“Back then it would be like walking through a big curtain of flies, it was a real spectacle. You’d swallow them and get them in your hair. But now the summers just aren’t the same,” says Ciara, a Lough Neagh ranger.
The flies were long considered a nuisance. On seeing them gather like a plume of smoke above the water, residents would shut their windows and doors to keep the insects out. Now, however, alarm is growing as sightings becoming rarer and rarer.
This to me feels like an article I’d just swipe past, “I don’t live there, that’s a shame.”
But what I think more people need to realize is that this is global in scope. It’s most certain that a species within 100 meters of where you are sitting right now won’t exist in the next X years. (Yes I know, intentionally vague)
My point being that this likely won’t stop, but speed up and become more and more noticeable with each passing year. How many species need to go extinct before the folks in charge go, “Oh fuck, we live on a giant machine at equilibrium and turns out removing parts to make our toys wasn’t a great idea.”
(Alternatively, the folks not in charge say the hell with who is in charge and remove the fucks.)
That concept is the foundation of my country, the United States, and day after day it’s looking more likely we’re going to need to exercise it. This government is no longer by the people and for the people, it’s by the corporation and for the corporation. And the corporate world will burn us all alive for a bump in quarterly earnings.
There exist species that are immune to cancer, immune to aging, immune to radiation, and we just go, “Let’s just pour this oil, acid, and sludge in their drinking water, She’ll be aight.”
I’m not saying anything profound here. Just afraid. Afraid and fucking angry. I love birds and bugs. I love their caws, chirps, tweets, not to mention they are the machinery that make plants work. Plants are extremely fucking important to humanity’s survival on this planet… EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.
We’re preparing our children for a world where birds will be talked about like dinosaurs, “My papa said he saw an owl when he was a boy!” “What’s an owl?”
We’re going to be left with a planet with no biodiversity, do you want to live on a planet with one type of bird, mosquitos, and cockroaches? I fucking don’t, and I’m not sure we can engineer our way out of this. I’m hopeful that at some point humanity can reintroduce lost life to the planet, but why put ourselves in that position?! This is our own doing, well, the 0.1% mostly. Cunts.
There is no fucking backup planet! We get one, why are we trying to “great filter” ourselves??
