Please beware the butterfly effect
autonomous, we don’t get fat or waste water like you, we don’t need a consultant to transform from a caterpillar, and we don’t need electricity or a smartphone with GPS.
Most of all, however, we butterflies and our insect cousins are “the little things that run the world,” according to famed biologist E.O. Wilson. “If all humankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to a rich state of equilibrium. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos,” he wrote. Alongside bees and other insects, we pollinate most plants and crops that feed you or the animals you eat, we control populations of plants and species by eating them, and other species survive by eating us. Insects are also a major part of the decomposition process that keeps our ecosystems healthy and functioning. Together we insects outweigh humanity by 17 times, and without us your world would grind to a halt.
While it is almost impossible to carry out a comprehensive study of ecosystems and species, many millions of which have escaped human discovery, your scientists have begun to grasp the absolutely essential and increasingly fragile role we insects play in maintaining our shared environment. No matter what research one consults today, insect populations are falling rapidly, decreasing by between 40 and 70 percent in the last 30 years. The rate of extinction of insects is occurring eight times faster than that of other animals. Much of this is due to the way humans have transformed the planet. According to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, three-quarters of the world’s land and two-thirds of its marine environments have been “significantly altered” by human action, with 85 percent of wetlands already lost and 90 percent of ocean fish stocks overharvested.
Much of the pressure on the world’s land — from deforestation to intensive farming and pesticides — is due to man’s need to feed more than 7 billion people and counting. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization calculated that 70 percent more food will be needed in 2050 compared to 2010. That is why, unfortunately, we butterflies and insects have already suffered great habitat loss through deforestation, desertification and intensive farming. American agricultural lands in particular have become increasingly toxic to us, due to the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides, which are banned in the EU. These pesticides sterilize the soil and persist for many years after their use, effectively killing off all life, even in neighboring areas.
If you were paying any attention, this summer was quite a hot one for humans and butterflies alike. As we watched the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic forest burn, the climate change you humans have caused was there for all to see. In fact, it has already made heatwaves, forest fires, severe flooding and hurricanes 10 times more likely. But, as you cut down or simply sit by and let the Amazon rainforest burn, you are not only releasing a huge amount of planet-heating carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, you are also eliminating the healthiest ecosystems boasting the greatest biodiversity on the planet. Brazil is the world’s most species-rich country but, despite having managed to bring deforestation under control in the early 2000s, deforestation and intentional forest fires are again removing more than 10,000 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest each year. Unfortunately, Borneo, the Congo Basin and Australia are other speciesrich areas where deforestation is proceeding at a frightening pace. On top of acting as carbon sinks and sanctuaries of biodiversity, the forests provide oxygen, rainfall and the regulation of water runoff for the rest of the land. We butterflies saw 149.8 million years of life on Earth before you humans showed up and, while you may be the most intelligent species on the planet, there is one important concept that you have so far failed to grasp. Nature has its ups and downs, it even suffers through extinction events and recovers, but it is always finely tuned to maintaining an equilibrium of life, circulating water and nutrients, keeping species and their populations in check, allocating resources so that we all have just what we need to live and to make our planet bloom and flourish. Only humans have managed to permanently upset that equilibrium.
Mahatma Gandhi once warned that “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” This is where I must ask you to completely rethink how you exist on this planet and to please follow the example of us butterflies and insects. We consume only what we need, our existence participates in, rather than destabilizes, the equilibrium of ecosystems and other species, and we even bring you good luck when we land on your shoulder. If I had a voice, I would shout. If I could cry, I would shed many a tear. I must somehow speak for the quintillions — yes, quintillions — of living beings on Earth that also have no voice. Please do not let us down; please do what you can to bring this madness under control; please join the rest of the living beings on this planet as friends and allies to help us all to flourish without bounds.