insect extinction

Silent Earth: Averting the insect apocalypse

As insects become more scarce, our world will slowly grind to a halt, for it cannot function without them.

There is no doubt that insects are in decline: every year there are slightly fewer butterflies, fewer bumblebees—fewer of almost all the myriad little beasts that make the world go round.


Estimates vary and are imprecise, but it seems likely that insects have declined in abundance by 75% or more in the last 50 years. The scientific evidence for this grows stronger every year, as studies are published describing the collapse of monarch butterfly populations in North America, the demise of woodland and grassland insects in Germany, or the seemingly inexorable contraction of the ranges of bumblebees and hoverflies in the UK.

In 1963, two years before I was born, Rachel Carson warned us in her book Silent Spring that we were doing terrible damage to our planet. She would weep to see how much worse it has become. Insect-rich wildlife habitats such as hay meadows, marshes, heathland and tropical rainforests have been bulldozed, burnt or ploughed to destruction on a vast scale. The problems with pesticides and fertilizers she highlighted have become far more acute, with an estimated three million tons of pesticides now going into the global environment every year.

Some of these new pesticides are thousands of times more toxic to insects than any that existed in Carson's day. Soils have been degraded, rivers choked with silt and polluted with chemicals. Climate change, a phenomenon unrecognized in her time, is now threatening to further ravage our planet. These changes have all happened in our lifetime, on our watch, and they continue to accelerate.

Few people seem to realize how devastating this is, not only for human well-being—we need insects to pollinate our crops, recycle dung, leaves and corpses, keep the soil healthy, control pests, and much more—but for larger animals such as birds, fish, and frogs who rely on insects for food. Wildflowers rely on them for pollination.

As insects become more scarce, our world will slowly grind to a halt, for it cannot function without them.

Insects are vital to ecosystems 

The American biologist Paul Ehrlich likened loss of species from an ecological community to randomly popping out rivets from the wing of an aeroplane. Remove one or two and the plane will probably be fine. Remove 10, or 20, or 50, and at some point that we are entirely unable to predict, there will be a catastrophic failure, and the plane will fall from the sky. Insects are the rivets that keep ecosystems functioning.

Halting and reversing insect declines, or indeed tackling any of the other major environmental threats we face, requires action at many levels, from the general public to farmers, food retailers and other businesses, local authorities and policy makers in government. Here in Britain, recent elections and the Brexit debate have seen precious little serious discussion of the environment, despite the compelling evidence that many of the biggest challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century relate to our unsustainable over-exploitation of our planet's finite resources.

To save them, we need to act, and act now. We can do this in several ways, some simple, others harder to achieve. Firstly, we need to engender a society that values the natural world, both for what it does for us and for its own sake. The obvious place to start is with our children, encouraging environmental awareness from an early age. We also need to green our urban areas. Imagine green cities filled with trees, vegetable gardens, ponds and wild flowers squeezed into every available space—in our gardens, city parks, allotments, cemeteries, on road verges, railway cuttings and roundabouts—and all free from pesticides.

We must transform our food system. Growing and transporting food so that we all have something to eat is the most fundamental of human activities. The way we do it has profound impacts on our own welfare, and on the environment, so it is surely worth investing in getting it right. There is an urgent need to overhaul the current system, which is failing us in multiple ways.

There is abundant evidence that smaller farms can be more productive and sustainable, but the current economic model and subsidy systems are driving them out of business. "Alternative" farming systems such as organic, permaculture, agroforestry, and biodynamic farming all seem to have much to offer, but receive precious little encouragement. In Bavaria, concern over insect declines led 1.7 million people to sign a petition demanding action, and this led to a suit of measures to make farming more wildlife friendly, including financial incentives to reach a target of 30% organic land. There is an appetite for change.

We could have a vibrant farming sector, employing many more people, focused on sustainable production of healthy food, looking after soil health and supporting biodiversity, and focussed mainly on fruit and veg rather than meat, but this needs support from both policy makers and consumers.

Our planet has coped remarkably well so far with the blizzard of changes we have wrought, but we would be foolish to assume that it will continue to do so. A relatively small proportion of species have actually gone extinct so far, but almost all wild species now exist in numbers that are a fraction of their former abundance, subsisting in degraded and fragmented habitats and subjected to a multitude of ever-changing man-made problems.

We do not understand anywhere near enough to be able to predict how much resilience is left in our depleted ecosystems, or how close we are to tipping points beyond which collapse becomes inevitable.

