Perk up people, it’s about your survival

Someone called Bradford Plumer, whom I had not previously come across, has a longish post asking why people don’t seem to care about the ongoing mass extinction and wishing that more writers on the subject “would really hammer home why humans should care about the loss of biodiversity”. Funnily enough, he couches his entire argument in terms of natural processes and ecosystems and what their collapse might mean. And he quotes agriculture, and especially monoculture, exclusively as problem, not solution. But the only example he gives of the sort of example that might might “get people to perk up” is the possibly looming pollination crisis caused by a shortage of bees.

Until there is a wider understanding that agriculture is part of nature, and not separate from it, and that we humans are far more dependent on the food providing services of agriculture than on any other ecological service, I doubt that there’s going to be much perking up anywhere.

There’s not a lot of understanding of that in Brad’s posts or the comments on it, but I live in hope.

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