fall off in bees and butterflies in my yard.

I can’t explain it but it was like they just disappeared. Then I read this article and this quote:

“We’ve begun to talk about living in the Anthropocene, a world shaped by humans. But E.O. Wilson, the naturalist and prophet of environmental degradation, has suggested another name: the Eremocine, the age of loneliness.”

My God, that sounds worse than death.

[Stonepounder]

7. When I was a kid, some 60 years ago, I remember seeing

fireflies everywhere on a summer's eve. Literally hundreds of them. And we lived in a suburban neighborhood. Now we live backing up to a forest, and if I see two or three fireflies on a summer's eve that's a lot.

I miss them. And the butterflies.

[bronxiteforever]

8. I am a little younger but have noticed the same thing.

Warning lights are flashing throughout the whole natural world.

[defacto7]

14. I have noticed as well. n/t

[Cartoonist]

2. Sad to say, but there's only one solution

Reduce the number of humans.
Who first?
I'll be leaving soon enough. You can feed me to the fish.

[catbyte]

5. Sadly, that's what it's going to take. I made a conscious decision in my early 20's to not

procreate because I could see the writing on the wall all those decades ago. I'm 63 and I've never regretted my decision. I see people having more than 2 kids and I just want to throttle them. They are killing their own children's future. Rich folks might be able to stave off the inevitable for a while, but not forever. Nature will take care of us if we don't. No insects, the ecosystem breaks down; no bees, crops don't get pollinated, famine ensues, millions starve to death and disease runs rampant. earth resources are finite. Why don't people get that?!?

[defacto7]

15. What do you think all the upward movement of wealth

is about? It's about who will survive. That's the dark side to the question of why what seems so illogical and inhuman is happening.

[Chickensoup]

3. Can anyone tell the idiots in the WH,

and Trump tower.

[Duppers]

6. This saddens and sickens me

To the pit of my stomach. Some of us have been screaming about this for years.

*WE* have caused this!! But any suggestion of less *WE* has been met with spitfire rejection here on DU. Even liberals cannot agree that we need to drastically reduce our numbers. Mother Nature will take care of us too.

[bronxiteforever]

9. Mother Nature is dying

“Nature’s resilient, but we’re pushing her to such extremes that eventually it will cause a collapse of the system.”

[Duppers]

10. I know and meant the forces that govern life

Will also kill us. We cannot survive in the conditions we've created.

[bronxiteforever]

11. Oh yes I was agreeing with you!

A wave of hi seems inappropriate given the somber article but take it as a hi in this dark time

[Duppers]

12. Thank you!

And I need all the waves of hi and smiles I can get. I've literally done a lot of crying about this.

I think folks having children now are idiots, not accepting the horror these children will be facing as adults.


Anyway, for now. And a 🤗 for you.

[bronxiteforever]

13. Thanks and I feel how you feel. Yet maybe we can save life still.

I know hope is the last to go but it’s not over yet!