
Is the Insect Apocalypse Upon Us? - sergeant3
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/insect-apocalypse-really-upon-us/583018/
======
gmoes
I’ve made the same basic comment before, but we need to ban the residential
use of herbicides and pesticides. I spoke to a beekeeper who had two hives
wiped out by Mosquito Squad spraying on an adjacent property.

I recently came across a 1997 paper called: "Producing and Consuming
Chemicals: The Moral Economy of the American Lawn". They cite a higher per
hectare usage for residential over agriculture. We need to get rid of our
lawns they are literally destroying the planet and they are greenhouse gas
emitters when you factor in gas powered mowers and leaf blowers. Fertilizer
emits nitrogen oxides that are potent greenhouse gases.

The paper is interesting as it talks about how lawns are marketed.
Unfortunately lawns are a multibillion dollar industry. If we are going to
fight climate change and environmental degradation, we need to seriously
rethink letting business needs take priority over the environment and not just
for lawns.

We need to allow people to have native plant yards. I've seen great results
with insects. Unfortunately it's illegal where I live and probably most non-
rural places. In order to allow this would mean changing state and local
ordinances across the US. I honestly don’t think that will happen until it’s
too late. By then lawns will be the last thing we will care about.

~~~
tootie
Lawns are the dumbest thing Americans obsess over. I've lived in apartments my
whole adult life but if I had a lawn I'd be inclined to just let it go wild.
Or maybe plant moss or something.

~~~
AlexandrB
Unfortunately, just like with municipal support of car culture, lawns and
their upkeep are often written into municipal bylaws. That's not even getting
into HOAs and how restrictive their lawn policies can be - often having
requirements down to which species of grass[1] you're allowed to use. Finally
there's communal pressure from neighbours, who will give you the stink eye if
the weeds from your wild lawn even _might_ encroach onto their manicured
grass.

[1] [https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/real-estate-and-
landlordin...](https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/real-estate-and-
landlording/hoa-and-my-lawn/)

~~~
goda90
I just bought my first home last spring. No HOA, but I did get the city called
on me for being close to the 8 inch limit on grass. We also heard on the grape
vine that one neighbor blamed our longer grass for the mosquitoes keeping them
from enjoying the outdoors, instead of, you know, the record rainfall and
nearby drainage ditch.

Luckily my city's ordinances have a provision for a "natural lawn" made up of
native grasses and plants that can be extra tall. I intend to turn my front
yard into one to reduce how much mowing I need to do.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
> for being close to the 8 inch limit on grass.

What the hell?

I assume simply concreting over it for more parking space would be fine
though.

Most UK streets will have a property or two where the garden does whatever it
is that gardens do when completely ignored for a decade. Or with meadow or
wildlife friendly planting, maybe intentionally including weeds.

I love this. All over HN American folks talk now and then about how govt
should keep out of things, and how that works so much better than in that
terrible interfering socialist place, Europe. You regulate your front lawns
and grass height. There's probably an ANSI standard for them. Sorry. ;)

------
jillesvangurp
There are a few practices in modern agriculture that are probably not helping.
Farmers use pesticides to kill everything but the crop they are interested in.
Then they use pesticides to get rid of insects and other parasites, and
finally they use herbicides so they can trigger plants to start dying just in
time for harvest rather than waiting this to happen organically.

That stuff is nasty. It's actually intended to be nasty. And the side effect
is that it kills a lot of animals and plants indiscriminately. Also, this
stuff is possibly not that great for human consumption either. There seems to
be a lot of lobbying around this topic and a lot of debate about what is
considered OK here. But I'd say most people would probably opt out of having
any of this stuff in their food, just on the off chance it might decrease
their chances of getting some cancer, genetic defects in their offspring, etc.

Modern organic farming can actually get great yields by more clever use of
soil and land and does not need pesticides, herbicides, or insecticides. There
is a lot of high tech stuff facilitating this including drones, water
management, use of herds of animals to manage soil (planned grazing), etc. And
then there is hydroponic farming as well. Progress in this space is very
rapid.

Phasing these out and restricting the use of poison in farming would probably
be a good thing. This cannot be done over night but there are plenty of farms
that have switched to being fully organic while increasing yields and profits.
It can be done and it requires doing things differently. Now is a good time to
start doing much more of that. And we might actually restore some arid lands
to healthy condition in the process which would not hurt our planet either.

