966
Humanity making progress like it always does
(mbin.grits.dev)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Sorry, can someone explain? If there are less bugs, that's attributable to something I should know?
Climate change.
Not just climate change, but also accumulation of and reckless overuse of pesticides plus removal of their natural habitats. We are doing our damndest to make sure we can't get our food pollinated. On the flip side, I have noticed a huge uptick in how many predatory pests I have had to fight off in my vegetable garden over the last few years despite seeing higher high temperatures and lower and longer low temperatures. The pests adapt. Its the ones we want that are going away.
Farming is always environmentally destructive. There is no such thing as "environmentally friendly" farming. The solution is massive investment into the farming infrastructure and rewilding of vast tracts of land.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
We use around half of the arable land for agriculture. The sad fact is we only need to use 10% of it. The rest we farm because we can make a profit. Not because it makes sense.
It would take a complete upheaval of our agricultural system. Massive investment into water storage, irrigation systems and protected culture. It would also mean the forced migration of a millions people from rural areas to be rewilded to areas under intensive agriculture.
Aka it's not an easy fix. t's a systematic change to the way we interact with the environment.
So, it's not going to happen.