When I talk about the environment I usually say “Climate change & Environmental Degradation.” It’s important to understand that while these two reinforce each other, they aren’t the same thing.

A UK-wide decline in bug splats recorded on car number plates indicates an “alarming” fall in the number of flying insects, UK scientists said in a survey published yesterday.

The 2024 Bugs Matter report revealed the numbers of flying insects found stuck to vehicle number plates had dropped by nearly 63 per cent since 2021.

This study from Germany in 2017 found a:

More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

And there were decreases in the 1900s as well. Bug biodiversity and biomass is WAY down. Here’s a lovely chart from 2019.

We’re seeing this sort of crash, in both biodiversity and biomass for all sorts of species, not just bugs. Problem is that our food production and a pile of environmental processes related to water and atmosphere renewal are dependent on animals and plants. There’s massive loss of plankton, mammals, reptiles, bacteria in our soil and so on.

This stuff isn’t independent of climate change, but even without any climate change there’d still be plenty of it. The loss of wild areas, plus tons of pollution and the side effects of extraction and energy generation are largely to blame.

Collapse of this “web of life” or “food web” is a huge danger to us, as well as being a monstrous crime against other forms of life.

So don’t think “climate change is it”. It isn’t, and it may not even be as important as loss of biodiversity.

 

This blog has always been free to read, but it isn’t free to produce. If you’d like to support my writing, I’d appreciate it. You can donate or subscribe by clicking on this link.