
Insects Are in Serious Trouble - ALee
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/oh-no/543390/?single_page=true
======
sxates
Years ago when I lived in suburban Texas with a typical suburban house with a
back yard that had open space behind it I had a terrible insect problem.
Exposed skin would get a mosquito bite-per-minute, the dogs were coming inside
covered in fleas, etc. So I went to Home Depot and bought this yard spray that
promised to kill mosquitos, fleas, ticks, etc. and I hosed down the back yard
in a desperate attempt to reclaim it for our families use.

What struck me as soon as I was done spraying the yard was how quiet it was.
It was eerie. It then occurred to me that I hadn't just killed the pests, I
had killed _everything_.

These sorts of products are in every hardware store. How many other people
just casually eliminate all insects in their yard, and perhaps do so
frequently? What do those chemicals do when they wash away into the watershed?
Same question for all the chemicals used in agriculture - it can't be good,
right?

In a way it boggles the mind that this is an acceptable product, which is
socially acceptable to use. I certainly regret it, but I seem to be in the
minority.

~~~
hutzlibu
I think a much better way to get rid of mosquitos in a local area, but not of
everything else, would be a laser turret ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser)

Unfortunately not market ready, yet ...

edit: bat boxes, water-fish traps and having birds around will certainly
reduce mosquito population ... but there will be still lots of them around. A
laser can take them (allmost) all out ...

Oh and about the water: if you just have open water around with no fish in it
... then the mosquitos will love that, btw.. So taking care, that there is no
open water around, when it is hot, helps also a lot ... but I still want my
laser turret.

~~~
chaostheory
TLDR: mosquitos hate air current. Just buy a few electric fans. No chems and
relatively cheap.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/science/a-low-tech-
mosquit...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/science/a-low-tech-mosquito-
deterrent.html)

~~~
hutzlibu
Not bad ... but the fans do make noise. Which is OK for a party with music
anyway, but for something more romantic - not so much. At least not for me ...

------
b0rsuk
I think nothing will change as long as _economic growth_ is understood as
_economic Good_.

Current economy can't work if there's no economic growth.

Banks are among the biggest culprits. If banks lend money at a 5% interest
rate, their customers must grow their businesses by 5%.

A new, sustainable economy is needed. I think about it each time I see the
Race for the Galaxy card. I've seen a radical example of this among African
tribes, in a documentary Africa serries by Basil Davidson. He argued the tribe
(sorry I don't remember its name) can fully sustain itself by taking things
from nature around it. All their wealth is external. They possess little, but
whenever they have a need for something - food, medicine, water, paint,
clothes, containers(...) they go to a forest, harvest a specific plant and get
it. They have recipes for everything they need.

~~~
mikeash
I like growth. I want to be wealthier or be able to work less (which is really
just an aspect of being wealthier). I want everybody else to be wealthier too.
I want my children to be better off than I am.

The problem is growth without care for the consequences. Making some people
wealthier at the expense of killing the planet is a bad plan.

But I think that it goes too far the other way to turn around and say that
growth itself is the problem and should be eliminated. We should strive for
sustainable growth, not stasis.

The story of the African tribe with external wealth is nice, but doesn't seem
like a good goal. What happens when some change in the climate (which can
happen even without human intervention) wipes out a plant they rely on, or a
long drought shrinks their food supply by half for a couple of years? Heck,
what happens when somebody gets cancer, or cataracts, or an abscessed tooth?

~~~
njarboe
I think one of the main problems is that GDP is used as the measure of
national prosperity. GDP goes down when people decide to work less. Some kind
of net wealth measurement would be much better parameter for a country to try
and maximize. Include natural resources and the biosphere in that wealth. In
this scheme taking oil from the ground and burning it would likely be a net
negative on national wealth while using oil to make carbon fiber for an
airplane would be a net positive. Growing a crop that builds the soil instead
of depleting might add more to Gross Domestic Wealth than a more "profitable"
crop.

