A giant insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It's a catastrophe

[Plucketeer]

24. "We are part of the natural world."

Indeed, we are. And BEING a natural outgrowth of life on this planet, we're no different from other facets of this whirling rock than earthquakes or volcanoes. Sure - we have self-awareness that we think elevates us above everything else. But we're not "apart" from the list of possible catalysts for catastrophe. We're just one more of them. We can't control quakes, nor asteroids, nor greed. All of what we're currently lamenting is just the wholly natural force of change.

I grew up in the countryside - fascinated with the flora and fauna that was all around every time I stepped off the back stoop. I rescued baby birds, caught and marveled at frogs and tortoises, searched for cocoons of moths and butterflies so I could watch them hatch, caught and categorized butterflies in a display, picked wild strawberries and blackberries. It was great growing up there - I wouldn't trade my childhood experiences for anything. Of course, I couldn't re-do them even if I wanted to. That "world" of mine is covered with blacktop and housing developments. I don't know why it had to go like that, but it's still surging with reckless abandon - and there's only the tiniest of voices calling for it to stop - or at least moderate out of respect for the ecosystems we recognize as being essential to our own ultimate fate. We're just a slow-spewing volcano or a slow-smashing asteroid. Obviously, having self-awareness does NOT afford us the chance to avoid an extinction event.

What happened to life after the prior extinctions revised this outpost? It had survivors that picked themselves up, recognized the various niches that mutating forms could adapt to and gave us a nearly complete makeover of "life forms". This scenario has played out like this time and again. So what makes us THINK or gives us the right to think we can hold everything in stasis? My personal hunch (IF we don't strangle ourselves with pollution or fry ourselves with nukes) is that AI will come to the fore and truly bring about world order thru oppression or outright elimination. And who would be to blame for that?