> The planet's ecosystem has had billions of years to balance itself out.
Yeah, and that system wasn't built for all the rapid ecological changes humanity is throwing at it. Or at least when it encountered events of our magnitude -- e.g. a comet impact or a super volcano erupting for an extended period of time -- it resulted in very rapid ecosystem change, most things died, and it took the planet millions of years to recover comparable levels of biodiversity. Definitionally, we are causing the 6th mass extinction event since the Cambrian explosion.
The planet's ecosystem isn't going to "balance itself out" on timescales that matter to us (i.e. less than a million years) when we're putting the planet through vast habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, etc.
Even the population explosion of the moth and other pests are due to us. The planet won't naturally work something out because we keep creating all of this easy to eat surplus with our monoculture crops.
Thus, we need to come up with a solution to this problem. Ideally one of the least harmful ones possible. And it appears that lots of pesticides are really harmful to the ecosystem and us -- who would have thought, things with -cide in the name, kill/harm more things than we expected. And while the moth might be thriving bc it's resistant to our pesticides, many other insect species are collapsing, potentially due to pesticide use.
It's part of the reason Rachel Carson was in favor of this approach.
Sure, genes will get out into wild population, which is definitely bad for biodiversity. But I'm skeptical anyone has done the cost benefit analysis of this versus pesticide use on biodiversity.
Yeah, and that system wasn't built for all the rapid ecological changes humanity is throwing at it. Or at least when it encountered events of our magnitude -- e.g. a comet impact or a super volcano erupting for an extended period of time -- it resulted in very rapid ecosystem change, most things died, and it took the planet millions of years to recover comparable levels of biodiversity. Definitionally, we are causing the 6th mass extinction event since the Cambrian explosion.
The planet's ecosystem isn't going to "balance itself out" on timescales that matter to us (i.e. less than a million years) when we're putting the planet through vast habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, etc.
Even the population explosion of the moth and other pests are due to us. The planet won't naturally work something out because we keep creating all of this easy to eat surplus with our monoculture crops.
Thus, we need to come up with a solution to this problem. Ideally one of the least harmful ones possible. And it appears that lots of pesticides are really harmful to the ecosystem and us -- who would have thought, things with -cide in the name, kill/harm more things than we expected. And while the moth might be thriving bc it's resistant to our pesticides, many other insect species are collapsing, potentially due to pesticide use.
It's part of the reason Rachel Carson was in favor of this approach.
Sure, genes will get out into wild population, which is definitely bad for biodiversity. But I'm skeptical anyone has done the cost benefit analysis of this versus pesticide use on biodiversity.