The root cause seems to be an unknown problem with bacteria that produce thiamine at the base of food chains, as well as some invasive species (which for example caused big problems in the Great Lakes in the USA). Thiamine is pretty fundamental to life so it might explain the decline in insects as well as the other effects described in the above article. Reading about thiamine antagonists it seems sulfates can destroy thiamine:
"Rumen bacteria also reduce sulfate to sulfite, therefore high dietary intakes of sulfate can have thiamine-antagonistic activities."
Sulfates in the environment are one result of burning coal. So it is possible that one side effect of burning coal for decades is the food chain has been interrupted at the bacterial level, reducing the amount of thiamine available. If true, I'm not sure if that would be easy to fix; at the very least it would probably require coal burning to stop immediately and perhaps manufacture of thiamine and distribution of it in the environment, which could take a decade and might be somewhat risky with side effects if done on a large scale. If it really is coal burning causing thiamine deficiencies over wide areas it should be easy to tell by looking for thiamine deficiencies downwind of coal burning plants.
There is a large body of existing literature linking pesticide application to decreased biodiversity. I’m not saying this speculation about thiamine is unfounded, but if there’s good supporting data for it, it’s likely to be an additive rather than alternative factor contributing to the loss of biodiversity.
Possibly they could be interrelated, if say thiamine deficiency made insects more susceptible to pesticides or pesticides also increased thiamine deficiency. The link between pesticides and decreased biodiversity would still exist, but the root cause or chain of causes might be something happening at a lower level than simple direct poisoning. This paper is interesting in that respect "A 2018 Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation and Biological Diversity":
Thiamine Deficiency as a Possible Driver of Wildlife Population Declines
Evidence is increasing that a range of taxonomic groups, including bivalve molluscs, ray-finned fish, and birds across the Northern Hemisphere, are deficient in thiamine (vitamin B1) 19, 20. Thiamine is required for basic cellular metabolism and functioning of neuronal membranes. Thiamine deficiency rarely is a direct cause of mortality, but impairs health and can cause immunosuppression or leads to behavioural and reproductive problems that ultimately could cause population decline or extirpation. Days of thiamine deficiency may present long-lasting sublethal effects, which makes recognition of the extent of thiamine deficiencies more complex. The deficiencies likely are caused by insufficient dietary intake, which may be related to shifts in thiamine-producing algal populations. A recent and extensive survey along the northwest coast of the US found evidence of thiamine depletion in the water column [21]. Additionally, exposure to environmental pollutants may interfere with thiamine uptake. The extent to which thiamine deficiency may pose a substantial long-term risk to a range of species remains unclear.
End quote.
So thiamine deficiency may also be partially induced by environmental pollutants which possibly includes insecticides (though the paper gives no citations for which pollutants). The scale of the known thiamine problems, at least in water systems, are scary, as is the fact that we don't really know what the extent of it is, especially on land. My experience in research, software, and life is that there are usually multiple simultaneous problems behind observable issues.
> Humans think about certain things as being infinite, until they aren't
I think the real issue is that humans DONT think beyond their own needs. You have people who think having a picture perfect green lawn is somehow an achievement. If its not perfect, you must be a lazy sack of crap or have no pride. Think Hank Hill from the animated TV series, King of the Hill.
Same goes for gardens and so on. To achieve this they poison the earth again and again and again. Continuously spraying and pumping all sorts of life destroying chemicals into the air and ground. Just so they can stand on their porch, arms akimbo, nodding in satisfaction of the holocaust they just unleashed against multiple forms of life, both insect and plant. All for a crappy lifeless lawn.
If grass needed bees to grow you can be sure we'd be up to our eyeballs in bees. (I come from NYC/Long island so I'm more familiar with urban earth poisoning. I'm sure farming has as great or a much larger impact as well. Just my POV)
Actually in many suburban and exurban places, more chemicals are used in lawns than in farms. On farms they have to watch their costs since they have very tight margins. A person spraying their yard every so often may get 2x or 3x what they need, just to be "safe" and then go ahead and spray any left overs until it is all gone, because why not. Same goes with fertilizer.
This isn't to say that farms don't have this problem, they definitely do.
If every suburbian yard was filled with native plants, wild bees would be doing amazing. Reminder to everyone, only honeybees can forage on a wide variety of flowers. Most bees can only consume native flowers to the area.
I disapprove of that unnecessary lawns and hoa sterile “gardening”. Like they mandate planting rules or hire “gardeners” to maintain a landscape in a sterile, generic state but there is no thought or reason to it. What hoa had their landscaping designed by ecologists with the environment in mind? It’s hoa boards who don’t care but just want something standard and cheap and to put as little consideration into it as possible. All for the “Maximize/maintain house value” lie. Minimum effort at a cheap bland environment harming aesthetic does not maximize value.
Humans suck (at least via intuition) when it comes to exponential processes. E.g. - people think a 2% growth rate of population in a town is good, but that means in 35 years it's double of what it was!
Interesting to note that population of central boroughs of London (which is used as a canonical example of population growth and overcrowding in Europe) is roughly half what they were 100 years ago. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Islington#De...
And likely decreasing now again, as people find less cultural benefit of living in an expensive city during an ongoing pandemic.
I don't think population size or density is really the problem - the problem is poor planning to account for probable changes in population size or density. Consistent 2% growth should be relatively easy for politicians to anticipate and manage.
I worded this poorly. I meant to point out the counterintuitive nature of 2% growth, not that growth of a city is bad. Mayors who don't realize what 2% means are doing a bad job governing.
That viewpoint might be pre 1970s. We’ve been hammered with environmental news for quiet some time.
Especially with the popularity of Boy Scouts and Camp Fire starting way back in American history.
At least the common person.
Most people know what’s going on, forests destroyed and changing habitats. They just don’t care or have higher priority issues like having a job to eat or electricity/productive resources.
It's an unfortunate consequence of our biology. We're not thinking machines, we reproduction machines. Thinking was never even tacked-on, it just was just a side-effect from our (quite amazing) capability to abstract and model the systems around us to make predictions about them. The monkey systems around us.
So, all in all it's not surprising that we lack the necessary algorithms to correctly deal with the dangers that come from being a species that found the ultimate exploits in the game of life.
Well, it's romantic to think that there's a higher calling for humankind. And I guess that for the story-telling narrator in our head who is interpreting and commenting the events unfolding in front of our eyes, it's just impossible to not treat the entity harboring it as very, very special, unique and bestowed with destiny.
The Earth does not belong to us, rather we belong to the Earth. The Earth is more important than we are, we should put the Earth's needs ahead of our own needs. We must stand up for the rights of the Earth, or else human rights will be impossible to maintain.
I consider to be very convincing the theory that most of our capacity for reasoning actually revolves around the modeling of other humans' thought processes. Together with language (which allows us to 'groom' many people at once, where individuals from other ape species have to groom each other one by one. Grooming as in 'interact to bond and build cooperative associations') it has allowed for incredible cooperative achievements.
So; monkey systems -> other humans, albeit flippantly.
Humans think about certain things as being infinite, until they aren't:
forests are so big we could never impact them
oceans are so big we could never impact them
the atmosphere is so big we could never impact it
the weather system is so big we could never impact it
there's so many insects we could never impact them
etc etc