~~~
jki275
I'd love to see a citation on this -- my impression (grew up in farm country)
was that organic farming was significantly less yield, higher expense, and
totally impossible to actually run a profitable farm on without raising prices
immensely. People do it, but the market for food that costs 3x is relatively
small -- most moderate to lower income simply can't afford it.

Maybe things have changed, but I suspect if they have everybody would have
switched already. Obviously getting rid of poisons is a great target, but I've
never heard from anyone in the business that it's even a possibility.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Many years since I had relatives in agriculture and horticulture, so I may be
embarrasingly outdated.

Monoculture tends to encourage everything we don't want. Needing fertilisers
or rotation, pesticides, disease has many acres to spread easily through etc.

There's good organic and bad, and efficient and inefficient., but look into
polyculture[1]. An old mixed farm would mix crops and sometimes livestock in
the same space. The yields were lower, but there were often more yields across
the farm to compensate. Thus the yield difference is often not as advertised.
Sympathetic planting could actively reduce likelihood of disease and pests.
Not everything scales to large farms.

It's also expensive because it's expensive. People expect and treat organic as
a premium product. Supermarkets charge accordingly, in no small part because
they can. If less industrial approaches to agriculture became widespread,
prices would fall. Though unlikely to remove the difference completely.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture)
(Doesn't consider organic polyculture)

~~~
jki275
I agree that it is a more sustainable method of farming to mix crops across
growing seasons. However, that is "dealt with" in modern farming by using
fertilizers and such -- and as you say, it doesn't scale well.

Organic is certainly a premium product, and where there are consumers that can
afford it, it will thrive. Unfortunately it seems to me that right now the
cost to produce it is simply too high for it to come out of that premium
category and be the norm.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Polyculture also mixes during the season. A field of onions _and_ carrots as
they discourage each other's pests. Or interspersing some height for a
harvestable canopy. Or an orchard where chickens are under the trees, picking
up grubs and fertilising. (Don't know if that works in practice, take as a for
instance). Some of these were just the standard old way of doing farming. Not
so amenable to the largest scale, but if less scale is what's required to keep
a working planet...

You're probably right about organic right now, but before the recession, all
the UK supermarkets were going crazy over organic throughout the 00s. Organic
versions of most things became available and prices fell to a point where some
were only 10% or 20% more. The trend was clear enough, but stopped dead by
2008.

------
dbingham
The conclusion of the article is that even though we don't have conclusive
research, the early signs are worrying and the risks are far too high to wait
for better data to act.

This is the problem with things like climate change and ecological collapse.
Science is extremely slow to measure and understand the phenomena. But the
disasters can move far faster than the science, wrecking havoc as they go.
Scientists are naturally cautious and skeptical and so will dismiss the kind
of claims it takes to move people until those claims are overwhelmingly
supported.

By the time scientists have enough data to comfortably support the claims,
it's far too late to act on them.

~~~
de_Selby
It's not the scientists fault. They are highlighting that there is an issue
and the consequences are potentially catastrophic. Scientists always uses
measured language in papers, but in the example of global warming Scientists
have effectively been screaming about it for decades in a public outreach
context, politicians have not listened though.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
It is easy to put this on politicians, but you must remember that politicians
are largely a reflection of the people they represent. We are all to blame for
finding the truth too inconvenient to handle.

------
cowmix
There's been a lot of these stories in the past year and, like all trendy
reporting, I'm not sure how serious I should take them in whole. However, I
can say this: I've been driving between Phoenix and Tucson consistently for
30+ years. For those of you who don't know, it is a 90+ mile ride which is
almost all at top highway speed. I've noticed in the past year or two my
windshield is much, much cleaner post drive whereas years ago I would almost
be forced to clean my car after each trip.

