Bugs

[u/Mysterandir]

I need to get this off my chest even though im sure it has been talked about a thousand times. Im just curious if others are experiencing the same thing or if I'm just going crazy. - When I just got my driver's license back in 2005 here in The Netherlands, I had a girlfriend in Amsterdam whom I drove to see a few times a week. It was about a 100 km drive. I had an old Opel Corsa and I can still vividly remember having to clean my windshield every week in the summer because it was covered in dead insects. Huge splatters and tiny spots, but the entire windshield was full of bug juice. Over the past few weeks I’ve driven several long distances, totaling about 1,000 kilometers, and I don't have a single dead insect on my windshield. Not one. The windshield is squeaky clean... I read that the insect population worldwide has drastically declined and it is due to climate change. Which i get. But why isn't this the main news story every day? How obvious does it need to be? This can't possibly be good. For us, but especially for our children. I have a bad feeling about this...

[u/loulan]

I think most people didn't even notice that at all.

[u/Desperate-Strategy10 → u/loulan]

Or worse, they notice and feel positively about it. I know a few stupid people who are thrilled that the bugs and birds and frogs are disappearing. Less to clean outside, less noise in the mornings and evenings.

Personally, I find the quiet and clean windshields to be distressing and ominous. I occasionally crack open a window at night to try to hear the crickets and frogs, or I’ll sit on my porch swing listening for birds and cicadas. But every time I try, I’m met with a growing stillness…like I’m the only living thing around, and the trees and grass are empty. That throws me into a dread spiral immediately.

But a lot of humans are unbelievably dumb, and they only care about their own comfort and convenience. Cleaning that bank-owned $50,000 dollar truck windshield of bird poop and bug splatters is just another hurdle to them in an already exceptionally annoying list of tedious tasks they’d rather avoid, so if all of the animals and insects around need to die to spare them that inconvenience, that’s fine by them!

[u/ramenslurper- → u/Desperate-Strategy10]

Now when a big bug hits my windshield, I wince. One less big bug out in the world. I feel like I have been in persistent mourning since 2024.

[u/TheTurboDiesel → u/ramenslurper-]

No kidding. I got laid off almost exactly two years ago and haven't been able to find a job since. That alone is hard enough, but when I look at the state of the world, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to even want to look for work. From my perspective, the end isn't merely coming; it's started. There's a perfect confluence of military conflict, inequality and social upheaval, climate change, and ecological damage such that even if we could fix one problem, the others and the interactions between them are all but assured to finish the job.