Ecological collapse

A recent landmark study that investigated alarming loss of insects is leaving scientists dumbfounded, deeply troubled, potentially the biggest-ever existential threat, risking ecosystem collapse too soon for comfort. In contrast to global warming, this may be much more imminently dangerous across-the-board to terrestrial life. An enormous loss of insect population, almost decimation in some parts of the world, threatens the life-giving structure of the ecosystem. This is a deadly serious problem!

“If we lose the insects, then everything is going to collapse… there has been some kind of horrific decline.” (Prof Dave Goulson, Sussex University). According to the new study, insect abundance has fallen by 75 percent over the past 27 years.

‘Horrific decline’ may serve as a gross understatement because anytime a key component of life on Earth declines by 75 percent in less than three decades, big-time-huge trouble is right around the corner. There’s no other way to look at it. Hopefully, the study is flawed. Time will tell, assuming there is enough.

The study utilized carefully controlled scientific protocols, but consider this: Even anecdotal evidence for the Average Joe tells the story: It wasn’t too many decades ago, 1950s-70s, that cross-country trips in the family car hit bugs, lots of ‘em, squashed on windshields and lodged within front bumper grills. No more. And, kids no longer frolic about chasing fireflies in back yards at night.

“Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. ‘We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse,” Prof Dave Goulson, Sussex University.

The loss of insects casts a very long dark shadow over the 21st century. Consider: First, global warming and now massive insect decline at a heart-stopping rate of decline. Is human society, en mass, committing suicide? The answer could be yes, humankind is committing harakari in the wide-open spaces for all to see, but nobody has noticed. Until now, as insect losses forewarn of impending ecosystem collapse.

Loss of insects is certain to have deleterious effects on ecosystem functionality, as insects play a central role in a variety of processes, including pollination, herbivory and detrivory, nutrient cycling, and providing a food source for higher trophic levels such as birds, amphibians, and mammals.

Harkening back to the Sixties, a strikingly similar issue was identified in Rachel Carson’s famous book Silent Spring (1962), the most important environmental book of the 20th century that exposed human poisoning of the biosphere through wholesale deployment of myriad chemicals aimed at pest control.

Carson’s fictional idyllic American town enriched with beautiful plant and animal life suddenly experienced a ‘strange blight,’ leaving a swathe of inexplicable illnesses, birds found dead, farm animals unable to reproduce, and fruitless apple trees, a strange lifelessness. She wrote: “A grim specter has crept upon us to silence the voices of spring.”

Today, scientists do not know the specific causes but speculate it could be simply that there is no food for insects; alternatively, the issue could be, specifically as well as more likely, exposure to chemical pesticides or maybe a combination, meaning too little food/too much pesticide.

Not only that, flower-rich grasslands, the natural habitat for insects, have declined by 97 percent since early-mid 20th century whilst industrial pesticides literally cover the world. Rachel Carson would be floored. That’s a sure-fire guaranteed formula for a tragic ending. Nature doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.

This article has been excerpted from: ‘Hidden Danger of Ecological Collapse.’

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org