A couple of days ago The Guardian reported on a German study that flying insect populations had declined by 75 per cent over the past 25 years.
Another report for the Dire Warnings file.
Only The Guardian's enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, says don't take this lightly.
Which of these would you name as the world’s most pressing environmental issue? Climate breakdown, air pollution, water loss, plastic waste or urban expansion? My answer is none of the above. Almost incredibly, I believe that climate breakdown takes third place, behind two issues that receive only a fraction of the attention.
This is not to downgrade the danger presented by global heating – on the contrary, it presents an existential threat. It is simply that I have come to realise that two other issues have such huge and immediate impacts that they push even this great predicament into third place.
One is industrial fishing, which, all over the blue planet, is now causing systemic ecological collapse. The other is the erasure of non-human life from the land by farming.
And perhaps not only non-human life. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, at current rates of soil loss, driven largely by poor farming practice, we have just 60 years of harvests left. And this is before the Global Land Outlook report, published in September, found that productivity is already declining on 20% of the world’s cropland.
Monbiot blames industrial agriculture and the pesticide industry for the collapse of insect populations and the knock-on effects that triggers. He suggests a global treaty to regulate pesticides, environmental assessments of the global fishing industry and the agricultural industry, a sharp reduction in land use (yes, he means to take your steak off the grocer's shelves) and an end to the use of land for growing corn for biofuels.
There's no use in debating the fine points and nuances of Monbiot's solutions. These are things that are simply not going to happen.
Maybe when, like the insects, we've pared the human population by 75 per cent all these problems will be solved. There'll be fresh air, clean water and plenty of delicious filet mignon for everybody. We've still got a way to go before we get there.
Remember, kids. Nature bats last.
4 comments:
Monbiot missed one: the widespread abuse of antibiotics in animal husbandry that's leading directly to resistant strains of harmful bacteria. As with the two other problems Monbiot identifies, we're very close to crisis and the agricultural and drug industries will fight regulatory efforts.
The bad news is that we'll be returning to pre-penicillin medicine. Forget about modern surgery. Transplants and orthopedic surgery become very risky, if not impossible. Even a c-section becomes potentially fatal. The "good news" is that this is likely to make overpopulation less of a problem.
Cap
Well, we have to get there one way or the other, Cap. The idea that we'll do it sensibly and cooperatively doesn't even rise to the level of a long shot.
It sure looks that way, Mound. If you're likely to need a hip or knee replacement, better see to it sooner than later.
Cap
Anyong...It's a tiny sector compared to other places in Canada but Newfoundland produces a growing array of beeswax products. The honey is a particularly pure wildflower variety that sells out quickly to local consumers, Jennings said.
There are no recorded cases of predominant bee parasites such as Varroa destructor or Nosema ceranae that have plagued honeybees elsewhere. And the absence of massive corn and soybean farms on the rocky island with its comparatively short growing season means neonic pesticides are hardly used, Jennings said.
An international panel of 50 scientists last month called for tighter regulations and an ultimate phase-out of such products. The group calling itself the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides compared so-called neonics or neonicotinoids, a type of insecticide that's chemically reminiscent of nicotine, to the use of DDT in the 1960s.
It said a study of 800 research papers offers conclusive evidence that neonics sprayed as a preventive pesticide over crops or to coat seeds are killing bees and other insects on a massive scale. Very little insecticides and pesticides are used in Newfoundland.
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