Nov 22, 2025 at 9:56 AM EST

A looming 'insect apocalypse' could endanger global food supplies

Brajeshwar

39 points

44 comments

Mood

informative

Sentiment

negative

Discussion Activity

Light discussion

First comment

19h

Peak period

Hour 20

Avg / period

1.5

Comment distribution3 data points

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Key moments

01Story posted
Nov 22, 2025 at 9:56 AM EST
1d ago
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02First comment
Nov 23, 2025 at 5:15 AM EST
19h after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
1 comments in Hour 20
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Step 03
04Latest activity
Nov 24, 2025 at 12:26 AM EST
2h ago
Step 04

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Discussion (44 comments)

Showing 3 comments of 44

warpspin

19h ago

1 reply

While I support protecting insects and I literally see how their amounts decreased since I've been a child, I wished people would stop the alarmist "food supply in danger" headline. It's not, at least not because of the insects. Most of our food supply is not dependent on wild insects, instead people usually pay for cultivated bees to pollinate their plants. Business is too serious to rely on circumstance.

The real problem is that loads of the wild plant life depends on wild insects, and we do not want to lose that.

Don't get me wrong. Neither I deny climate change, nor do I say we should destroy nature as much as we do.

But we need to start talking the truth instead of invented talking points, or people won't take science serious anymore... even more than they already ignore it.

yummypaint

2h ago

Interactions between species are scarcely understood in general, if they are known at all. It's only very recently that the existence of mycelial networks was discovered. It's only very recently that the importance of micro biome and it's role in health is starting to be recognized. It's only in hindsight that impact of the near extinction of vultures in India on human health was understood.

History has shown industrialized humans to be dangerously ignorant of environmental systems, and almost every action we take with regard to these systems is destructive. Every extinction is irreversible. Things are so wildly out of equilibrium now that it's no longer possible to return to the equilibria from our past.

Ecological collapse isnt some mild inconvenience that makes milk more expensive. Once it has happened, ecological collapse cannot and will not be undone by the seriousness of "business." This type of thinking embodies exactly the kind of arrogant hubris that led us into this situation. The negative feedback loops that have kept earth habitable for us so far aren't laws of nature, and no-one knows how far they can be bent before breaking, or how they even work.

metalman

21h ago

it will likely come as a double wammy, polinator/benificial/comensual insects will be reduced past self sustaining number and destructive bugs will increase to uncontrolable levels. plants have been managing this for millions of years, needing polinators and preditory insects, but fighting destructive and seed eating bugs the fight is older in animals, where there is a direct connection in the amount of abrasive silica in plants, and the development of teath and dental enamil is parellel in the fossil record we humans, fucking with shit big time is not going to go good, nature negotiates in ways and time frames that quite clearly exclude our direct partisipation, with nature ready, at any time, for a complete reset.

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ID: 46015262Type: storyLast synced: 11/22/2025, 5:47:06 PM

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