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If we wipe out "everything," Mother Nature will deal herself a new hand and continue playing solitaire with herself. But we wouldn't be around to see it.

We worry about this stuff because we fear we might not survive.



In the worst case scenario, couldn't most of us just become vegan (with some supplements of course)? There seems to be many plants which are not entirely reliant on insects, or which could survive on minimal number of them, or which could be easily agricultured to thrive without them. Wouldn't this be even better morality-wise?


In the worst case scenario weather patterns will shift enough that large scale agriculture will fail in parts of the world that are currently productive.

Heat waves, floods, and drought can and will destroy entire crops. Furthermore, sea level rise and stronger storms will destroy ports and transportation infrastructure, making it harder and more expensive to transport crops.


Aren't you talking about global warming? I fail to see how the biodiversity loss itself directly would affect such climate changes.


I do think the poster was conflating some aspects of climate change, but life has surprising effects on weather and local climate.

Desertification and dust storms are both possible outcomes of biodiversity loss.

There's also a growing body of evidence that precipitation is driven partially by bacteria. (See the following article from Nature: https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080228/full/news.2008.632.h...)


What I'm saying is that it would be very, very difficult to mitigate catastrophic insect loss by switching consumption to primarily vegetables.

Climate change is here, and is going to get worse. Losing pollinators and the collapse of ecosystems would be painfully disruptive on a large scale, and climate change will make it extremely difficult for humanity to adapt to it.


The worst case scenario is that we end up with an ecology that can't produce enough calories per acre on a consistent enough basis to support large numbers of warm blooded omnivorous mammals.


I'm not someone predicting the end of the world. My mantra is generally "It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine."

I was merely pointing out that humanity doesn't actually care if we wipe out all life. We wring our hands because we fear we will wipe out ourselves, as if we are terribly important.

It's narcissism, not morality, that drives such fretting.




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