~~~
b0rsuk
When a company produces 1000 cars and pollutes a river in process, this counts
as economic growth. When another company spends time, money and resources to
clean that river, that also counts as economic growth, even if was just to get
natural environment back to its original health. Some food for thought.

~~~
defterGoose
What? You're making a serious stretch there. The profit from the cars
contributes directly to GDP, but even if individual people get paid to help
clean up the river, where is that money coming from? It's a DRAIN on resources
to get the river back to normal, there's no profit. Therefore it's not growth.

~~~
ansible
I think the point is that the cleanup effort is "on the books" and calculated
as part of the gross domestic product.

The issue that people are trying to make is that there are many activities
that do contribute to the overall wealth of a country, which don't get counted
in the GDP. And there are things that are counted by the GDP which don't
contribute to wealth.

GDP is a poor measure of the overall wealth and health of a country.

~~~
defterGoose
Right, I agree with you. From the tone of the post, it seemed like the author
was justifying the GDP calculation as it's made. Perhaps there was some
sarcasm there I didn't detect. But yeah, if we want to count the cost of
services produced for, say, digging a giant hole and then subsequently filling
in said hole, we may want to rethink our logic. I'm becoming disillusioned
with the idea of economics being a valid human science when it can't seem to
deal properly with the concept of externalities.

------
okreallywtf
It saddens and frustrates me to no end that this is the kind of work that the
EPA should be doing for the long term good of our country and species and
knowing that it is being systematically dismantled from the inside (as many of
our federal agencies are). We've given the keys of the hen-house to the foxes
and are sitting back to watch our manufacturing jobs roll in. Granted this
problem was already occurring and economics almost always takes precedence
over the environment _overall_ , but the fact we're going backwards makes me
furious.

Scott Pruitt Is Carrying Out His E.P.A. Agenda in Secret, Critics Say:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/politics/scott-
pruitt-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/politics/scott-pruitt-
epa.html?_r=0)

Trump signs order at the EPA to dismantle environmental protections:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-
science/trump...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-
science/trump-signs-order-at-the-epa-to-dismantle-environmental-
protections/2017/03/28/3ec30240-13e2-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?utm_term=.4c2cf38cccfc)

Counseled by Industry, Not Staff, E.P.A. Chief Is Off to a Blazing Start:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/us/politics/trump-epa-
chi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/us/politics/trump-epa-chief-pruitt-
regulations-climate-
change.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article)

------
j_s
I believe the primary source was discussed last week. (Discussion is still
open but ain't nobody got time for that once it's off the front page!)

75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15502074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15502074)
(Oct 2017, 428 comments)

~~~
athenot
Last week's article motivated me to plant Milkweed ( _Asclepias tuberosa_ and
_Asclepias incarnata_ ) in my garden next year, to help with the population of
Monarch butterflies and bees.

On the other hand, I'll still be deploying my organic mosquito control based
on plant oils injected into a mister system. I really don't think mosquitoes
fulfill any role in the ecosystem that can't be filled in by other species;
but the difficulty is in avoiding messing with any other insects.

~~~
zzalpha
_I really don 't think mosquitoes fulfill any role in the ecosystem that can't
be filled in by other species_

This is literally the exact kind of hubris that got us in this mess in the
first place...

------
AlexandrB
As sad as this is, the reality is that nobody cares. Biologists have been
beating the conservation drum (rightly so) for decades but the behaviour of
the average consumer has hardly changed. Arguably, it's actually gotten worse
with metrics like the use of plastic at an all-time high [1] (thanks, bottled
water). Soon enough we will learn what the economic value of the free labor
provided by insects and other animals as basic agricultural processes like
pollination become a service that must be paid for (on many farms this is
actually already the case).

The good thing about capitalism is that it's great at optimizing a cost/value
equilibrium for things that are easy to quantify. But the bad thing about
capitalism is that things that are hard (or impossible) to quantify are, at
best, an afterthought. Resulting in the all-too-familiar tragedy of the
commons.

[1] [https://www.plasticsinsight.com/global-consumption-
plastic-m...](https://www.plasticsinsight.com/global-consumption-plastic-
materials-region-1980-2015/)

~~~
zzalpha
_But the bad thing about capitalism is that things that are hard (or
impossible) to quantify are, at best, an afterthought._

It's actually worse than that. Capitalism cannot on its own deal with negative
externalities even when they are quantifiable.