Unscientific, but unsettling nonetheless.

~~~
davemp
> I've noticed in the past year or two my windshield is much, much cleaner
> post drive whereas years ago I would almost be forced to clean my car after
> each trip.

I've seen mentions this phenomena floating around. I wonder if this could be
attributed to a change in the aerodynamics of modern windshields.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Only an anecdote, but I'm going to say no.

Mainly as I have strongly experienced the same phenomena motorcycling. My head
and helmet are not changed aerodynamically. A naked bike contributes little.
Yet headlight and visor catch far fewer than 30 years ago. I don't expect to
break the journey to clear it like I used to.

The windscreen on the car may very well catch less, but in that case it _also_
seems like there are a lot less to catch.

------
makerofspoons
35% of our food is pollinated by insects:
[https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/plan...](https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/plantsanimals/pollinate/)

We are facing a food crunch in the near future- we will number 9-11 billion
before population declines begin to set in at the same time climate change
will be desertifying the worlds breadbasket, we are running out of fresh
water, we are running out of top soil, and insect declines will threaten the
angiosperms we eat. It is not clear how insect populations will respond to the
3-5 degrees of warming expected by the end of this century (based on RCP 8.5
and RCP 6.0 from the latest IPCC report).

Mid-century is shaping up to be one of the most important and tragic periods
in human civilization, if it is to survive it. We should keep in mind we are
always nine missed meals from anarchy.

~~~
happy_man
Well, this post covers my maximum daily dose of alarmism. Thanks

~~~
DanTheManPR
What's the alarmist version of “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they
aren't after you.”?

~~~
krapp
> What's the alarmist version of “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean
> they aren't after you.”?

"Omae wa mo shinderou."

------
pasta
_" the total mass of local flying insects had fallen by 80 percent in three
decades"_

Ok, but what if it is now back at the 'norm' and there were just too many
insects all those times?

Do we know what the norm is?

I must agree that the quick loss of so many insects does not sound normal. But
we also know that insects can swarm very quickly and become a pest in good
conditions.

With climate change we have a lot of data from even thousands of years ago, so
we have some feeling about the 'norm'.

Does a norm for the total mass of flying insects exist?

~~~
c0nfused
I agree, what we should do is apply even greater amounts of pesticides to
certain countries while letting others try to fight ecological collapse. then
in a hundred years we can see who is right and who is dead.

~~~
pasta
I don't like your comment.

I'm not saying we should not act. I'm asking if we know what we are up
against.

~~~
c0nfused
You were not intended to like it.

The idea that we need more data is lazy, shortsighted, and used as a primary
argument to justify doing nothing.

The neighbor's house is on fire, Sparks are falling on your roof because of a
breeze and you are holding of fighting the fire because the wind might change
and we might be able to do nothing except high five each other about how smart
we were.

In life, you never know enough to make the perfect decision. You have act on
the existing data, not wait until the choice you should have made becomes
clear.

------
spking
[...]it’s hard to take the widely quoted numbers from Sánchez-Bayo and
Wyckhuys’s review as gospel.

They say that 41 percent of insect species are declining and that global
numbers are falling by 2.5 percent a year, but “they’re trying to quantify
things that we really can’t quantify at this point,” says Michelle Trautwein
from the California Academy of Sciences.

“I understand the desire to put numbers to these things to facilitate the
conversation, but I would say all of those are built on mountains of unknown
facts.”

------
njarboe
The answer is "Not known". A decently skeptical article. One excerpt.

"When scientists have collected long-term data on insects, they’ve usually
done so in a piecemeal way. The 2017 German study, for example, collated data
from traps that had been laid in different parts of the country over time,
rather than from concerted attempts to systematically sample the same sites.
Haphazard though such studies might be, many of them point in the same
dispiriting direction. In their review, Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys found 73
studies showing insect declines."

Start of next paragraph: "But that’s what they went looking for! They searched
a database using the keywords insect and decline, and so wouldn’t have
considered research showing stability or increases."

~~~
PavlikPaja
Maybe insects evolved to avoid such traps, cars, and people in general.

------
njarboe
I wonder if all these beehives and bee keepers are similar to a bunch of
pastoral goats and herders? Almost no control of who puts a beehive somewhere
(tragedy of the commons). Those bees then strip all of the surrounding area of
flower nectar, leaving nothing for the natural insects, which then die. Bee
keepers go all over the US to place their hives and then bring them to
California to pollenate the nut trees. Plus the rise in the popularity of
honey and the trendiness of having hives for fun.

In addition, bees' diets by commercial beekeepers are often supplemented by
man-made sugars. To continue the analogy, imagine that there was someplace
that really wanted a bunch of goats for two weeks a year to eat up a bunch of
plants as a brush clearing method. People get paid a lot to have goats arrive
at that location every year. The laws of the country are such that goats are
allowed to roam anywhere and eat plants on people land and fences have not
been invented yet. You only have to own the land where they come back to at
night(the corral). The goat herders try to maximize the size of the herd by
feeding the goats a cheap but nutritiously deficient food for most of their
calories, but goats have to get some vital vitamins, proteins, and minerals
from the stuff they eat in the wild. In fact, over the centuries the goats
have evolved so that they can run fast and long away from the corral in the
morning, just to get somewhere that has not already been stripped of wild food
that they need, burning the calories supplied by the goat herder. The goat
eats for a few hours somewhere that is not already over-grazed, and then runs
back to the corral.