In Paul Ehrlich's 'rivets on a plane' analogy, we may be close to the point where the wing falls off.

Dave Goulson is Professor of Biology at University of Sussex, UK, specializing in bee ecology. He has published more than 300 scientific articles plus seven books, including the Sunday Times bestsellers A Sting in the Tale (2013), the Garden Jungle (2019), and Silent Earth (2021).

This is a modified extract from Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, published September 2021 by HarperCollins.

Banner photo credit: Pimthida/flickr

California Governor Gavin Newsom stands at a podium giving a speech.
Credit: California Governor/Flickr

States step up climate action as Trump rolls back policies

As Trump moves to dismantle environmental protections and withdraw support for clean energy, state leaders and advocates are taking charge of climate action through legal challenges, new policies and renewable energy expansion.

Dharna Noor reports for The Guardian.

Keep reading...Show less
Senator Whitehouse & climate change

Senator Whitehouse puts climate change on budget committee’s agenda

For more than a decade, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gave daily warnings about the mounting threat of climate change. Now he has a powerful new perch.
Solar panel on thatched roof hut.
Credit: teresa cotrim/Pixabay

Keeping Africa’s solar future bright with repair and reuse

Solar power has transformed life across Africa, but as millions of panels and lights break down, local repair initiatives are stepping up to keep communities powered and reduce waste.

Peter Yeung reports for Reasons To Be Cheerful.

Keep reading...Show less
Black woman scientist wearing gloves and glasses injects a liquid into tiny test tubes.

Trump’s science freeze leaves researchers in limbo

The Trump administration’s abrupt freeze on federal science communication and grant processes threw researchers into chaos, delaying critical projects and threatening the future of public health research.

Celia Ford reports for Vox.

Keep reading...Show less
Donald Trump and Joe Biden shake hands in front of the White House.
Credit: Tim Reckmann/Flickr

The White House's sustainable chemistry plan lacks bold goals to drive change

The Biden administration’s sustainable chemistry strategy was supposed to nudge the U.S. chemical industry toward safer, greener alternatives, but without clear benchmarks or regulatory teeth, it risks being little more than a well-meaning memo.

Joel Tickner writes for C&EN.

Keep reading...Show less
RFK, MAGA and green politics
Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

RFK Jr. stirs up MAGA, MAHA and green politics

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s surprising shift from liberal environmental champion to far-right Trump ally raises questions about the growing divide in green advocacy.

Benji Jones reports for Vox.

Keep reading...Show less
At an indoor urban farm, a man takes notes in front of shelves of plants with strong LED lights.
Credit: ekkasit919/BigStock Photo ID: 206727814

Reimagining office spaces as urban farms could solve food and real estate crises

Vacant office spaces are finding a second life as indoor farms, turning empty buildings into hubs for growing kale, cucumbers and more, while addressing urban food security and sustainability.

Vittoria Traverso reports for the BBC.

Keep reading...Show less
Image of an oil pump jack and fence is superimposed in front of a giant crypto coin.
Credit: cla300/BigStock PhotoID: 445214753

Fossil fuel-backed crypto schemes put taxpayer dollars at risk

A network of fossil fuel operatives is advocating for state and federal governments to invest billions of taxpayer dollars in Bitcoin reserves, tying financial instability to increased energy consumption and environmental harm.

Freddy Brewster reports for The Lever.

Keep reading...Show less
From our Newsroom
wildfire retardants being sprayed by plane

New evidence links heavy metal pollution with wildfire retardants

“The chemical black box” that blankets wildfire-impacted areas is increasingly under scrutiny.

People  sitting in an outdoors table working on a big sign.

Op-ed: Why funding for the environmental justice movement must be anti-racist

We must prioritize minority-serving institutions, BIPOC-led organizations and researchers to lead environmental justice efforts.

joe biden

Biden finalizes long-awaited hydrogen tax credits ahead of Trump presidency

Responses to the new rules have been mixed, and environmental advocates worry that Trump could undermine them.

Op-ed: Toxic prisons teach us that environmental justice needs abolition

Op-ed: Toxic prisons teach us that environmental justice needs abolition

Prisons, jails and detention centers are placed in locations where environmental hazards such as toxic landfills, floods and extreme heat are the norm.

Agents of Change in Environmental Justice logo

LISTEN: Reflections on the first five years of the Agents of Change program

The leadership team talks about what they’ve learned — and what lies ahead.

Stay informed: sign up for The Daily Climate newsletter
Top news on climate impacts, solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered to your inbox week days.