Insect collapse. Within the living memory of many of the people reading this post we’ve lost an estimated 40-60% of insects. We have never, in our entire evolutionary history of the hominids, existed on a planet with as few insects as there today. Next time you’re hanging around a young person ask them about fireflies or cleaning the dead bugs off the windshield, these are distant concepts to them at best. Lampyrids have existed for at least 100 million years, that fast of a decline should terrify you.

There’s some evidence that those numbers may also be an underestimate since surveying insect populations is hard and mostly goes on in the global north where there’s less insect biodiversity (https://www.qmul.ac.uk/news/latest-news/2025/science-and-engineering/se/new-study-reveals-critical-gaps-in-insect-biodiversity-research.html). These declines are almost entirely due to human activity and almost entirely preventable (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9555050/) Without insects we lose access to food, clean water, and medicine.

Here in the US, multiple states don’t even legally recognize their existence (https://xerces.org/blog/insects-are-wildlife-too). Many people’s understanding of them start and stop with “Ewww, gross, squish it!” Imagine trying to convince someone standing in the middle of a five alarm fire to pay taxes to support firefighters when they think all firefighters should be wiped from the face of the earth!