You solve that through government regulation. But when government is bought
and sold by businesses who would prefer costs be externalized as much as
possible, the outcomes are... less than ideal.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
Just some wishful thinking here...

Is it possible that the local insect populations got wise to these malaise
traps that the researchers were using in western germany?

Apparently the way that a malaise trap works is that it waits for insects to
fly into it's wall, hopes that they crawl up the wall, and then hopes that
they crawl right into a bottle filled with ethanol.

Now I do not know anything at all about insects and how they might learn or
adapt to various situations.

But I know that they can adapt just like anything else, and maybe some of them
starting saying "no I will not crawl up that screen into the bottle of
alcohol" after 27 years and got the word out to other local insects?

Am I crazy for thinking that might be the case?

~~~
hk__2
> Am I crazy for thinking that might be the case?

I don’t know; but I wish they would be able to adapt so rapidly. Think how
after thousands of years they still don’t understand they can’t fly through
transparent glass.

~~~
cialowicz
Flying into transparent glass under their own power isn't something that kills
an insect, so there won't be any selection mechanism at work.

One of the other things to consider is the windshield/windscreen
phenomenon[0]:

    
    
      > If you talk to people, they have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash on your windscreen...
      > I used to have to wash my car all the time. It was always covered with insects.
    

I suppose there _might_ be a selection mechanism at play there. Perhaps some
insects have learned to avoid flying over comparably warmer swaths of
pavement?

I still think the news here is pretty frightening.

[0] [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-
insect...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone)

~~~
athenot
It also depends on which side of the Gnat Line you're driving. :)

[http://southofthegnatline.blogspot.com/p/gnat-
line-101_28.ht...](http://southofthegnatline.blogspot.com/p/gnat-
line-101_28.html)

------
xoa
I'm glad to see some of the recent research on threats to insect populations
getting more attention, HN recently had a good discussion on this in "75%
decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas" [1].
But in reading through that thread I saw a lot of discussion about pesticides
but surprisingly nothing at all regarding nighttime light pollution, and in
that context I think another Atlantic piece is of interest, "Night Lights
Drive Pollinators Away from Plants" [2]. In particular I think that's an area
where it seems like there is more direct action potential for technologists.
Both individually and in terms of community ordinances we should push to
better take advantage of advances in LEDs and sensors to try to reduce color
temperature at light and try to better ensure that lighting exists only when
and where humans actually directly need it at the time, rather then the
current dumblight defaults of "always on, lots of spread, and always at the
same temperature".

This should be an area where at least some level of technological win-win is
possible, because we generally only need lighting on when a human is not
present. Permanent-on has just been that way by default because there was no
better way to ensure it would be on if somebody came around. Fixed color
temperatures too have been a matter of simple necessity given the technology
available. So there should be a lot of room to reduce wasted light (and in
turn energy) and simultaneously benefit pollinators via smarter lighting tech.

From a personal perspective, this provided me the impetus to get my camera,
door sensors, and other presence detectors all linked up with my lighting at
long last so that my outdoor lighting is by default off at night except when
directly needed. I'd support a national push to develop more directed, warmer,
and smarter street lighting and the like as well.

\----

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15502074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15502074)

2:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/confirme...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/confirmed-
night-lights-drive-pollinators-away-from-plants/535983/)

------
baxtr
They‘ll be back, once we’re gone:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/wildlife-
returns-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/wildlife-returns-to-
radioactive-wasteland-of-chernobyl/)

------
vwcx
I wonder what this comment section would like if this study was released
during last year's Zika panic.

~~~
okreallywtf
I would like to think this comment section would have a more informed opinion
than average, I was seeing/reading about this during the panic and even then
many people were speaking out against arial spraying [0]. It decimated the
insect populations [1], people describing "total silence" like another
commenter except it was over huge areas.

[0] [http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/harvard-zika-expert-
naled-...](http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/harvard-zika-expert-naled-aerial-
spraying-doesnt-work-could-worsen-problem-8785034) [1]
[http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/florida-
keys...](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/florida-
keys/article101067802.html)

------
phkahler
I wonder if sunlight / cloud cover negatively affects insect population.

------
mdekkers
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c)

------
adreamingsoul
we really need to band all insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides.

