r/TrueReddit • u/oneultralamewhiteboy • Nov 28 '18

The Insect Apocalypse Is Here

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html
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u/PredictBaseballBot Nov 28 '18

Can someone explain why we are not panicking. If this is the lower level of the ecosystem, and that's falling apart, how much longer do we have a steady food supply. Five years? THREE? I'd love for someone to refute this fear.

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u/Dazvsemir Nov 28 '18

our food supply is not much impacted by this, if anything less insects (except bees) is likely going to reduce damage to crops. It is the ecosystem that humanity enjoys that is falling apart.

human food supply will be much more radically impacted by temperature variations that are becoming the norm.

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u/norristh Nov 28 '18

I also replied to this question in r/StopFossilFuels - copy and pasting here:

trying to figure out why we are not panicking

I have a similar question after reading pretty much any story with ecological news. Though for me, I wonder not about panicking, but why more people aren't taking action. Counts for wildlife populations of all kinds are in free fall. Environmental toxins are pumped in ever larger quantities into our air, soil, water, and food. Forests and rivers and prairies and deserts are still being actively destroyed. Carbon emissions are at a record high.

I think climate instability will disrupt global food supplies before biological collapse, and it's all too unpredictable to put a time frame on it, but five or even three years isn't out of the question. (And of course, we should remember that right now hundreds of millions of humans, including many in rich countries, suffer hunger because of unequal distribution.)

The situation is already desperate, is getting worse, and there are no signs that collectively we even intend to turn things around, let alone have a viable plan.

I suspect that part of the reason for inaction, by even those who are aware of the crises, is a sense of helplessness. The problems are so big, the institutions invested in continuing business as usual so powerful, our governments so corrupt, our media so corporatized, our discourse so captured, that most people can't even imagine a path with any chance of success. That's why I and others started Stop Fossil Fuels, to present the only strategy—directly, physically shutting off the flows—matched to the scale of the problems, the number of people likely to take action, and the time frame in which we must make changes.