Plummeting insect numbers threaten collapse of nature

[pier4r]

(02-24-2019 01:33 AM)mfleming Wrote:  Thanks for the reminder Gene.

Personally, I think our descendants one or two hundred years from now (yes, we'll go on) will wonder about our obsession with Apocalypse the past few generations. Atomic Warfare, Silent Spring, Population Bomb, Acid Rain, Ozone Hole, Global Warming, Climate Change - have I left anything out? They'll contrast that with rising life spans, increasing wealth, decreasing disease and starvation and violence and wonder - what the heck was gramps smoking! Very curious from a behavioral point of view...

~Mark

I strongly hope that your view will be the right one. But I am a bit more pessimistic.

First of all, even if good solution are found, they are found because there is a pressing problem. You won't likely find solutions without problems. Therefore the obsession you have at a certain point is about a pressing problem you didn't yet solve. And you may start to solve it too late.

Therefore it is like today we say "how silly were people in Europe around the 1400. Obsessed with simple diseases!". That is a silly statement, as one has to know that in Europe in the 1400, simple diseases were fatal. The same will apply to possible humans in 2200. If they are naive, they will judge with the eyes of their time past times.

Second. It is not necessarily true that if some metrics improve, then all is fine. The conditions during the roman empire in 200 AD in many - at the time - big settlements were much better than in the same settlements around the 600 AD.