When the goat returns it has a way to tell the other goats where it went to
find a good place to eat and the next day hundreds of goats head out to that
location to strip it to dirt in one day. Other goats head out somewhat
randomly on a dead run to try and find somewhere around that has something to
eat.

This goat hive can only exist in one place when the grass is sprouting or in
places that goats have not been in many years. The goat herders corrals are
built on huge trucks so that when they need to move the goats to somewhere
else, because the local area is completely stripped, they can just start up
the truck and be in a new location 500 miles away in a single day.

A disease now starts spreading among the goats. They get shipped around
everywhere so it spreads to other herds really fast. The goats are dying at a
high rate and no one knows why or how to cure it, but the goats breed pretty
fast. The goat herders can keep the number of goats high enough to meet the
demand of the companies that need the annual grazing clearing, but only
because of the increasing price the companies are willing to pay. This
incentivizes more goat herders breeding more goats at a furious rate. The
surviving herders are now searching hard for the last places that have not
been completely stripped mined of wild food. Never a blade of grass springs
from the Earth where a goat is not immediately there to eat it.

You can imagine what such a system would do to the wild grazing animal
population. Anything wild would never find anything to eat, the predator
populations would be huge, gorging on the free roaming goats that the herders
don't guard. The herders have no way guarding hundreds of thousands of goats.
They could not possibly watch over each one and don't even think about how
that might be done.

Now add in farmers that grow plants the goats can't eat. They cover huge areas
where only a small amount of the wild plants survive that the goats need.
Around the farms wild plants still grow, but farms are being consolidated and
those edge areas are being eliminated. Some wild animals can eat what the
farmers grow, so the farmers develop chemicals that kill the animals that eat
their crops. This chemical will also kill goats and gets on the few remaining
wild plants the goats eat and poison them too.

Now imagine that the goats and wild animals are so small that the herders and
other people in society don't really notice them at all. They only start to
worry about the goats when there are not enough goats arriving every year to
clear out the brush where the annual spring picnic is held. Only after that
happens do a few quirky scientists start looking into the problem and notice
that these wild animals that have to compete with goats have been dropping in
numbers like crazy for quite awhile.

Just an analogy, but maybe some truth to it?

------
kossTKR
This thread is weird to me.

How are so many in the dark about the fact that it's mainly corporate PR that
are behind all off the confusion about dangerous consequences from both
energy-, agri-, and chemistry business?

Energy companies have known about potential catastrophic consequences for
years, scientists have known, people living in nature have known.

People are "confused", doesn't get the urgency or simply ignore the issue
because of PR, astroturfing and corporate campaigns.

It's all because of huge corporations hiring armies of lawyers, marketing
people and greenwashing lobbyists that write both the laws and the news. (*see
my sources if you doubt this )

Forget about the politicians and the consumers - they have been massively
propagandized by a conglomeration of enormous agricultural and energy sector
companies for half a century.

Seriously it's __well described and documented__ and has been since Exxon
found out about climate change and hid its own findings in the 70's.

How do you some of you people know so little about the culprit, and instead
blame mostly consumers or the politicians who are bought by corporations?

There is no debate and hasn't been for decades - the culprit is growth
capitalism and the mega-corps that ruthlessly lie and distort in service of
profits.

This has happened for over 100 years when US car manufacturers killed public
transport in the US, and Edward Bernays created modern public PR, that
apparently is working frighteningly well still.

Read:

Merchants of doubt [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7799004-merchants-of-
dou...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7799004-merchants-of-doubt)

Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/659246.Toxic_Sludge_Is_G...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/659246.Toxic_Sludge_Is_Good_for_You?ac=1&from_search=true)

Exxon Has Known for over 40 years:
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-
about-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-
climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/)

------
Simon_says
A rare case in the wild of Betteridge's Law failing us.

~~~
pwaivers
> Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that
> ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

The article says that the "insect apocalypse" is not going to happen, despite
pretty strong evidence of insect decline. So Betteridge's Law does hold here.

