Killing The Insects, and Ourselves

SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT OF THE INSECTS which buzzed about Europe a quarter century ago are missing inaction, victims of man made insecticides and climate change. Likewise, tree species in North America, like armadillos, are migrating north,toward the migrating warmth. The farther north you go, the more rapidly the Earth is warming. for decades we have known of the decline of butterflies, bumble bees, and frogs, all of which are delicate bellwether species. They die first, the rest of the natural world follows. if we lose the flying insects, as we are currently doing with alarming rapidity, we lose all plant life on earth, and, ultimately, our lives. Best we put our mosquito zappers, Round Up, DDT, and all manner of insecticides and herbicides in cold storage, and start giving the little buggers half a chance. Corporate agriculture giants grow huge mono crops, laced with insecticides, inimical to all wildlife, including human. Mono crops attract far fewer insect species.Archer Midland Daniels, Dow Dupont, Monsanto Bayer, ow however in the hell they are incestuously, monopolistically conjoined, would be well advised to invest for the long term, for sustained future profit. For that, human survival is mandatory. It would help to stop reducing earth's tree population by ten billion per year, and instead to plant one trillion new trees, to bring the world's total up to close to five trillion, which would be only two trillion fewer than at the dawn of human history. E.O. Wilson, famed Harvard biologist, tells us that if we lose our red ants, and nothing else, we are doomed. We should listen to him; he's an expert, and experts still know more than the rest of us, though we Americans seem reluctant to acknowledge that. We must produce less meat, and less inefficiently. Why not eat the grain we currently feed to cattle ourselves? We long for the days of the small family farms with multiple crops, and bemoan the advent of sterile corporate ag. Nature, and insects, like diversity. Suburban backyards need not be manicured to the point of sterility. A few weeds, and a little wildlife enhances life for all. Slower population growth, less greed, more human humility, less destruction of nature, and more solar energy are needed. The sooner we start healing the planet and stop exploiting it for profit, the better our chances of raising our great grand children. the fly in the ointment is that it may already be too late.